ONE ARMED SWORDSWOMAN (1972)

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

A lot of chopsockies emulated the internationally successful ONE ARMED SWORDSMAN, so frankly I wasn't expecting anything much of this five-years-later Taiwanese knockoff. I have to hold the original producers guiltless of a screwup in the English credits: "Ching-Ching Chang als [sic] ONE ARMED SWORDSWOMAN," but I was unfamiliar with any other IMDB credits for the writer-director Sheng-en Chen. Similarly, I didn't know starring diva Chang or any of the other names, so I tend to assume the whole cast was Taiwanese, even if they were attempting to mimic the look of a Hong Kong Shaw film.

SWORDSWOMAN takes the opposite tack from SWORDSMAN in the characterization department. Whereas the viewer learns a lot about the family background of the 1967 protagonist, Chang's character Pan Yi Fung starts out as a one-dimensional "knight errant," who apparently has no other goal in life but to wander about killing ruthless bandits with her sword. Her puissance is displayed in an early scene where four bandits snare her with ropes, after which Pan frees herself and slays them with one smooth move. Then a traveling stranger comes along, praising her skills, which pleases her inordinately. More bandits appear to challenge Pan, and the stranger lends his skills to help her. But the stranger doesn't happen to kill any of the bandits and instead deals Pan a wound in her arm with a poisoned sword. The traveler reveals that he's really one of the bandit gang, and that Pan will soon perish of the poison. The noble fighter tries to take many of her foes with her, but she's clearly losing strength. But then another famous kung fu knight happens along and spirits Pan away.

The heroine's apparently able to direct her rescuer to Pan's estate, where she lives with one female servant. The savior is one Chen Peng Fei, known as the Black Dragon due to his attire: all-black robes and a hat with a face-shrouding black veil. Chen tells Pan and the servant that the only way to save Pan's life is to amputate her poisoned arm. Pan agrees to the operation, after which Chen takes his leave. Three years later, Pan has re-trained herself to compensate for her missing arm, but she's also formed an intense need to see the Dragon again. The terse script does not expound on her motives, but actress Chang conveys an immense feeling of loneliness.

She meets her black-garbed ally, who unmasks before her and sweet-talks her with homilies about the loner nature of martial artists. They have offscreen sex, but in the morning, Chen sneaks away like a dog. Pan follows him, and Chen insults her by offering her a valuable pearl for services rendered. Pan is heartbroken and returns home. Strangely, her maid advises Pan that she might still be united with the man she loves, and Pan decides to look for Chen once more, in case, I don't know, he's changed his mind about being a bastard.

Now, experienced filmgoers may foresee some shenanigans, given that Pan never saw Chen without his mask the first time, and anyone can wear an all-concealing black costume. But even if a viewer suspects trickery, Pan's next experience is unsettling, for suddenly she starts running into more black-garbed men, who, when she unmasks them, are not Chen. Then she kills-- or apparently kills-- a fifth Man in Black, after she's heard a young woman call him "Chen." Jealous, she attacks and kills the man, only to be told he's blind. She's so aggrieved that she almost lets a vengeful mob murder her. But once again, the Black Dragon saves Pan and takes her back home. There he unmasks, showing her that he's not the man to whom she surrendered herself. 

For some reason Chen and Pan fake their deaths to throw off the bandit gang, but the head guy-- Lee Ming-Tse, the fellow who deceived Pan-- sees through the charade. I don't know why Chen, divested of his costume, makes a solo attack on Lee and his goons in the bandit fortress, but the sortie ends with Chen retreating back to Pan's house, half-blinded by spears that eject streams of acid (!) Of course, the reason Chen must be sidelined is because Pan is the star, and to her goes the honor of confronting Lee and his gang, atop a mountain this time. Perhaps needless to say, Pan triumphs over all adversaries, though Lee does get in a mean jab about their romantic time together. And so the film ends with Pan alone amid her fallen foes, though in an earlier scene, the door's left open for a possible union of the two crusaders.

Chang provides a good range of emotions here, though everyone else is strictly Saturday-morning serial, and she does well in the battle scenes. As I commented in my SWORDSMAN review, the mundane removal of an arm doesn't generate an uncanny vibe for the "freakish flesh" trope, but Pan performs assorted superlative feats, particularly for being able to hurl twigs hard enough to pierce an enemy's throat. 

I'm sure that neither Sheng-en Chen or anyone else thought they were making a masterpiece. In the copy on TUBI, the final scene between Chen and Pan is spoiled by a sudden cut, presumably because some censor thought the romantic interlude too racy. Yet though I've seen dozens of flicks featuring kung-fu knights, even the few that address the disadvantages of a justice-seeking life, like CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON, tend to underplay the emotional cost of the martial life. That cost is evident in the ease with which the disguised bandit gets Pan to turn her back on him, and her strange obsession with the real Chen, who relates to her only as patient to doctor, residing at her manor for a month just to preserve her life. Though the villain Lee never explains how he formulated his plan to sleep with her and then gaslight her, it's likely that he figured out how emotionally vulnerable Pan was, precisely because she'd tried to live a totally righteous life and found, like many others, that virtue being the reward for virtue was worse than no reward at all.  

                       

THE MYSTERIOUS MAGICIAN (1964)

 

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

Opinions seem divided as to where DER HEXER, the "krimi" adaptation of Edgar Wallace's 1925 book THE RINGER, stands. Some reviews call it one of the worst of its ilk, others, one of the best. My take is somewhere in the middle: MAGICIAN is an enjoyable romp without a lot of substance.

A young woman is gruesomely murdered and her body gets tossed in the Thames. When Scotland Yard investigates, it's discovered that the victim possesses an indirect celebrity: she's the sister of a professional assassin, the Ringer-- whose name in German became "hexer," meaning magician or wizard. (The English dub uses the latter term, even though the movie's title uses the former.) He's called the Ringer because he's got an uncanny ability to assume many disguises in order to knock off his targets. The movie's vague about what the Yard knows about the Ringer: on one hand, they have the info that he was somehow exiled from Britain, yet no one knows what he looks like sans disguises. Perhaps the book's more consistent on that point.

I would guess that the book doesn't inject as many allusions to sex as MAGICIAN does. For instance, from Goodreads reviews I know that though the book-version of the story has the sister killed for discovering some skullduggery, MAGICIAN has her find out that her employer's involved in white slavery. Similarly, I'll bet the main character of the book isn't as much of a "player" as Joachim Fuchsberger's Inspector Higgins-- for all that the cop's engaged to a pert young miss named Elise (Sophie Hardy). The overall sexiness of the film stands in contrast to the comparatively higher quotient of violence in many krimis: only the opening murder and the Ringer's killing of the big boss-- with a sword-cane through his heart-- caught my attention.  

Edgar Wallace created a fair number of oddly named masterminds in his career, but the Ringer's only an "uncanny villain" by virtue of his power of disguise-mastery. It's suggested that the cops covertly admire the assassin because he's only targeted other criminals, and indeed the Ringer is really the star of the story, more than any of his pursuers. I can't speak for the book, but the movie ends with the assassin escaping after killing the last of the white slavers. I don't think Wallace usually resurrected his criminals for any encores, but Goodreads also informs me that the author also published a collection of stories, ALIAS THE RINGER.        

AGAINST THE DRUNKEN CAT PAWS (1979)

 

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

As distinctive as the title is, very little of the rambling storyline has to do with its heroine Lin (Chia Ling) using drunk-fu, or patterning her moves on those of felines. In fact, if the epithet "blind drunk" didn't mean something else, one could have credibly titled the movie "Against the Blind Drunken Cat Paws," since Lin spends roughly half the picture as a high-functioning, blind kung-fu artist.

Some time back, Lin was the martially-trained daughter of a prominent kung-fu master, who'd become famous for bringing bandits to justice-- specifically, 13 of the equally famed "14 Bandits." But the gang's leader Wolf Fang escapes, and he gathers a new mob, also called variously "14 Bandits," when the dub doesn't say "13" instead. Wolf Fang's forces-- including a blind female colossus (whose eyes are crossed) and a dwarf with a poisonous blowgun-- attack the master's domicile, killing him and many of the servants. Lin is blinded by the dwarf's poisons but gets away. Strangely, the film doesn't seek to get much emotional mileage out of this sad state of affairs. Director Shan Hsi-Ting-- who directed over 50 HK flicks, of which I've seen only a few-- merely has her holed up in some old temple with her little brother (also a kung-fu trainee) and her cat. It's not clear how Lin supports herself, much less gets all the booze she drinks (though sometimes she steals it).

However, the New 14 Bandits come to the town where Lin's hiding out, and their next intended target is some government official who also prosecuted Wolf Fang's earlier gang. The official has a kung-fu daughter named Wang (Sun Chia-Lin), and she and her unnamed female servant (also a "fu girl") seek to figure out a way to repel the villains. She makes common cause with Lu, a stalwart who had been engaged to Lin before she disappeared. Lu has recognized Lin despite her deshabille appearance, so he and Wang contrive a plan to make Lin admit her true identity. They tell Lin that the two of them are going to be married, and Lin can't tamp down her true feelings for Lu. Not only does she reveal her identity, she also cries so heavily, she weeps out the poison that has kept her blind for so long. 

Lin, Lu, Lin's brother and Wang are joined by a couple of other characters whose importance, frankly, escaped me. So they take on the 14 Bandits, who possess various talents, including Wolf Fang, who apparently has real fangs in his mouth. The various battles are decent, aside from those centered upon a supposedly "funny" character, but Chia Ling is the only performer worth watching. Her character's arc is compromised by these mostly uninteresting support-types, and so I can't say that CAT deserves to be on the list of the actress's best films. She would only make seven more movies before mostly retiring from the role of kung-fu diva.                   

THE LEGEND OF FRENCHIE KING (1971)

 

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

After the passing of Claudia Cardinale in September, I reviewed one of her only films with mild fantasy content, BLONDE IN BLACK LEATHER. In that essay, I mentioned that I didn't know if I'd ever review Cardinale's 1971 collaboration with the then-living Brigitte Bardot, THE LEGEND OF FRENCHIE KING. Then Le Bardot passed this month, so I decided to watch FRENCHIE, like Bardot says in one line, "for the hell of it." To my mild surprise, there was also a smidgen of fantasy content in FRENCHIE as well: the villain of the story gets injured early-on, and he's kept out of the main action while a Chinese man uses an uncanny form of acupuncture to gradually restore him to health.     

Said villain, name of Doc Miller, exists only to set up the action. He commissions some geology expert to predict that there's oil on a deserted ranch, near a town, Bougerville. inhabited mostly by French emigrees. Miller then kills the expert, as if he's a pirate protecting forbidden treasure. and apparently buys the land legally, by wiring money through the venue of the telegraph. He takes his title with him on his way to claim his prize, but his train is held up by five bandits, the black-clad Frenchie King gang. Miller is injured and out of the picture for a long time, while the King gang reaches its hideout and reveals the audience that they're all young women, the daughters (by five separate mothers) of their bandit father, now deceased. While four of the sisters (Emma Cohen, Patty Shepard, Teresa Gimpera and France Dougnac) complain about the hard life of outlawry, Frenchie, aka Louise (Bardot) finds Miller's title. They don girls' clothes and journey to Bougerville, in their company of their Black servant. (Maybe the girls went west from Louisiana?)

However, Bougerville already has a reigning "queen:" Maria Sarrazin (Cardinale), who lords it over her four brothers (named for the Apostles) and over the ineffectual marshal, Jeffords (Michael J. Pollard). Though Maria and her bros are rowdy types, they're basically law-abiding horse-breeders-- until Maria learns from a separate soure that the "Little P" ranch holds oil reserves. She and her four brothers meet Frenchie and her four sisters, where Frenchie assumes the identity of "Doc Miller." When Maria forcefully offers to buy Frenchie out, the lady bandit knows that there's more to the "Little P" than is apparent.

 Afterward, the rest of the film is devoted to episodic encounters between the two "queens," with the "manly" Maria trying to intimidate the "womanly" Doc Miller, or alternately, to get Jeffords to invalidate the ranch-sale. To his credit, though Jeffords is the comedy relief, having zero chance with either of the starring beauties, he does stick to the law, and even hazily suspects that Doc Miller might be the bandit Frenchie, generally thought to be a man. All of the contentions between Maria and Frenchie-- as well as those between the four sisters and four brothers, who end up marrying one another-- lead up to a splashy, climactic fistfight between the dueling dominatrixes. It's easily one of the best catights in all cinema, and seems loosely patterned on the climactic fight between John Wayne and Randolph Scott in 1942's THE SPOILERS. After the girls settle their differences in a tie, they team up to rescue their siblings from the law. Implicitly the Sarrazins leave behind lawful activities and join the King Sisters in a life of happy outlawry.

FRENCHIE will win no awards for its very simple plot, and it's only a "feminist western" in a loose, non-didactic manner. Devotees of feminism ought to love the fact that even though Frenchie's four sisters are wed in holy matrimony (the multiple marriages reminding me of the Greek myth of the Danaids), both Maria and Frenchie remain completely uncompromised by romantic attachments-- and I suppose a "queer studies" resding would insist that they must be warm for one another's forms, though there's nothing in the US cut to support that theory. They're just two domineering women who, as Frenchie says following their big battle, would have fought for the hell of it even without the conflict over hidden treasure. The original director was one Guy Casaril, who apparently (according to IMDB) also contributed to the script, but he was replaced by Christian-Jaque. Like other French comedies, the humor tends to be droll rather than laugh-out-loud funny. This is seen in the closing shot of the Kings and the Sarrazins riding on the outlaw trail together, with the former group all clad in black and the latter all in white-- a clear shot at the stereotype of the white-clad good guy and the "black hat" villain. A few bits of slapstick happen for no reason: after the villain shows up to claim the ranch, where an oil gusher has spouted, he exults in the shower, which then explodes for no reason but to kill off the bad guy. Bardot and Cardinale play off one another well, despite rumors of contumely on the set, and just before the closing scene. Jeffords gives up marshaling, because the West's no longer a place for a man. (And he didn't even experience 21st-century feminism, which doesn't even offer hot babes.)

               

DEMON SLAYER SWORD (1995)

 

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

This misleadingly titled offering on a couple of streaming channels must be the most obscure item I've reviewed yet. Not only did the 1995 TV-film-- originally entitled ONIMARO ZANSHINKEN-- not have any online reviews, it didn't even have any visual representations on the three major search engines, except the above placeholder. I assume SWORD only recently showed up on the service I watched.

The title is an almost complete fakeout: there's not even a mention of metaphorical demons, much less demons who can be slain by a magical sword. Rather, this is a story that might've been slightly compelling given its novel concept. In SWORD, an apprentice swordsmith must journey from town to town in Edo-era Japan, trying to recover the badly forged swords left behind by the apprentice's late master. I have no idea what the "Zanshinken" of the title means but "Onimaro," played by Hidekazu Akai, is the name of the apprentice seeking to erase the stain on his master's name by buying back, or even stealing, the inferior craftworks. But Onimaro doesn't only have to contend with sword-owners who have various reasons for not wanting to sell the bad swords. A gang of ninjas, belonging to the legendary Iga Clan, want to kill Onimaro because the clan-leader had some old beef with the deceased swordsmith.

The problem is that because this is a TV-movie, there's not much time spent explaining the various motives of the support-characters, and even Onimaro and his allies are underwhelming. The production values are pretty strong, as are the three major swordfights. But even though as a Westerner I've been exposed to SOME of the mystique surrounding Japanese sword-crafting, SWORD didn't communicate the slightest sense of what that mystique might consist of. Maybe the script would have been able to concentrate more on Onimaro's swordmaking aesthetics had it not saddled the hero with a little "family:" a sassy orphan boy and the daughter of the nasty clan-leader. The daughter of course falls for the hero and is played by Eriko Tamura of DRAGONBALL EVOLUTION fame.

There are two clearly uncanny incidents in the movie. One involves the bad ninjas-- who don't dress in the standard pajamas-- catching the orphan boy in the forest with a multitude of lasso-ropes. This carries an uncanny feel since one cannot see the rope-casters. The other comes at the climax. Several sword-wielders attack Onimaro, and apparently both the hero and his sword are so excellent that not only can Onimaro split the enemies' swords, he can also rapidly whittle the blades into tiny fragments. In any case, still no demons, nor any supernatural phenomena whatever.

   

     

THE MAN FROM UNCLE (2015)

 

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

When I saw MAN FROM UNCLE in a first-run theater, I must not have read any contemporaneous reviews of it. I tend to assume that many if not all reviews would have led with, "don't watch this movie if you want entertainment akin to that of the loopy 1960s superspy-teleseries." In addition to being bored, I seem to remember being astonished that director/co-writer Guy Ritchie-- best known for some crime films and two high-tech Sherlock Holmes movies-- had made almost no attempt to emulate the series, except for setting UNCLE's action in the same era of the swinging 1960s. Most of the time, big-screen adaptations of small-screen successes are if anything too reverential toward their source material.

Watching the same film years later with my amateur reviewers' hat on, I must admit that I could cite dozens if not hundreds of movies more boring than Ritchie's UNCLE. But this mostly mundane espionage-film, even with a few uncanny gimmicks thrown in to put some "super" in the spy-jinks, is still very pedestrian. In contrast to the series, in which Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin were introduced as partners in crimefighting for the secret organization UNCLE. the movie insists on giving audiences a dreary account of "how they first met." The heroes' recruitment to UNCLE is brought in only at the story's end, as if to allow sentimental old-timers to imagine the film as a real-world prequel to the fantasy-series.

Since the Cold War was still at its most frigid in 1963, Solo (Henry Cavill) works for the CIA while Kuryakin (Armie Hammer) is some sort of an agent for the USSR. Because the CIA becomes aware of a plot by a Neo-Nazi organization-- loosely covalent with the TV show's "Thrush" group-- seeks to gain control of a nuclear weapon. This project, led by rich magnate Victoria Vinciguerra (Elizabeth Debicki), has obtained the services of a major scientific talent with the telling name of Teller. With an eye to luring Teller away from the bad actors, Solo goes to East Berlin to engage the services of Teller's daughter (Alicia Vikander). Gaby accepts the mission, but during her extraction from East Germany, Solo has a eye-raising (and fender-crunching) encounter with Agent Kuryakin. As played by Hammer, this Kuryakin is a Samson-like powerhouse, though no particular explanation appears for his being able to grab a car by the bumper and hold the vehicle back. Despite this hostile first meeting, the Kremlin wants to eliminate a new nuclear threat as much as the CIA does, so Solo and Kuryakin are assigned to work together, still using Gaby as a means of entrance into the social circle of Victoria and her allies.

In addition to Kuryakin's strength and the THUNDERBALL-like plot of a private entity gaining control of an atom bomb, there's one moment where one agent uses a laser-device to cut through a wire fence, but that's it for the fantasy-content in UNCLE. The relationship of the two heroes is thoroughly predictable: they don't like each other and bait one another, though by the conclusion they've become bound as danger-buddies. Gaby is a little more interesting than either character, for she's in the position of a vital young woman who finds herself playing den-mother to two handsome hunks while also pretending to be the fiancee of Kuryakin's fake character. Vikander and Elizabeth Debicki are allowed to channel a bit of sixties glamor through their attire, and one late development gives Gaby a little semblance of a "Girl from UNCLE." But Ritchie's main focus follows the pattern of a mundane action-thriller, and there's nothing memorable on that score. The film flopped, barely making more than its original cost, so this movie stands as one of the least successful adaptations of a small-screen show.        

DRAGON PRINCESS (1976)

 

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

There's no good reason to have Sonny Chiba's name plastered on top of this movie when he's only in about ten minutes at the start. Real star Etsuko Shihomi had already starred in four excellent chopsockies in the SISTER STREET FIGHTER series (1974-5), any one of which outclasses this relatively feeble effort.

Though PRINCESS is, like the SISTER films, set in 1970s Asia, the plot feels like a period-piece, specifically LADY SNOWBLOOD, which concerned a woman trained since childhood to avenge the wrongs done to a parental figure. One small difference is that in this scenario, the female child witnesses the wrongdoing. Isshin (Chiba) is a karate master who's attacked by an ambitious rival, Nikaido (Bin Amatsu) and Nikaido's henchmen. One of the henchmen supplies the film's main metaphenomenal presence, as well as seeming to belong to a period-chopsocky: a white-haired man who, though blind, can hear well enough to fling darts with deadly accuracy. One such dart puts out one of Isshin's eyes, and when the assailants leave Isshin in his humiliated state, Isshin commands his little daughter Yumi to pull the dart from his eye-- one of the movie's few memorable scenes. Isshin then takes Yumi to the US, where he trains her in karate until she reaches young womanhood and is played by Shihomi. She spends most of her young life being trained to gain revenge on Nikaido. One other minor divergence from LADY SNOWBLOOD is that she protests the rigorous training in her youth, but for the rest of the movie seems to be okay with having been so constricted. She and her father spar a little in this sequence but eventually he gets sick and dies, after which Yumi travels to Japan for vengeance.

Shihomi looks great as she pursues Nikaido and the various henchmen, and she gains aid from another martial artist (Yasuaki Kurata) in her quest for revenge. However, though Shihomi had already proven herself a charismatic fake-fighter in the SISTER films, here the fights are sloppily coordinated and are hindered by pan-and-scan in the only available print. I note that the director only helmed eight other films, so maybe the producers got what they paid for. Some scenes are draggy and some move too fast to have any emotional impact. Only at the end, when Yumi and her buddy square off with the villains do things pick up. The film's other memorable scene, taking place in a field of wheat-stalks, shows a wounded Yumi finding a way to neutralize the blind killer's hearing-advantage, by attaching tiny bells to the wheat-stalks, so their jangling of these diabolical devices drives the killer to distraction. (One online review had the notion that the white-haired man was simply going berserk for no reason.) The henchman's hearing is still so acute that he manages to knock down the bells with his darts, but then Yumi attacks and kills him. She also duels Nikaido to the death, but this isn't nearly as impressive. PRINCESS looks like a rush job and has little to recommend it, even compared to many of the lesser HK chopsockies.        

CHIN SHA YEN (1977)

 

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

"Bring me the head of Chin Sha Yen" (or something very like that) cries some gang-leader halfway through this dumbass Chinese blend of kung-fu and hardboiled-detective genres. I listened to this dopey movie twice and that's the only time I heard the proper name that forms the movie's title. I only know, thanks to the HKMDB, that the character is played by the actor Wang Kuan-Hsiung, who would get a much better acting opportunity in the following year's LADY CONSTABLES. But I don't think the English translation is totally at fault for CHIN's problems. This is the sort of bumptious movie where characters walk around proclaiming themselves to be "The Just Man" or "The Wanderer from the North," just to make it seem like something dramatic is going on.

 So in this case, a martial maiden named Hsiao (Polly Shang Kuan) gets to be the hardboiled dick of the story. After her uncle is slain by a gold-masked man, Hsiao ranges from town to town, looking for the criminal, who may or may not be identical with a legendary kung-fu master, The Golden Bird. Clearly "Golden Bird" would have made a better title, since that's the person Hsiao keeps seeking. Her inquiries cause the killer to send some hired thugs after her. A stranger who calls himself The Wanderer intervenes to protect Hsiao, slaying one hireling with, of all things, a scroll that elongates so as to somehow cut the hireling's throat. Despite this rescue, Hsiao immediately suspects that the Wanderer may actually be the Golden Bird, so she rejects his aid. Yet he keeps showing up to help her, and so do two other kung-fu dudes, the aforementioned Just Man and some guy whose name I didn't hear. They're all in an inn when some gang-leader calls for the head of Chin Sha Yen, and I swear I never heard the name repeated. Hsiao keeps blundering about, so eventually the Golden Bird himself shows up. But is it the original, or an impostor? I doubt even the audiences in 1977 really cared. The script keeps a fair quantity of marvels-- an umbrella that can be used as a shield against swords, combatants that can run up the sides of trees-- and that was probably all anyone expected. Shang Kuan is definitely the starring character here, despite the flatness of the character, and on top of that, the fights are pretty desultory. This is a little odd, since the director started as a stunt guy. I didn't recognize any of the movies on which he served as a director, except 1979's ONE FOOT CRANE, an equally bland offering, but with Lily Li in the martial maiden role.

      

HERCULES (2014)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *fair* 
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*                                                                                                                                                  The Wiki-article on this film mentioned that its producers originally intended, for whatever reason, not to credit Steve Moore, author of the graphic novel on which the movie was based. I've read none of Moore's works on the subject of the Greek hero, but since this Dwayne Johnson project spawned two imitations, THE LEGEND OF HERCULES and HERCULES REBORN, one might credit Moore with having brought these into being as well.                                   

  I didn't remember anything about my previous screening of this flick, but now I see why: the only thing HERCULES has going for it is a restrained performance by Johnson, in which he bulked up more than his usual weight and, more importantly, avoided any of his signature winks to the audience. This Hercules grew up as an orphan who became a great warrior due to his uncanny strength and his fighting-skills, and over time people began telling stories about his divine parentage and his slaying of giant monsters. Only one event in the myths strongly resembles the traditional narratives: while Hercules lived in Thebes with his wife and children under the rule of King Eurystheus, his family was slaughtered. He was accused of having slain them when he went mad, but all Hercules remembers is witnessing a spectre akin to the death-hound Cereberus. After that, Hercules became a full-time mercenary, leading an assortment of soldiers, some of whom are also based on legendary figures (Atalanta, Autolycus, Tydeus). Hercules comes to the defense of King Cotys (John Hurt), ruler of Thrace, against an invading force. But wait-- could it be that Cotys hasn't told the whole truth about the situation? Just like Hercules' memories of his family's slaughter may not be entirely correct?                                                                             

 Basically, 2014 HERCULES is constructed like a two-part mystery story, and neither mystery is interesting. The script tries to sell the idea that Hercules, after having been a mercenary who for years killed for whoever paid him the best, suddenly gets the Religion of Altruism and turns against Cotys and his secret ally. The secondary characters are no better, supplying nothing more than the marking of time. The battles are OK, but the most I can say is that they aren't as terrible as those in LEGEND. If I had to choose between the three, HERCULES REBORN seems the best just by virtue of having less pretension than the other two-- though I'd probably choose to view a half dozen Herc-flicks from the 1960s over any of these 2014 losers.                                

 

REMO WILLIAMS: THE ADVENTURE BEGINS (1985)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*, 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*                                                                                                                          Even though I never read more than one or two installments of the popular "Destroyer" men's adventure series, it seems like a natural for big-screen adaptation. Apparently the producers signed lead actor Fred Ward for a three-picture deal on the theory that they could finesse the concept into a Bond-like film franchise. Yet. despite hiring two creative persons who had worked on 007 movies (director Guy "GOLDFINGER" Hamilton, writer Christopher ("SPY WHO LOVED ME"), what they ended up producing looks like a big-budget version of one of those cheesy TV-superhero flicks, like the 1970s CAPTAIN AMERICA telefilms.                                                 

  For reasons never made clear, a super-secret government agency named CURE needs to draft a new agent to learn the rare martial arts discipline "Sinanju," courtesy of the art's only living teacher, eccentric Korean Chiun (Joel Grey). An agent named Mac decides, also for no stated reason, to draft a cop named Sam into becoming Chiun's new pupil. CURE brings this tutelage about by faking Sam's death, giving him a new face via plastic surgery, and rechristening Sam as "Remo Williams" (Fred Ward). Sam, after expressing some mild confusion over his reinvented life, seems to be totally okay with assuming the new identity and bidding farewell to whatever old life he once possessed.                                                                                             

Roughly an hour is then consumed as the obnoxious Chiun puts Remo through a host of ordeals designed to mold him into the perfect government assassin-- a destiny that Remo also has zero problems with. I'm sure the intent of the many training scenes was meant not just to establish how Remo becomes a physical paragon who can dodge bullets and suchlike, but to build up the sense of an emotional bond between student and teacher. These character-establishing scenes between Ward and Grey are decent, and the best thing in ADVENTURE. But the movie is a total letdown in terms of its villains. I couldn't determine from the Internet the plot of the first DESTROYER novel, so I don't know if that's the template scripter Wood followed. But wherever it came from, it was a terrible idea to give the new hero a fat-cat villain who's running a scam to bilk the US military, and who just has a small collection of thugs working for him. Moreover, despite a "big" scene filmed at the real Statue of Liberty, all of the stunts are pedestrian, like Hamilton's direction. Ward, Grey and Kate Mulgrew (playing a potential love interest for Remo) try hard. But the overall effect is as if ADVENTURE was made by people who never even SAW a Bond movie before, much less that any of them had actually worked on one.    

LION MAN (1975)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*                                                                                                                                                  The Turkish film industry is renowned for producing knockoffs of Western franchises. the so-called "Turkish Star Wars" being a famous one, though not one I've seen. But the movie LION MAN-- currently on streaming under the blah title THE SWORD AND THE CLAW-- is a reasonably original take on Tarzan, but one where the future hero (Cuneyt Arkin) is raised from infanthood by a pride of lions.                                                                                                      

The place name "Byzantium" is tossed out at one point, so I guess the opening conflict takes place between Byzantine Christians and Muslims of that period. The Christians lose a rather ratty looking battle, and their representative lord Antuan (Yildririm Gencer) appears at the court of Suleiman Shah (also played by Arkin) to come to terms. Unbeknownst to Antuan, a lady of the Christian court, Princess Maria, finds Suleiman beguiling despite his being married to his own queen. Maria and Suleiman do the deed. Some time passes, during which Antuan lays plans for an assassination and the queen delivers a son to Suleiman. However, Antuan's assassins attack the shah at court and kill all his people, including the queen, which apparently paves the way for the Byzantines to conquer the country. However, one of the queen's servants gets away with the shah's infant son. This son is lost in the wild and gets raised by lions. Antuan tops off his triumph by marrying Maria, little suspecting that she has a Suleiman-bun in the oven.                                                                                                      

Twenty years later, the Byzantines exert a cruel hold upon the kingdom of Wherever It Is, and a resistance movement of Muslim nationals has arisen. Antar (Cebil Sahbaz), the grown son of Maria-- whom Antuan assumes to be his own progeny-- serves the Byzantine cause, and during a patrol he and his soldiers are attacked by rebels. For reasons I forget, Aslan the Lion Man intervenes to help the Byzantines. The two half-brothers exchange pleasantries, to the extent that Aslan can't speak human lingo.                                                                             

Living with the lions has conferred upon Aslan superhuman strength, at least on the level of a Maciste-movie, and the movie's highlight is seeing the hero attack people with his naked fingers poised like claws. Aslan's interference with the rebels cheeses off the daughter of the rebel leader, so she sets up an occasion to meet the wild man. When he drops his guard, she stabs Aslan-- and then belatedly sees that he possesses a royal birthmark, attesting to his true lineage. Soon Aslan joins the rebels and learns to speak and follow other human customs-- though surprisingly given the Tarzan influence, there's no romantic arc between Aslan and any female of his own species.                                     

   Meanwhile, Maria finally confesses to Antuan that Antar is not the Byzantine's son. (Antar also possesses the birthmark of the shah's line, but I guess none of the Byzantines knew what it meant.) Antuan hurls Maria into durance vile and begins counter-attacking the rebels and their new ally. After various martial encounters, Antuan tries to nullify Aslan's claw-powers by pouring acid on his hands. However, a rebel blacksmith makes metal claw-hands for the hero, so that he becomes more powerful than before. Eventually Antar learns his true heritage and the half-brothers unite to destroy the "false father."                                                                                                                       Surprisingly, aside from avenging the death of Suleiman, the movie's main plot-thread is about the two siblings finding one another. LION MAN has a delirious concept, but at most turns it's undermined by the poverty of the production, resulting in bad fight-choreography beside which even an Italian knockabout comedy looks good. Some battle-scenes are even scored with a peculiar jaunty tune, rather than something more suitably adventurous. Arkin's the only performer who projects a little personality, though I can't say he overshadows even Gordon Scott, much less Johnny Weismuller.    

LUPIN III: PURSUIT OF HARIMAO'S TREASURE (1995)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*

MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*                                                                                                                                                  This LUPIN III TV special is, as the title suggests, a treasure-hunt story. In fact, in keeping with several callbacks to the James Bond franchise, there's not much of the marvelous phenomena common to many other LUPIN-tales of the period. Even Goemon confines himself to one quasi-marvelous feat, that of using his sword to cut slabs of street-concrete out from under a fleet of cop-cars. The period in the history of things Lupin-esque seems dubious too, for though Lupin and Jigen are working together, Goemon doesn't seem a regular part of the team, and continually makes remarks about being a "part-timer" who expects to be remunerated on an hourly basis. The Lupin Gang's status with respect to Fujiko seems standard though, and Lupin even remarks that Fujiko dealt herself in to get the others' help in finding the booty, in contrast to the more frequent situation where Lupin calls on the seductive siren for special reconnaissance.                                                                                       

  The desired treasure is a cache of gold and precious metals hidden by a Malaysian bandit, Harimao, who during WWII ripped off the English and the Japanese alike. Two competitors for the prize are the British lord Sir Archer-- strongly implied to have been a real agent on whom the fictional stories of James Bond were based-- and his super-competent granddaughter Diana. The treasure's location is hidden in three separate statues, and when Archer gets one of the statues, Lupin consents to work with Archer and Diana to find the trove. One of the special's best moments is the revelation of how Harimao forged the valuables into a vehicle of sorts, suggesting that he might have anticipated a not dissimilar episode of the SPEED RACER teleseries.                                                                                       

 Of course it wouldn't be a Lupin adventure if there weren't "bad thieves" to play off the "noble thieves." In this case, there's a gang of Neo-Nazis who also want Harimao's riches, and the foremost henchman is a brute named Goering, who stomps the usually athletic Lupin in each of their altercations. Strangely, though the original Nazis were not precisely welcoming of alternative sexualities, these goose-steppers are led by a rouge-wearing cross-dresser whose punny name, at least in his mastermind identity, is "Herr Maffrodite." Given that he hates women but plays up a feminine appearance, Maffrodite might have been a major Lupin antagonist had the script built him up better. However, he comes off as little more than a cartoon of a cross-dresser and so proves no more than a curiosity. The script devotes much more attention to Lupin's constant attempts to grope and/or or court Diana. She usually kicks his ass in response, and while Fujiko shows mild jealousy of Diana in just one scene, most of her time in the movie is taken up being ogled by Dirty Old Sir Archer. So I can just barely label this item as participating in the "fighting femmes" category. TREASURE is a mildly entertaining romp with more naughty jokes that one would ever find in an American heist film, nothing more. Oh, and Zenigata's in the story, but is only used for occasional comedy relief.                                                                     

GOLIATH AT THE CONQUEST OF DAMASCUS (1965)

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

One or two online reviews tagged this late peplum movie as the reason the genre died off in the mid-sixties. Though it's a very minor example of its species, in terms of simple entertainment value DAMASCUS probably isn't much worse than a lot of lesser efforts, including the 1959 movie that initiated the often-inappropriate use of the name "Goliath" for various muscleman heroes. It's also no worse than the companion film writer-director Domenico Paolella made around the same time with many of the same cast-members, not least star "Rock Stevens" (Peter Lupus) as the hero. Some eagle-eyed reviewers spotted that DAMASCUS re-used some cavalry scenes from HERCULES AND THE TYRANTS OF BABYLON. 

The rightful ruler of Damascus (apparently "Bagdad" in the original script) has been deposed by a usurper with the unusual name of "Thor" (Piero Lulli). When the ruler sends his beautiful daughter to be married to the prince of another realm, possibly with an eye to making new military allies, a gang of bandits abduct Princess Meriem (Anna Maria Polani). These Bedouin-looking bandits, who sport another curious name (Kara-Ghitai, which sounds like Kara-Khitai, an archaic name for China), hold Meriem prisoner, and though her father summons the help of strongman Goliath (who has no backstory), the hero arrives too late.

Skipping over a lot of boring conspiracy conversations, Goliath begins the process of infiltrating the bandits so that he can liberate Meriem. The princess' father sends Goliath to Damascus to make contact with a couple of loyalist spies, Yassour (Mario Petri) and Fatma (Helga Line). For some reason, Yassour tests Goliath's loyalty by instructing Fatma to tempt him with pleasures of the flesh, and though Goliath seems to be more intrigued than most peplum-heroes, he refuses lovely Fatma's enticements and passes the test. In due time Goliath joins the Kara-Ghitai by the unusual strategy of getting into a fight with them to prove his mettle, and surprisingly, they accept this complete outsider. They almost brand Goliath with their insider facial mark, but they get interrupted, so that the star doesn't have to spend the rest of the film with an appliance on his face.

DAMASCUS doesn't have many spectacular battle-scenes, not counting those recycled from the earlier film, and the closest thing to a demonstration of uncanny strength comes near the end, when Goliath and another muscleman force open the gates of Damascus by sheer glute-power. Goliath by himself has a scene where he stabs an enemy with a stone thunderbolt taken from the statue of a local pagan deity, but the concluding sword-battle is between secondary hero Yassour and a traitorous Bedouin. Meriem is reunited with her groom and Damascus is saved. Lupus/Stevens projects a certain degree of charm in his stolid role, but the movie's main assets are the two Euro-babes, though they don't get to do much of anything. I've seen eight of Paolella's directorial efforts (dubbed of course), and the only one I found exceptional was an isophenomenal spaghetti western called HATE FOR HATE, which genre was probably a better fit for the raconteur than that of peplum.        

SNAKE IN THE CRANE'S SHADOW (1978)

 

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

This title is horribly generic, but I suppose it's slightly preferable to the Taiwanese one, translating to something like "Adventure of the Heaven Mouse."

SNAKE is a slackly plotted "hunt for the valuable object" tale, in which two martial artists with disabilities try to keep the object and the treasure it leads to out of the hands of assorted ne'er-do-wells. This main plotline competes with a B-plot in which three goofballs with no martial skills get in the way of the female fighter and even try to become her students. One of the doofuses is played by familiar face Dean Shek, but the facial recognition doesn't make up for a lot of stupid so-called comedy.

As for the "heroes with disabilities," one is a cripple known as Unicorn (Wen Chiang-long), who's missing a leg, and the other is the blind Dragon Lady (Lung Chung-erh). Damned if I could figure out why either of them devotes their talents to protecting the pieces of a map from various bad guys, but that's what they choose to do. The fights are okay but the only somewhat memorable moments are when one or more of the villains use noise to mess with Dragon Lady's acute senses. The oddest such method is some sort of net studded with hooks, capable of slashing an enemy's face if it makes contact. I believe the enemy wielding this diabolical device was known as the Eight Steps Killer (Lung Tien-Hsiang), but I wouldn't swear to it.

Ironically, some months after this dud, Lung Chung-erh once more portrayed a martially skilled blind woman in the much more entertaining SECRET MESSAGE, aka NINJA MASSACRE. 

HERCULES REBORN (2014)

 

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

I haven't seen most of the productions of the mockbuster studio known as The Asylum, but HERCULES REBORN-- which sought to profit from not one but two big-budget Hercules pictures that came out in 2014-- may be the best thing the company ever did. To be sure, REBORN is still no more than an adequate time-killer, but most Asylum titles, if they garner any fan-favor at all, do so only by becoming known as "so bad they're good."

It's never absolutely clear that the Hercules of this movie is the son of the heaven-ruling Zeus (though the hero says that he's the real thing). Certainly, this Hercules doesn't inhabit a world of magical (and expensive) monsters. In addition, this strongman (played by a wrestler billed under various names, John Hennigan being the one IMDB uses) doesn't perform any supernatural feats of strength. Yet REBORN earns some points at the start by adapting one of the most consequential stories in the joined canon of Greek Heracles and Roman Hercules: the story of how madness overtook the hero, causing him to slay his wife and children. REBORN opens with this scene, not too much less horrific even though the deaths are more suggested than shown. Some archaic stories blame the goddess Hera for this calamity, but director Nick Lyon foregrounds a human plotter, face unseen, who's evidently slipped Hercules a potion that made him go crazy.

The scene shifts in time and place, years later in a kingdom called "Enos" (possibly a misspelled reference to an archaic Greek city, "Aenus"). The young ruler of the city, Arius (Christian Oliver), anticipates about to wed his royal bride Theodora (Christina Wolfe). However, one of his allies, General Nikos (Dylan Vox), lusts after Theodora, and to gain the young beauty, Nikos betrays Arius and invades Enos with his forces. Theodora is captured but Arius and a small retinue escape.

Arius has no other allies to draw upon, but he happens to have heard tales that Hercules, Son of Zeus, has taken refuge in a neighboring town. Over the objections of his followers, Arius leads them to seek out the demigod. Though the process of hooking up with Hercules proves fairly tedious, inevitably Arius finds his quarry, who's been drinking himself into a stupor for the past few years, trying to forget what he did to his family. Just as inevitably, Hercules agrees to lend his uncanny might to Arius' cause, at least partly because the hero bears some grudge against the usurper Nikos.

The middle part of the film is fairly boring, since the two scriptwriters-- whose other projects I did not recognize-- don't use the trip back to Enos as any sort of bonding-time between the remorseful demigod and the young prince, desperate to rescue his lady love. The two heroes just more or less use one another for their separate ends, even though the astute viewer may well suspect that Hercules' grudge against Nikos will somehow tie into the mysterious malefactor who slipped the hero a madness-mickey. (The subtitling says that the evildoer got the madness-potion from "Hera," though the actor pronounces the name "Har-ra," and it's impossible to tell if this "Hera/Harra" is supposed to be the deity Hera or not.)

Though the script's characterizations are nothing special, REBORN also earns some points for its semblance of a gritty, primitive reality. The movie was filmed in Morocco, so that the settings look a little arid for Greece, yet they still carry a convincing Mediterranean vibe. More importantly, Lyon-- a director with several other Asylum-credits-- stages battle scenes that aren't shy about bloodletting, unlike a lot of comparable takes on Greek mythology. And though Lyon doesn't show Nikos having his way with his captive Theodora, the director makes it quite clear that the villain doesn't deny himself the pleasures of the young woman's body. Theodora also takes several knocks in the course of the film, though she does manage to escape prison by tricking and stabbing a guard.

Hennigan makes an okay Hercules, playing him as a fierce brute with glimmers of sentiment. Oliver as Arius gets to show more dimension, but in the end he's nothing but the sum of his parts. The only aspect of REBORN that justifies a fair mythicity rating is the way script and direction capture the sense of a rude, primitive society where life is often all too cheap. Because the movie doesn't depict any overt signs of magical phenomena, it doesn't qualify for the category I call "the reign of wizardry," which exclusively concerns magical-fantasy stories.

LUPIN III: SECRET OF THE TWILIGHT GEMINI (1996)

 

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

Just to get a detail about this TV-special's title out of the way: no one in the story uses the phrase "Twilight Gemini." But there are a pair of matched diamonds, one of which is called "the Twilight," and thus the two gems are Gemini-like twins. 

According to legend, the joined diamonds can open one's way to a great treasure. So this is another "treasure-hunt Lupin," as well as being "adventure-Lupin," since there's not a great emphasis on humor here. More importantly, GEMINI also provides a rare example of "gentleman-Lupin." The master thief does try to steal a kiss from Fujiko, but he doesn't show the "drooling lech" persona of his more goofball exploits. For most of the film, he renders chivalrous aid to Lara, a much younger woman, and doesn't mack on her once.

A quasi-familial connection-- an ailing old man who had some avuncular influence on the master thief's early career-- gives Lupin the Twilight Diamond and tells him that it's one of two keys to a fabulous treasure. This bounty was the accumulated wealth of the "Geltic" people, who for decades have been a scattered people. The Geltic tribe was attacked by treasure-hunters from England and from some made-up nation, and though the invaders couldn't remove the treasure from its impregnable vault, the Gelts lost their holdings.

After getting the diamond, Lupin is cornered by Zenigata and a small army of cops. The thief is inadvertently rescued by a group of uniformed thugs, but their leader, the whip-wielding Sadachiyo, wants the diamond. Lupin escapes these forces as well, but he will meet them again in the Gelts' domain, somewhere in Morocco.

 Sadachiyo's thugs are connected to a group of robed conspirators who claim to be seeking a rebirth of the Geltic culture. Coincidentally, Lupin also meets the young female Lara, who's a native of the Geltic tribe and whom Lupin saves from cops. She too wants her people to rise to their former greatness, and she repays Lupin by leading him to her people.

Lupin's gang doesn't have much to do here. Jigen accompanies Lupin to Morocco, but he only has two-three scenes. Fujiko overtakes Lupin, trying to deal herself in, but aside from showing her boobs she also gets short shrift. Goemon isn't even mentioned in the first half, but by sheer coincidence, he shows up just when Lupin needs him. Goemon is hunting not treasure but Sadachiyo, because the latter-- whom in the English translation Goemon calls "he," for all that the character looks like a butch female-- betrayed the samurai ideals both of them had expoused in their training days. Sadachiyo doesn't explain the old grudge, any more than his choice in gender-attire. But since he can slice apart rocks with his whip the way Goemon can with his sword, the viewer will take Goemon's account at face value. Zenigata has assorted comic scenes, but he could have been easily written out with no effect on the plot.

Lupin, who seems more devoted to helping Lara than to finding treasure, eventually sorts out the identity of the cult-leader, and the treasure is unlocked so that the true Gelts can regain their lost prominence. For once the Lupin gang gets no payoff in the end, though sentimental Lara gives Lupin one of the diamonds, and he nobly claims that he'll cherish it, rather than splitting it with his gang. 

I omitted some history vis-a-vis Lara's familial relation to the gang-chief who set Lupin on this trail in the first place, but the fine points aren't very significant. GEMINI is formulaic Lupin, not actively bad but generally unimpressive. I rate the film "fair" in mythicity only because the story-trope of Lupin coincidentally helping out marginalized peoples does seem to loom large in various anime productions, though I doubt the trope appeared often, if at all, in the original Monkey Punch manga.    

LUPIN III: GOEMON'S BLOOD SPRAY (2019)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*

Animation director Takeshi Koike followed up on his 2012 teleseries A WOMAN NAMED FUJIKO MINE with a 2014 OAV, JIGEN'S GRAVESTONE. Both of these iterations of the Lupin III franchise were considerably more serious in tone than the original comics of Lupin's creator Monkey Punch. After roughly five years, Koike got the chance to follow up on his follow-up with two more OAVs focused on selected Lupin characters: GOEMON'S BLOOD SPRAY in 2019 and FUJIKO'S LIE in 2020. 

Structurally BLOOD SPRAY has a strong plot-similarity to GRAVESTONE. In both, the spotlighted character is hired to perform a job unrelated to any of his criminal outings with Lupin. But a formidable opponent appears, using special skills to offset those of the protector. Each character is shamed by his failure but gets a second chance to duel his adversary to the death, this time with Lupin's crew in attendance.

The BLOOD SPRAY script changes up some details. Goemon is hired to protect a yakuza boss from possible assassination while the boss and his gang are aboard a steam ship. Hawk, a red-haired giant of a man wielding twin axes, boards the ship and destroys its engines. However, Hawk isn't after any of the yakuza, but after Lupin and Jigen, who are, apparently without Goemon's knowledge, aboard the ship to rip off the gangster's loot. (Fujiko is aboard ship as well, but her role here is as minor as it was in GRAVESTONE.) The yakuza boss perishes when the ship catches on fire, and the other gangsters blame Goemon for failing in his mission. Goemon accepts the blame and swears to slay Hawk.

Zenigata, who was barely in GRAVESTONE, learns of Hawk's mission and plans to arrest him as well as the Lupin gang, though for some unstated reason the cop's superiors want him to leave Hawk alone. (Since Hawk was an American soldier at one point, he may have become involved in black-ops, so that someone in the American spy-networks ordered "hands off.") Hawk tracks Lupin, Jigen and Fujiko to their hideout. They flee into a nearby forest, but just when the man-mountain has them cornered, Goemon appears and challenges Hawk. To the samurai's shock, Hawk's unique axe-weapons counter Goemon's katana, so that the samurai is both wounded and defeated. By dumb luck, Zenigata appears and gets the drop on Hawk, and the giant refuses to fight a lawman, allowing himself to be taken prisoner. Lupin and his friends escape with the wounded Goemon in tow.

Goemon is doubly shamed and subjects himself to a special cleansing ritual, and though his allies feel for him, they can't empathize with his warrior-ethos and end up leaving him behind while they try to figure who hired Hawk to kill them. In their absence, yakuza gangsters make the mistake of messing with Goemon. Ironically, their interference sparks in him the "sixth sense" he seeks to bring forth in order to combat Hawk. The gangsters die bloodily, except for one Goemon spares, to reaffirm the samurai's intention to continue his honor-bound mission. Hawk breaks out of jail and pursues the Lupin Gang, with Zenigata on his heels. But Goemon gets his second chance at vengeance, and no one needs guess who wins. 

There are no concessions to goony humor here as there was, very briefly, in GRAVESTONE, and Zenigata is played utterly straight, rather than as the comic fall-guy. And even though Goemon is the gang-member being spotlighted here, he remains a fairly standard stoic samurai, used largely to contrast his honorable conduct to the ruthlessness of the yakuza. The "sixth sense" is less a marvelous psychic ability than a temporary boosting of Goemon's already-superlative senses. And the best character-moment stems not from Goemon but from his partners, as they watch him undergoing his mystic ordeal. Clearly, despite their patina of tough indifference, Lupin, Jigen and Fujiko are worried about their comrade, even if Fujiko disengages by refusing to recognize male standards of shame, claiming, "Men are stupid." Lupin and Jigen agree with her but remain to watch the samurai for some time longer, being no less implicated in the masculine codes of honor.