AMAZONS AND GLADIATORS (2001)

 

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

While my recent screening of BATTLE OF THE AMAZONS yielded only stinky cheese, AMAZONS AND GLADIATORS offers a more pleasing aroma.

In the BATTLE review, I said that it was no sin to be unoriginal, only to be lazy. In GLADIATORS writer-director Zachary Weintraub produced a cheese-fest consisting mostly of sexy men and women fighting each other, motivated only by a routine revenge fantasy. And the feminist tropes of the film are just as superficial. Nevertheless, GLADIATORS is never lazy but delivers its conflicts with considerable energy.     

Most of the action takes place in a fictional Roman province, "Panne," supposedly "60 years after the death of Christ." But it's a very mutable history, for its villain is the real-life Roman officer Marcus Crassius, famed for putting down the slave revolt of Spartacus. In this tale, Julius Caesar fears the popularity of Crassius (Patrick Bergin) with the Roman people, so the emperor appoints the soldier governor of Panne. Crassius resents being exiled from Rome, so he becomes a tyrant to the common folk under his reign. As one of his depredations, he kills the mother of heroine Serena and consigns the young girl and her sister Gwyned to slavery. As adults the two of them (played by Nichole Hiltz and Wendi Winburn) are trained as dancers, but their beauty attracts the attention of Roman officials. Gwyned (she of the oddly British name) becomes reconciled to a ritzy captivity, but Serena kills a Roman who tries to rape her. Luckily, there's an Amazon captive (Jennifer Rubin) close to hand, and the warrior-woman not only helps Serena escape, she paves Serena's path to join the Amazons of Queen Zenobia.

There was a historical Queen Zenobia who battled Rome, but she wasn't a contemporary of Crassius (and neither lived just 60 years after Christ's death). Real Zenobia also had no association with the Greek legends of Amazons, but this one-- who's not a major character here-- rules a tribe of female warriors who live out in the forest. They don't steal men to mate with but are defined purely as rebels against Roman authority. Serena trains as a woman-warrior and nurtures a desire to be revenged on Governor Crassius. Ultimately, after a lot of complications, Serena gets the chance to duel Crassius to the death in his low-rent imitation of a Roman arena.

The most amusing feminist trope comes after Crassius' death, when the assembled Amazons, having put down the small contingent of Roman soldiers, warn the arena-patrons never to abuse women, or they'll face Amazon vengeance. GLADIATORS is more compelling, even in its cheesiness, when it simply depicts women as willing to fight for justice-- even if these justice-fighters just happen to all be unbelievable hotties. There's no attention to how the Amazons came to separate themselves from patriarchal rule, nor is there any sense of their even having a culture or religion; they only qualify as a "weird society" by the mere fact of being an all-female tribe. There are a few puzzling scenes where a wisewoman utters predictions of Rome's imminent doom and even claims that Serena will play some role in that downfall. Only at the end does the prophet provide closure, claiming that Serena's Amazons will participate in the sacking of Rome, alongside the more typical suspects, the Goths and Vandals. I don't think that Goths, Vandals or even early converts to Roman Christianity would be very welcoming to Amazonian customs. But within the movie's terms, I suppose the apparent fulfillment of the prophecy falls into the uncanny domain as well.                     

RAWHIDE: "INCIDENT OF THE BLUE FIRE" (1959)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*

Like INCIDENT OF THE PALE RIDER, BLUE FIRE is one of a handful of tales from the early seasons of RAWHIDE that use uncanny scenarios to throw doubt upon the substantial and rational aspects of the world.

Gil Favor's band of hard-working drovers and the cattle they shepherd are far from civilization when they encounter the "blue fire" of the title. The electrical phenomenon is said to herald lightning-strikes, but the drovers don't need the azure discharge to tell them that they stand in peril of a stampede, if the prevalent storm clouds should panic the easily spooked "beeves." Favor assures his men that the "St. Elmo's fire" is harmless, but the fact that he, like other 19th-century cowboys, don't know what the hell it is makes the situation even more unnerving. The terminally superstitious Hey Soos makes things no better by maundering about deaths and devils.

Into the drovers' camp comes an individual who becomes a flashpoint for all the cowboys' inchoate fears: a footloose fellow named "Lucky" Markley. Markley himself is a would-be drover, as he tries to sell Favor a tiny herd of scrub cattle he's rounded up. The cows are of such inferior stock that Favor won't have them. However, because they're in the midst of marauding Comanches, the trial-boss allows Markley to work for him as a drover, at least until they reach some civilized port. Unfortunately for Favor, Hey Soos openly disparages Markley as the harbinger of bad luck, and the rest of the men are just as leery of the stranger.

 Markley (affably played by Skip Homeier) does nothing to provoke this hostility, though he makes one arguable error. While he and another drover are rounding up a stray steer, three Comanches accost them, demanding not only the steer but also Markley's horse. Markley shoots one brave, and the other two flee, but return later with a larger contingent of Comanches. The drovers resent Markley for bringing on more trouble, though the Comanches probably would have sought to plunder the herd no matter what happened. The men want Markley cast out. Favor alone defends the man, so much so that even Markley wonders why the trail-boss protects him, given that Favor owes Markley nothing. Favor tells a tale of having lost a young male companion during a round-up due to "bad luck," and it's implied that Favor believes in determining life by one's own actions, not through beliefs in good or ill fortune. It's this novel approach that keeps FIRE from being just a dime-a-dozen "it is wrong to give in to mob rule" morality play.

The stunning conclusion suggests that Favor's view is too simple. Finally, just as the Comanches move in for a raid, lightning strikes and the cattle stampede. Only a skillful maneuver has the chance to box the cattle in and quell their rampage, and Lucky Markley performs the deed-- sort of. The viewer alone sees how Markley, riding his cowpony, is struck in the head by lightning, killing him-- and yet, somehow horse and rider curtail the stampede, as well as scaring off the Indian raiders. Later the drovers find both horse and rider. The horse is dead from falling and breaking his neck, but there's nothing to indicate how the so-called "jonah" died, except slight burn-marks on the back of his neck. Was Favor's "favored son" killed, only to complete his task despite being a dead man in the saddle? The episode ends with no pat answers for anyone and thus stands as one of the very best "weird westerns" ever produced for television.         

THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (1972)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

This is an average but still tolerable adaptation of the classic Doyle tale. As I just finished rereading the source material today, I find myself excusing a lot of odd changes just because it was a TV-movie with limited time and money.   

I rather liked the straightforward Holmes of Stewart Granger, while the Watson of Bernard Fox (best known as the character "Doctor Bombay" on BEWITCHED) was efficient enough. Watson's long sojourn at Baskerville Hall is cut for time, which makes sense. Yet the writer also tries to work in Holmes' masquerade as a moor-hermit, which only makes sense if Holmes is absenting himself from the hall so that he can study all suspects at his leisure.

Unlike the 1939 version, this HOUND keeps the idea that the villain Stapleton (William Shatner) has his wife masquerade as his sister to hoax his prospective victim (and cousin), as well as having used another female pawn to bring about the death of the earlier target. On the other hand, the writer troubled to build up Doctor Mortimer as a red herring, which Doyle never does. This proved an enjoyable development because it gave Anthony Zerbe better lines than the literary character got.

In my review I asserted that the thing separating Doyle's novel from most film adaptations was that Doyle made the Hound-mystery a meditation on the human tendency to regress to the primitive and egoistic. The 1972 HOUND is no different, but its depiction of the killer hound is more bracing than I've seen in two of the more expensive productions. This is particularly true because the beast turns on its master, which is in some ways more visually satisfying than Doyle's conclusion. And this may be the only HOUND where, after the dog's dead, the heroes still hear a distant, mysterious howl.     

       

THE RED QUEEN KILLS SEVEN TIMES (1972)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological* 

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Given that great title, and QUEEN's ability to spotlight the charms (albeit never naked ones) of Barbara Bouchet, I wanted this film to reach the heights of the classic giallos. But the second and last giallo-movie of director Emilio Miraglia doesn't have anything underlying all the pretty pictures-- and to understand why, I have to do my usual thing of talking about the ending. 

Part of QUEEN's problem lies in the "family curse" with which the story begins, in that said curse never seems like anything but a laundry list of plot-points. We see Bouchet's character Kitty as a child, quarreling with her similarly aged sister Evelyn. They take their quarrel to their rich grandfather, who just happens to have a grotesque painting on the wall of his study. This painting depicts two sisters from some medieval portion of the family tree, with one, the Black Queen, stabbing her nasty sister The Red Queen to death. Grandpa not only keeps this testament to sibling hatred out in the open, he tells the two girls an involved story about how the Red Queen came back to life, killed six innocents, and then murdered her sister as well. Also, the Red Queen supposedly repeats this curse in subsequent generations. Wow, it's a medieval legend that sounds just like the plot of a giallo!

Fast forward to the siblings' teen years: they quarrel again, fight by the side of a river, and when Kitty knocks Evelyn into the water, she's swept away and never seen again. To spare Kitty, her cousin Franziska (Marina Malfatti) and her husband concoct a story for the public: that Evelyn simply emigrated to the US. Kitty feels very guilty but gets on with her life, working for a fashion house that allows the writers to bring in many more hot women, not least Sybil Danning (who does have a really cool nude scene). Then Kitty's grandpa dies, and the question of inheritance comes up. And it's only then that a red-cloaked female killer starts randomly attacking the friends of Kitty and of her boyfriend Martin.

Once the motive of inheritance comes up, though, no one's going to believe that Evelyn is back, fulfilling the Red Queen curse by knocking off random innocents while building up to the main target. Of course's it's a hoax designed to put the whole inheritance in the hands of Franziska and her husband. The hoariness of the plot would be excusable if the characters had been interesting within the bounds of a hyperbolic murder mystery. But despite all the potential psychological conflicts that can arise from sibling rivalry, QUEEN comes off as just a bunch of random characters going through the motions. And though the violence quotient is high, the menace of The Red Queen doesn't come close to the visual impact of the most memorable giallo grotesques.   

     

BLONDE IN BLACK LEATHER (1975)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological* 

On this blog I generally review either metaphenomenal films or isophenomenal films that are in some way relevant to metaphenomenal tropes. For that reason, I've hesitated to review my favorite film by Italian actress Claudia Cardinale, who passed away this week. Zany as it is, I'm not sure how much I have to say about the comedy-western THE LEGEND OF FRENCHIE KING, wherein Cardinale teamed up with French legend Brigitte Bardot (as of this writing still among the living). However, four years later Cardinale teamed with another Italian luminary, Monica Vitti for a film originally called "Here Begins the Adventure." The English title for this comedy-road film, BLONDE IN BLACK LEATHER, may be better in that it suggests the allure of adventure that Moreau's leather-clad motorcyclist holds for homebody Cardinale. However, director/co-writer Carlo di Palma does bring in elements of irony here, given that Cardinale's character is in some ways much more dynamic, even though BLONDE is primarily one of the many knockabout comedies that the Italian film industry so often produced.     

For the first ten minutes BLONDE almost does look like a precursor to the over-fifteen-years-later drama THELMA AND LOUISE. Claudia (Cardinale) works in a laundry while her barely-seen pig of a husband sits on his ass. Later there's a line about how Claudia's husband beat her, but the English translation doesn't say this right away. Claudia encounters the leather-clad, motorcycle-riding blonde Miele (Vitti). After hearing some of Miele's stories about her adventurous life, Claudia begs Miele to take her away from her drudgery. Miele, preoccupied with making a rendezvous with her fiancee up north, initially takes Claudia a little way, leaves her flat, and then changes her mind, rescuing the laundress from a lothario.

It's soon evident to the viewer, though not to naive Claudia, that Miele is a complete bullshitter. The next half hour is pretty boring, as the two women tool around the Italian countryside. Miele carelessly loses the motorbike and whines ceaselessly about making her appointment. The ladies try to steal a car and end up almost kidnapping a kid, but that action quickly peters out. 

Still on the way to the northern city, the girls stop in Naples, where the film's best scenes take place. The heroines help an old woman get back her money from one of the local gangsters. In return she gives them a magic charm that may or may not have real power. A few scenes later, the girls end up at a casino-- one where, curiously, the gangster-owner punishes his subordinates with an electrical torture machine. The girls break the bank, which sounds like the charm at work, though technically, Claudia is shown invoking the power of the charm AFTER the ladies start winning. However, the casino's gangster-boss lures them into another game. The girls lose but accuse the gangster of cheating and try to leave with their dough.

Now, the charm is never mentioned again, but it would be the only explanation for what happens next. As gangsters surround Claudia, Miele tells her that since her husband used to beat Claudia, Claudia ought to do the same to the thugs. And so the slim Cardinale proceeds to slug her way through a dozen men as if she had become Bud Spenser, the bulky colossus from the TRINITY films. (This might have been an intentional reference since one of those films is seen airing in a theater at the film's climax.) Miele, supposedly the big adventuress, does little to contribute to the fight, but though the girls get free they lose their money and are reduced to hiking north once more. They have another adventure on a train (where the director briefly emulates a silent movie with B&W photography and undercranking). They both have Edenic dreams wherein Claudia hooks up with a devil while Miele does the same with an angel, and both beings are played by the same actor. They eventually quarrel and part, only to come together to get Miele to her goal. Only after parting again does Claudia find out just how much of a fake Miele is. Yet Miele redeems herself by kicking her own bad boyfriend to the curb, and the two hit the road again, getting more of a happy ending than Thelma and Louise.

BLONDE is too whack-a-doodle to be credited with strong sociological intent, feminist or otherwise. But I was never completely bored, given that even the slow first half-hour spotlights the stunning looks of the two costars. BLONDE certainly doesn't deserve to be listed with the many more serious movies in Cardinale's repertoire. But in contrast with her LEGEND-ary costar Bardot, I never felt that Cardinale's vivacity was best served by sober dramas. She possessed one of the screen's most infectious smiles, and so I tend to like her comedies better than her serious stuff. And as I said, BLONDE is also one of the very few times Cardinale dabbled in any kind of fantasy-story.   

      

PHANTOM OF THE RED HOUSE (1956)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*                                                                                                                                                   From what I can tell, although PHANTOM OF THE RED HOUSE is one of the earliest of the Mexican horror films to have received dubbed distribution in the States, it's not all that well thought-of. It seems to be the only horror move in the repertoire of Miguel M. Delgado-- at least I didn't recognize any other titles in his oeuvre-- but frankly I liked this comic "old dark house" film better than a lot of serious horrors from the period, and better than many of the American offerings in that subgenre.                                                           

The main plot is entirely derivative: a rich old guy pops off and the heirs, in order to claim any of his property, must dwell in the house for a set period of time. This naturally gives a masked maniac the chance to start knocking off the heirs to clear the path to the money. I actually don't remember anything being said about a "last man standing" who'd inherit everything if all the other heirs are gone, but maybe the scripters thought that sort of thing was a given.                                                                                 

Anyway, after one or two of the nastier victims are knocked off, the main heroine hires a detective to ferret out the "phantom" killer, who's a moderately spooky figure in a cloak, fedora and fright-mask. The shamus is also a goofus by the name of Diogenes Holmes (Antonio Espino), and in many comedic ODH movies, he would be the star.                                                                                                       

But Diogenes is not the main character, nor is the mystery killer the star, nor are most of the other candidates for murder (some of whom also sport names as wacky as the detective's, such as "Dr. Hipocrates Piedra," "Pedro Satan," and a woman nicknamed "Mulehead." No, this time, in a subgenre where the lead female is usually some colorless ingenue, PHANTOM gives viewers a lively, daffy female who's much funnier than the dopey detective. She too sports a peculiar name, that of "Mercedes Benz de Carrera," or "Mercy" as her boyfriend calls her, but as played by Alma Rosa Aguirre, she enlivens the predictable antics just as much as Bob Hope did with a similar role in the 1939 CAT AND THE CANARY. Delgado keeps things visually interesting with some quality B&W photography, but the oddball psychology of the female lead-- who, for once, isn't some simp who denies that she cares about a big inheritance-- is the main attraction in this "casa rosa." (Not that I ever found out the meaning of the estate's name, BTW...)                                                                                                                                                             

MYSTERY ON MONSTER ISLAND (1981)

 

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

                                                                                                                ***SPOILERS***                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          I didn't originally care much for MYSTERY ON MONSTER ISLAND, directed and co-written by Spaniard Juan Piquer Simon. However, when I compare MYSTERY to the movie for which Simon may be best known to Americans, the terminally dumb SUPERSONIC MAN, this low-budget "robinsonade" doesn't come off quite so badly.                                                                                                                                                                                                There's even some fun to be had imagining how this project might have come about. It might have started when Simon scouted some location and realized that he might use it for a "Robinson Crusoe" type of story. Maybe he had some particular affection for the public domain Jules Verne novel GODFREY MORGAN, but realized that Crusoe-type stories weren't all that salable in the 1980s. So Simon took the adventurous trajectory of the Verne book-- in which a young man of privilege went on a sea voyage to prove his mettle and had various island-adventures-- and added some fake monsters. It seems axiomatic that Simon or someone in his orbit chose the title to make moviegoers associate MYSTERY with the well-liked MYSTERIOUS ISLAND. Yet the thrust of the movie's narrative is very different, and I find the novelty of MYSTERY slightly preferable to any of the lackluster remakes of the 1961 Harryhausen film.                                                                                   

So as mentioned above, the novel concerns Godfrey Morgan, who goes off on various adventures, accompanied by a comedy-relief tutor named Artelett, said adventures being fostered by Godfrey's uncle, so that the young man can prove himself before he marries his beloved, the uncle's female ward. MYSTERY starts out pretty much the same way, except that in the film, the young fellow (now named Jeff and played by Ian Sera) is sent to a particular island by the uncle (Peter Cushing). Jeff goes in the company of the tutor (David Hatton) in advance of his impending marriage to the ward Meg (Ana Obregon), but in this case, some chicanery is signaled by the fact that the uncle has actually purchased the island in advance. In fact, in a plot-point that I assume isn't in the book, the uncle competes for the purchase of the property with another rich man, Taskinar (Terence Stamp). Taskinar, unlike the uncle, knows that there's a cache of gold hidden on the island, and so he means to have that booty no matter who else gets in his way. That includes Jeff, Artellet, and all the minions of the uncle.     

  By "minions," I mean not only the transparently phony monsters encountered by Jeff and Artellet, but everyone else that the two meet on the island. From a "Friday"-like native to a supposed French castaway named Dominique (Blanca Estrada), everyone's just an actor hired by the uncle to give Jeff the illusion of an adventure. This ploy doesn't make much sense-- certainly Jeff resents the deception when he finds out-- but by sheer chance, the life-and-death stakes become real when Taskinar and his crew of pirates invade the island for the gold. So even though there are no monsters on Monster Island-- all the dinosaurs being the creation of some "toymaker"-- the movie does conclude in a big brawl between Jeff's allies and the forces of Taskinar, and the story ends with the good guys' victory.             

This simple film's list of merits and demerits is almost equal. Cushing and Stamp have only a smattering of scenes, so obviously Simon only had the funds to pay the "big names" in his movie for a few days apiece. (Paul Naschy has some minor scenes as well, but I didn't bother looking for him.) Main character Jeff ought to be likable since he sincerely wants to prove himself, but actor Sera is just kind of bland. Maybe that's why he didn't have a very long cinematic career, with three of his appearances being in movies by Simon. One odd development is the revelation that Taskinar somehow suborned the actress playing the role of castaway Dominque, but I don't see that she did anything to help the villain's designs. She does make a play for the engaged young man, but that may have been her own private idea. Still, in the concluding brawl, Meg gets to fight Dominique, even though Meg has no idea that the other girl put the moves on her man. I frankly liked best the performance of David Hatton as the incompetent and effete tutor, because I thought he gave the one-dimensional character his all, which is more than I could say for Ian Sera. And lastly, though this is a compromised adaptation of the Verne book, I probably will never read the source novel, and so MYSTERY educated me in the broad outlines of Verne's forgotten venture into Robinson Crusoe territory.                       

SPY TODAY, DIE TOMORROW (1967)

 

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

This minor Italian-Spanish-German flick, while not actually good, is at least diverting at times in comparison to the most routine programmers in the Eurospy subgenre. 

For a start, it boasts three weird titles. The original German title, seen above, translates to "Mister Dynamite--Tomorrow Death Kisses You" and was meant to highlight the movie's connection to a popular series of German spy novels, whose hero sports the nickname "Mister Dynamite." (In the novels his real name is "Karl Urban," the same as the modern New Zealand actor, but SPY changes the character's first name to "Bob.") For the UK the title became "Die Slowly, You'll Enjoy It More," which really sounds like something the Italians would have come up with. (Some dubber liked the title so much, they had three separate characters in the film repeat the sentence as a catchphrase.) Apparently SPY is the title for continental Europe.

So, in shameless imitation of THUNDERBALL, a secret oiganization, headed by one Bardo Baretti (Amedeo Nazzari), apparently steals an atomic bomb and wants a payoff not to detonate it in some U.S. city. So far, so ordinary. Yet when we first see Bardo, he's certainly not acting like a normative spy-chief. He gets angry at his current girlfriend for leaving their house without his permission, kicks her out permanently, and then-- lies down on the floor and wraps a rug around his body, as if retreating to the womb. I confess I found this one scene a real hoot, even though the script never elaborates upon it. Bardo also plays with model trains in his office, suggesting that he's a few bricks short of a load.

The U.S. military doesn't seem much better off. Several uniformed men sit around a table, discussing how their computer systems have claimed that one of their bombs is missing. No one thinks to ask if the employees of the unnamed nuclear installation have verified the absence of a bomb; they just take the computer's word for the matter. This will have consequences later for the plot, such as it is, later.

Bob Urban (former Tarzan Lex Barker) is sent out to turn over various stones and ferret out the blackmailers. Like every other sixties spy, he first has to meet with some goofy version of Bond's "Q," who tries to fob off weird weapons on the agent-- none of which he uses. The tech guy describes two weapons but doesn't show them in operation. He also described a pill that produces a big smokescreen, then for some reason starts to swallow it, spits it out and creates a big smoke-cloud in his lab. The director plays this scene for obvious laughs and therefore it's not as funny as the intro of Bardo.

Like every other Eurospy, Urban begins wandering around various cities, getting into fights until eventually Bardo sends henchmen to pick him up. Prior to this, a mysterious girl named Lu (Maria Perschy) ingratiates herself with Bardo and almost immediately becomes one of the henchpersons, for she also helps Bardo's men capture Urban by coming on to the heroic operative. But since she's the only major female character in the story-- with just two other minor ones tossed in for quick effect-- Lu starts out a bad girl and is later revealed to be a good one in disguise.

It's soon apparent that director/co-writer Franz Josef Gottlieb is really only interested in the comic scenes, for all the fights and gun-battles are tossed out with an air of, "this is the stuff the punters came for, so here it is." There are various pointless scenes in which Urban teams up with a CIA agent played by Euro-favorite Brad Harris, and these seem designed just to burn time. Urban's not much better with the sexual conquest scenes, either. At one point, in the middle of his assignment, he takes a blonde girl to the beach for some sun and fun, and then gets called back to the job. Somehow one suspects the hero's conviction for his noble purpose is lacking.

There are two elements of the denouement which are, like the Bardo intro, not really good but are a little unexpected. First, Urban figures out that the threat of nuclear blackmail has been a huge bluff; that Bardo had an inside agent falsify the computer's findings-- making it even stupider that the military guys never checked their missile silos. Second, though Urban has a final shootout with the inside agent, Bardo does what no other evil mastermind has ever done in a Eurospy flick-- he escapes. He's last seen having donned military garb, which allows him to commandeer a car from some soldiers and simply drive off. Two explanations occur to me. One: the version I saw is missing a big climactic scene. Two-- because the producers hoped to launch a series of "Mister Dynamite" films-- they may have thought they'd have Bardo appear in one of the next movies, movies which never got made. Since I know nothing of the book series, it's even possible that Bardo might be a recurring villain therein, and that Gottlieb simply adapted the character's weird behavior patterns from a book source.

Most of Gottlieb's other directorial efforts didn't receive English dubbing or subbing, and so it looks like this was his only Eurospy film. However, he did direct three earlier "Krimis," and in my review of SECRET OF THE BLACK WIDOW, I noted that the performers were allowed to "camp things up." So maybe Gottlieb was like the American serial director James Horne, who frequently injected baggy-pants comedy into theoretically serious adventures.

One last phenomenality matter: THUNDERBALL sustains the trope of the "bizarre crime" by having its villains steal a real nuclear bomb. In this case, the mere pretense to such a crime does not satisfy that trope, but it does rate as a "phantasmal figuration."

THE FRENCH SEX MURDERS (1972)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

For a guy who worked mostly on westerns, Ferdinando Merighi did all right with his one sleaze-filled giallo. THE FRENCH SEX MURDERS. It could have been a lot better script-wise, but at least it's never dull.

One often sees the more mystery-oriented Italian thrillers establish two seemingly unrelated social domains: one reputable, one not so much. The disreputable domain is an upscale French whorehouse run by Madame Colette (a still glamorous Anita Ekberg) and staffed by such beauties as Marianne (Rosalba Neri) and Francine (Barbara Bouchet). Petty thief Antoine has been banned because of previous bad behavior with Francine. Yet because the lusty young fellow brings a large wad of cash with him, Madame Colette allows him to have a session with his obsession. The two quarrel, Antoine slaps Francine around and then leaves. Moments later, an American named Randall-- a writer who's talked the Madame into letting him hang around and gather material for a sleazy expose on French prostitution-- finds Francine dead from bludgeoning.

The reputable domain is comprised by the representatives of the law who condemn Antoine despite his protestations of innocence. Antoine swears that he'll kill everyone who sent him to the guillotine, though he doesn't lose his life that way. Apparently just to give the movie a little more oomph, Antoine escapes jail but gets his head cut off in a motorcycle accident. In the view of Judge Tesch (William Alexander), the man who sentenced Antoine, justice has been served. When his close friend Professor Waldemar (Howard Vernon) makes the unusual request to collect Antoine's head for study, Tesch makes it happen. 

Tesch, though, is not the important part of the reputable world, for the story places far more emphasis upon the eccentric scientist, his laboratory aide Roger (Franco Borelli), and Waldemar's sexy daughter Eleanora (Evelyn Kraft). Patently some mystery-element's being set up when the script repeatedly informs us that Waldemar doesn't like anyone messing around his daughter, and that Eleanora isn't willing to challenge his authority and openly date Roger. 

Then Madame Colette is killed. Maybe her death wouldn't be enough to launch a continuing investigation, but then Judge Tesch is slain as well, and people start wondering if Antoine is really back from the dead. Inspector Fontaine (Robert Sacchi, a well-known Humphrey Bogart lookalike from the period) takes over the case, but he can't seem to prevent more murders, including the decapitation of Marianne. The mystery killer is never clearly seen and his murder-methods are basic, though Merighi tries to soup up the killings with rapid-fire repetitions of the murder-frames, but it's dire rather than exciting.

To absolutely no one's surprise, Antoine's not back from the dead. Weird Waldemar suddenly confesses a deep and abiding love for his own daughter Eleanora, and reveals that he killed Francine at the whorehouse because the prostitute (blonde like Eleanora) wouldn't play along with Waldermar's incest-fantasy. (She may have also triggered him by suggesting the daughter's unavailability, as Francine's last words include the phrase, "I'm a dirty whore, yet you can't have me!" Supposedly Waldemar commits all the other murders to "cover" for the original killing, though it's one of the later murders that allows Fontaine to solve the mystery. I suppose one might have said that Waldemar's true motives was to kill off other young women because the violence stimulated him, but then how does one explain his gory slayings of two men as well? And although Madame Colette's very comely, there's not much chance that Waldemar could imagine her to be his "forbidden fruit."

So as a mystery the film is mostly BS, but the hot women are well photographed and events move along nicely, despite the unimpressive murder-methods. 

THE JUNGLE PRINCESS (1936)

 

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

There's not much doubt that THE JUNGLE PRINCESS was an attempt to emulate the success of 1932's TARZAN THE APE MAN, since one of the credited writers, Cyril Hume, had worked on two of the MGM Tarzans before contributing to PRINCESS. As an interesting sidebar, director William Thiele went on to helm two MGM ape-man adventures after this film. All that said, PRINCESS is intended to be a romantic drama first and foremost.

Jungle-girl Ulah (Dorothy Lamour in her feature film debut, which "typed" her as a sarong-girl) isn't precisely raised by animals in her rather vague origin. When she's a small girl she's apparently living in the Malaysian jungle with her father, and the father is killed by a tiger (presumably a female) even as the tiger is shot to death. Ulah then just lives in the jungle for the next fifteen or so years alongside the tiger's cub, who ends up looking pretty healthy for a fifteen-year-old tiger. Ulah apparently has some rapport with the local monkey population, who hang out with her despite her tiger companion, though she's never said to wield any literal power over animals.

A group of white hunters come looking for zoo animals, and their party includes Chris Powell (Ray Milland) and his fiancee Ava (Molly Lamont). They're warned by natives of a legend of a "laughing tiger," but this is a superstition that's grown from the locals having heard Ulah's girlish laugh when her tiger friend was roaming about.

Chris ventures into the jungle, where he's attacked by Ulah's tiger, but Ulah appears and orders the tiger to leave him. Ulah takes Chris to her cave to care for him, and almost immediately falls for him. She can only speak what Chris calls "baby-talk Malay," but this common ground gives the hunter the chance to teach Ulah some English. Though it's unlikely that Ulah knows what human sex entails, her body language suggests an intense desire for propinquity at the very least.

Once Chris returns to his camp with Ulah in tow, everyone's glad to see him, but Ava's not the least glad to see Ulah. Ava conceals her hostility, but when Chris invites Ulah to eat with the group at a European-style dinner table, Ava sees an opportunity to make Ulah look bad. She tries to take advantage of the sarong-clad beauty's ignorance by dressing her in foolish clothes. But in a moment that probably gratified female viewers in 1936, Ulah senses what's going on, dumps the bad clothes and cobbles together an impressive outfit that makes Chris appreciate her even more. To his credit, he realizes he's fallen out of love with Ava and tries to be honest with her, though she doesn't want to hear it. 

The natives, still fired by superstition, cage Ulah's tiger and plan to kill it, believing it a demon. They nurture the same plans for Ulah, and when the whites get in the Malaysians' way they're scheduled for sacrifice too. But somehow Ulah's monkey friends (one of which is prominently an African chimp) find out about her peril and come to her rescue, swarming into the Malaysian village and causing havoc. Thanks to the distraction the white hunters are able to escape with Ulah, and later she and Chris are implicitly united, with Ava being a belated good sport about it.

Dorothy Lamour, a former New Orleans beauty queen, enhances her formidable looks with a light, enticing personality. The sarong-look is almost certainly derived from stories about South Sea Island vahines, and though it's hard to tell from the black and white print, it looks to me like the makeup people might have darkened Lamour's skin for the role. In theory Ulah might be at least partly Malaysian, since nothing is said about her mother, and Ulah patently learned her pidgin-Malay from someone. But the broad implication is that Ulah is white, though it's also hard to judge even the father's ethnicity from his brief appearance. As with Tarzan, Ulah is a figure that potentially allowed audiences to flirt with breaking racial codes, in that the character is technically white but suggests the possibility of dallying with someone from the other side of the ethnic tracks.

In addition to the animals' rapport with the sarong-girl, the legend that grows up about "the laughing tiger" fits my category of the phantasmal figuration, even though in this case it arises from a social misapprehension.

THE CAT AND THE CANARY (1927)

 

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

Paul Leni's CAT AND THE CANARY was not the direct progenitor of the many "old dark house" films seen throughout the 1930s, for it came near the end of a spate of film adaptations of Broadway suspense-plays. But even without seeing all the other silent films, I doubt any of them go as far as Leni did, in trying to turn static theaterical scenarios into impact-filled "movie magic."

The plot in this case is pretty incidental. After a patriarch dies, embittered at the many greedy members of his family, his potential heirs gather at the patriarch's creepy old mansion to hear his will. As soon it's announced that his niece Annabelle (Laura LaPlante) is the main beneficiary, she becomes the target of familial enmity even as the old man was, a "canary" besieged by predacious cats. And as if to underline the feline metaphor, a guard from the local asylum shows up at the manor and warns everyone that there's an escaped madman on the loose. The fiend is called "the Cat" because of his habit of tearing his victims apart.

In contrast to many other ODH movies, nothing actually keeps the members of the gathering from getting in their cars and leaving, except perhaps the lateness of the hour. But then, while Annabelle is asleep in her bed, a clawed hand emerges from a panel in the wall and goes for her throat. Jump-scare! The claw-hand only takes her necklace, not her life, though she screams (in capital letters, yet).

Leni's playing around with the size of the inter-titles is just one of various Expressionist devices the director used to enhance a very gimmicky thriller. None of the characters are memorable, but Leni uses techniques like superimposed images and off-kilter set designs to enhance the emotions of the trapped characters. This is particularly true of Annabelle's cousin Paul (Creighton Hale), who gets most of the scenes in his role as the comedy-relief defender of the womenfolk. He sets the pattern for many similar viewpoint characters in ODH movies, not least the 1939 remake, with Bob Hope in the role. Interestingly, the later film makes more than the original of a possible romantic connection between Hope's character and that of Paulette Goddard, even though they too are figured as distant cousins.

I shouldn't need to expatiate on the nature of the Cat in a landscape where everyone knows what "the Scooby Doo Ending" means. Nevertheless, there's something almost archetypal about that key scene of the helpless female being menaced by a monstrous claw-hand-- a trope that would grow in strength over forty years later with the rise of the Italian giallos, followed by the American slashers.

THE BLACK RIDER (1954)

 

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

Wolf Rilla, son of Walter "Doctor Mabuse" Rilla, enjoyed one career-transcending moment when he helmed the 1960 VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED. I say "transcending" rather than "defining" because most of Rilla's career consisted of directing low-budget British flicks, many of which looked like "quota quickies."

THE BLACK RIDER does show Rilla dipping his toes in the shallow end of the metaphenomenal pool. At a time when at least a few British units were trying to compete, on lower budgets, with the American sci-fi boom, RIDER looks a lot like a pokier version of one of those British modern-Gothics of the 1930s, like 1934's THE BLACK ABBOT. In fact, the script uses the same trope as ABBOT, for it deals with how conspirators are hiding in a run-down monastery and using a spectral being to keep the curious away. Yet the titular "Black Rider" is of such minor consequence to the story that the script starts out calling the spectre "the Black Monk," as if he's the ghost of some condemned religious votary, and then uses the term "Black Rider," who's given the connotation of a Satanic Wild Huntsman running around snatching up souls for hell. The movie opens with one scene of a villager wandering too near the monastery and getting the crap scared out of him by the Rider-- who is mounted not on a traditional horse, but on a disguised motorcycle.

Neither the phony spirit nor the malcontents behind him are the stars of this show, but by an odd coincidence, hero Jimmy Marsh (Jimmy Hanley) is also an aficianado of the 1950s motorbikes. In fact, when he's planning to unveil his new vehicle to his girlfriend Mary (Rona Anderson) and her father Robert, there's some misfired comic business about how the two of them think Jimmy's concealing some scandalous affair from them. Indeed, there's so little going on in this sleepy town that it's like they have to conjure up a scandal to stay awake. 

Robert, editor of the local newspaper for which Jimmy writes on occasion, doesn't like motorcycles because they represent change, and he doesn't care about the local legend of the Black Rider for much the same reason. Jimmy thinks there's some deeper story about the monastery, but when he investigates at night, someone knocks him on the head and tosses him down a dry well. His assailants, evidently intending to end Jimmy's life, don't realize that the well-wall is broken and allows Jimmy access to a tunnel, through which he wanders until he exits the monastery.

The film then dithers around for a while, showing other clean-cut British youths tooling around on their bikes for some reason until Jimmy can convince some friends to make a Hardy Boys assault on the monastery. The fight between Jimmy's group and the criminals is over so fast it doesn't rate as belonging to the combative mode, but once the villains are corralled, it turns out that they're actually spies. In fact, they have in their possession a compact "atomic sabotage device," with which they intended to blast a nearby tank factory or something like that. The head villain gets no good lines but is played by one of the few faces modern viewers might recognize, Lionel (FIRST MEN IN THE MOON) Jeffries.

Most of the movie is dull, with the minor exception of a few lovely shots of the English countryside, well composed by cinematographer Geoffrey Faithfull. He would work with Rilla again on VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED and with Robert Day on both CORRIDORS OF BLOOD and FIRST MAN INTO SPACE. Writer A.R. Rawlinson had seen better days contributing to the scripts for Hitchcock's 1934 MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH and Stevenson's 1937 KING SOLOMON'S MINES.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME (1981), APRIL FOOLS DAY (2009)

 

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

I'm gratified to note online info that others besides me regard HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME as an "American giallo." Most slashers of the eighties, good or bad, tend to follow a fairly linear plot, in which some psycho-killer slowly slays victim after victim without much controversy about the murderer's identity. Even when such films end with the revelation that the killer wasn't the expected culprit, the overall narrative isn't substantially different because of the twist ending.

Giallo-makers, though, love to complicate the main plot with tons of data, whether relevant to that plot or not. In the most extravagant Italian productions, the writers often seem to be mocking Poe's basic idea of the "ratiocinative tale." It seems unlikely that director J. Lee Thompson or the four credited writers of BIRTHDAY were intentionally emulating the Italian movies. Even though the 1981 film was one of the more successful slashers, it's possible that the filmmakers were just trying to meld the popular tropes of the slasher-story with more traditional Hitchcockian thrillers.

Ginny (Melissa Sue Anderson) belongs to the "Top Ten," a group of privileged high school seniors who hang out and sometimes scandalize the older residents of the city with dangerous games. Then a black-gloved killer slays two members of the clique before anyone realizes that anyone is in danger. Ginny, who previously underwent brain surgery a few years ago, slowly begins to wonder if she herself may be committing crimes due to some mental abnormality in her psyche, brought on by the death of her mother. It takes a long time for anyone-- Ginny, her father Hal (Lawrence Dane), or Doctor Faraday (Glenn Ford)-- to allude to the accident that took the life of Ginny's mother. For roughly the film, Ginny and her clique-members just go about their daily business, slamming one another or trying to sleep with one another.

Though the first murder is a simple throat-slashing, subsequent deaths are more imaginatively mounted-- again, along the lines of the giallo for "artistic" deaths. One of the standout set-pieces involves a young man getting a deadly shish-kebab shoved down his throat, and arguably the lobby card of this scene remains one of the most famous examples of lurid slasher-art. Some scenes eat a great deal of run-time even when they don't contribute that much to the overall story but the creation of red herrings, as with a continuity involving one of the boys sabotaging the pull-rope of a church-bell. But Thompson et al do an admirable job of keeping tension up even in what are essentially throwaway scenes.

Anderson carries most of the movie with her innocent but determined protagonist, seeking the truth even if she herself is unmasked as a lunatic. Lawrence Dane is equally good, even though it may take a while for viewers to get a handle on his character. Aside from Ginny, none of the Top Ten are more than ciphers, but of the young actors, Traci E Bregman and David Eisner prove better than average. 

I can't say that all the complications add up to a complex symbol-tapestry, but I admire the bravura flourish of the big finish, which the writers reportedly changed during filming-- IMO, for the better. The sociological trope of "killer going after privileged classes" doesn't really gel into anything meaningful, but that too reminds me strongly of Italian giallos.

I can't say 2008's APRIL FOOLS DAY reminds me of much of anything. This DTV movie is, as one may anticipate, a loose remake of the 1986 faux-slasher APRIL FOOL'S DAY, which I reviewed earlier. I don't think the original movie is considered one of the better slashers of the decade, but it has a certain iconic fame for having been among the many such films to play off famous holidays or social events.

And here's all anyone needs to know in comparing the original to the remake:

APRIL '86 was a slasher-take on the tropes associated with TEN LITTLE INDIANS, a mystery.

APRIL '08 is a slasher-take on the tropes associated with I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, which was already a slasher. And since SUMMER was a decent enough slasher, why would anyone watch a hack-version of the previous movie?

All the young men and women being stalked by a killer are flawlessly good-looking, and dull as dirt. I haven't seen the movie that propelled the writer-director team "The Butcher Brothers" to fame, but it's got to be better than this soulless junk. The terrible dialogue, which seems like 75% exposition, fails to put across any character enough to make one identify with any of the protagonists. 

I'm trying to think of one positive thing to say about this dismal DAY, but this time, I just can't do it. Unlike BIRTHDAY, DAY participates in the trope of the phantasmal figuration.

CREATURES THE WORLD FORGOT (1971)

 

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

CREATURES THE WORLD FORGOT was the last of Hammer Studio's "prehistoric films," the most well known of which is still 1966's ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. Unlike YEARS, there are no "creatures" beyond naturalistic ones here, so it's often been suspected that some publicist came up with the title to suggest the presence of dinosaurs amidst the film's Stone Age protagonists.

It's hard to imagine why director Don Chaffey and writer-producer Michael Carreras thought audiences would line up for a prehistoric flick in which none of the principals can communicate save in grunts and gestures. True, a few of the males and females are played by good looking actors, such as the male lead Tony Bonner and the female support-character Julie Ege. But CREATURES doesn't offer lots of sexy cavepeople conflicts as YEARS did.

The decision to abstain from dialogue suggests that Carreras wanted to avoid some of the "baby talk" seen in earlier cavepeople flicks. Yet without dialogue, it proves difficult for a viewer to invest any importance to the seemingly endless quarrels between cavemen butting heads with one another. There's a vague quasi-ethnic myth in an intermarriage between a dark-haired tribe and a blonde-haired tribe, which in part results in a pair of contentious brothers, a dark one named Rool (Robert John) and a fair one, Toomak (Bonner). Guess which one is the nice one? Toomak is also the one who gets the girl Nala (Ege) and the leadership of their tribe. Rool doesn't seem to envy his brother's wife, but he does want to be the chief. Rool goes to great lengths, including the kidnapping of Nala, to dispossess Toomak.

The most interesting unused potential of CREATURES is that it might have dramatized the way early man formulated religion. There's an early scene in which the Dark Tribe loses its home thanks to an erupting volcano, but there are no further references to this momentous event. Halfway through the film we learn that the tribe has a female shaman of some sort, because when a cavewoman brings forth a mute girl, the shamaness adopts the girl and perhaps teaches her arcane ideas. There's a tribe that paints itself white and wears weird headgear, but what they mean is anyone's guess. At the film's climax the mute girl utilizes clay dolls in some sort of forerunner of voodoo, but it's ambiguous as to whether she causes ill fate to befall her victims or just believes that she does. 

The musical score and photography are solid, but I can't picture anyone watching CREATURES for any reason but to speculate on said unused potential.

LIBIDO (1965)

 

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

The Italian-made LIBIDO is called a "giallo" now, but in its day I imagine it was seen as just another psycho-thriller with a particularly strong debt to 1955's DIABOLIQUE. 

The film was co-written and co-directed by the team of Ernesto Gastaldi and Vittorio Salerno. Neither man directed more than a handful of films, and most of their credits are for their writing, with Gastaldi racking up the greatest number of familiar genre-movies, including WEREWOLF IN A GIRL'S DORMITORY and AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK. 

LIBIDO starts with a flashback to the childhood of its protagonist Christian. As a young boy Christian is jolted out of his childhood innocence when he responds to a noise in his father's private room. There the child sees the dead body of his father's mistress, whom the father has just killed, presumably during accidental "rough trade." 

The script fast-forwards to the present, when Christian is a young but troubled young man (Giancarlo Giannini). He returns to his family home for the first time in years, ostensibly to take stock of all his inherited possessions, along with his fiancee Helene, his lawyer Paul and Paul's girlfriend Brigitte (Mara Maryl). It's established that on the same day Young Christian discovered the mistress's body, the murderer apparently committed suicide by leaping off a cliff, though the body was not recovered. Paul and Helene are all business about their purpose here, but Brigitte is a giddy young thing who enjoys tempting the disturbed Christian with her body. Christian's complexes are not helped by the fact that lawyer Paul has been like something of a father to him over the years, and that Brigitte is a blonde like the murdered mistress. (In the dubbed version I saw, no one even ventures a word about what Christian's mother was like.) In addition, Paul and Brigitte sleep together in the mirrored room where the murder was committed. 

Then Christian begins seeing little peculiarities, suggesting that Dead Old Dad may actually be alive and roaming around the house. To the writers' credit, they not only know that a lot of viewers will be smart enough to anticipate the old "lawyer-out-to-steal-the-inheritance" angle, so the script allows even the disturbed Christian to be smart enough to suspect Paul on that score. The other three manage to short-circuit that possibility by revealing a side of Christian's nature that he's blocked from his mind. And then the murders start happening-- and given the small four-person cast, there's not a lot of choices for the plotter(s). And of course, it wouldn't be a DIABOLIQUE imitator without a final twist, which some have compared to Roger Corman's 1961 PIT AND THE PENDULUM.

Derivative or not, LIBIDO looks great, crisply photographed and well acted, which makes it more enjoyable to watch than the cruder spawn of the giallo thriller.

SANTO IN THE VENGEANCE OF THE MUMMY (1971)

 

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

Santo's encounter with an arrow-shooting mummy lacks the kinetic strength of the wrestler-hero's classic metaphenomenal adventures of the sixties. Yet it's at least a decent timekiller, thus putting it ahead of a number of dull seventies Santos.

Santo accompanies an archaeologist-friend, Professor Romero, as Romero and his expedition journey to what I assume is some Mexican jungle to look for an "Apache" mummy's tomb. Yes, the streaming translation I watched said at least three times that the people who built the tomb were "Apaches," and never used the word "Aztec," though I feel fairly sure the original Mexican script would have used the latter term. I wonder if giving the mummy a bow and arrow confused some translator? Maybe the translator was thrown by the very idea that an undead creature would use arrows even if he was "Apache."

Given that everyone in the expedition (except Santo) is a boring stereotype, it's surprising that there's a fair amount of tension as the explorers make their way to the tomb and discuss the legend of the mummy. The history of the mummy is known to the professor long before the expedition begins, though it is of course recapitulated once the tomb is discovered. The "Apache" warrior Nonoca-- whose name sounds quite a bit like that of Popoca, The Aztec Mummy-- has a love affair with Lua, a sacrificial victim who's supposed to remain pure before she's killed and sent to the gods. Nonoca and Lua, who are probably strongly influenced by the story of Universal's classic mummies, are captured and Nonoca is killed and mummified.

After the tomb is profaned in modern times, the arrow-wielding mummy shows up and starts killing the explorers. Santo never manages to prevent any of these killings, no doubt because if he tried, he would have won too easily. Given that I already categorized the film as uncanny, it should be a given that the evil mummy is really some crook in mummy-garb-- though he does give the luchador a pretty good fight at the climax. Just in case any viewers thought Santo didn't get enough action, the film's main story is bracketed by two lively Santo wrestling-bouts.

PARANOIA (1969), SO SWEET, SO PERVERSE (1969), A QUIET PLACE TO KILL (1970), KNIFE OF ICE (1972)

 

PHENOMENALITY: (1,3) *naturalistic,* (2,4) *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: (1-3) *poor,* (4) *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, sociological*

*SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS*

Due to my regard for Carroll Baker, who turned her back on Hollywood to seek her own path in Italian cinema, I wanted to like all of these stylishly-directed thrillers, four quasi-giallos which Umberto Lenzi directed with Baker as the star. But only one of the four proved itself worthy of the talent involved.

PARANOIA was the title by which the Italian film ORGASMO became known in the U.S. Baker plays Kathryn, a wealthy widow who tries to start a new life by moving into a villa in Italy. Though she's surrounded by caring protectors, her boredom leads her to take up with a younger-by-ten-years fellow named Peter. After Peter worms his way into the bored woman's bed, he not only slowly begins to get rid of the villa's servants, he also brings in his beloved sister Eva to stay there. Peter even convinces Kathryn to undertake a threesome, but later the widow is deeply shocked to learn that her two guests are only step-siblings and therefore have no compunction against having sex without her. As soon as Kathryn asks her guests to leave, she learns that they hold all the power over her, and that her carelessness has led to her doom. The downbeat conclusion of this thriller comes close to registering as an irony, but I rate it a drama since on some level Kathryn never completely succumbs to the degradation of her predators.

Though the sex-scenes of PARANOIA would be fairly tame today, they engendered enough controversy that Lenzi and Co. quickly followed up with the same-year SO SWEET, SO PERVERSE. In contrast to PARANOIA, though, the sexual content of SWEET is mostly implied, perhaps because its basic plot is borrowed from the novel and film DIABOLIQUE. Industrialist Jean (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is on the outs with his wife Danielle (Erika Blanc), but as it happens he's put in the position of becoming a savior to Nicole (Baker), who is being abused by her husband Klaus. Nicole rewards Jean by taking him as her lover, all the while complaining about what a weak vessel she is. This turns out to be a dodge, for in truth Nicole is a cold hearted master planner who's conspiring with both Klaus and Danielle to knock off Jean. The trio succeed, and it seems like Danielle and Nicole will enjoy some lesbian action from then on (though nothing is shown on screen). But like the passive female character of DIABOLIQUE, Danielle is haunted by the fear that Jean may still be alive. It's not much of a "phantasmal figuration," amounting to nothing more than a few ambiguous phrases from Nicole, but Danielle's guilt puts her in the position to be the next victim. A final coda suggests that the evil plotters won't get away with it despite their cleverness.

A QUIET PLACE TO KILL-- which was titled PARANOIA in Italy, possibly as an inside joke by Lenzi-- also borrowed from DIABOLIQUE to an extent, but stayed staunchly in the realm of the naturalistic. Helen (Baker) is a race-car driver (!) who flips out and goes on vacation. Her ex-husband Maurice (Jean Sorel), married to Constance (Anna Proclemer), invites Helen to a party at his residence, and once there, Helen and Constance find that they're got a mutual disgust for Maurice.  As in the opening scenes of DIABOLIQUE, the two women plot to murder the man who has mistreated them both. However, the murder attempt goes wrong, and Constance dies. Their mutual guilt leads Helen and her ex to cover up the death and to be forced together (which at least leads to a lot better sex-scenes than we got in SO SWEET). However, Susan (Marina Coffa), the adult daughter of Constance, shows up, determined to learn the truth behind her mother's death. She disgusts Helen by sleeping with her stepfather, but later, Maurice also apparently perishes. Suffice to say that at least this script spices things up by introducing a second conspiratorial couple as a contrast to the first one. But aside from the sex-scenes and some nice camera-work, the film drags its way to a contrived conclusion.

KNIFE OF ICE, the last Lenzi-Baker collab, displays more promise than the previous three films. Martha (Baker) is a woman who lives with her uncle Ralph at an estate in the Spanish Pyrenees. During her childhood Martha witnessed her parents' death in a train accident, and as a result she became mute, partly because her parents died after throwing Martha clear of the accident. Despite that trauma, the movie starts off showing Martha transcending her trauma by meeting her cousin Jenny (Evelyn Stewart) at a train-station. Martha and Jenny are driven back to the estate by Martha's somewhat creepy chauffeur Marcos (Eduardo Fajardo), but when Marcos has to leave the car briefly, a strange man peers into the car at the two women, and then vanishes into the Spanish fog.

At the estate creepiness becomes more exaggerated as Jenny gives her uncle a present of occult books, while Martha continues to have occasional flashbacks to the tragedy, indicating that her struggle is far from over. A small ensemble of characters assemble at the estate in order to welcome the visitor, and though none are overtly weird, Lenzi keeps the proceedings just slightly off-kilter, in which the things people say suggest other meanings.

Then Jenny is knifed to death by a black-gloved killer whose face, naturally, the audience does not see. The police question all the residents and employees, and assert that another female victim was recently killed in the area, causing them to suspect a sexual deviate. The occultist uncle goes further, hypothesizing that the killer may be a Satanist, who slays innocent women due to their symbolic equation to Mary, Mother of Jesus, so that the murder-victims are as Satanic sacrifices. An additional odd touch: twice Martha flashes back to a bullfight she witnessed prior to her malady, and one flashback shows her taking pleasure in the violence.

Other minutiae multiply. A card with a Satanic sigil comes to Uncle Ralph in the mail, and the weird guy is seen stalking around the city. Martha considers leaving the estate to avoid the maniac, but of course events contrive to keep her close to the mystery. The cops catch the weird guy, who admits to being a Satanist but not to being the killer. More victims die, including (maybe) Uncle Ralph-- or is that a deception to catch the killer?

Of all four Baker-Lenzi works, KNIFE is the only one that has a strong psychological concept underlying it. Other authors were credited with the scripts for SO SWEET and QUIET PLACE, while Lenzi provided the basic story for both PARANOIA and KNIFE, though he collaborated with others on the final screenplay. He might not have known at the time of scripting KNIFE that it would be his last collaboration with the Hollywood superstar, but the story he laid out for Baker this time gave her a meatier role than the other three narratives, since Baker only speaks once during KNIFE and otherwise must convey emotion through expression, gesture and stance. I wouldn't call it one of the best giallos, but I think it deserves more approbation than the overrated PARANOIA.