THE FOX WITH A VELVET TAIL (1971)

 

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

The "fox" in the title means nothing as such, it's probably just a marketing tactic to make consumers associate the movie with other "animal-named" giallos. However, there's nothing Argento-esque about this movie by Spanish director/co-writer Jose Maria Forque. If anything, FOX has more in common with a suspense-giallo like 1969's PARANOIA in being focused on a mundane murder-plot. 

The alternate title IN THE EYE OF THE HURRICANE applies better to the situation of wealthy lady Ruth (Analia Gade), in that for almost half the movie she seems to be peacefully ensconced on her estate, immune to any forces of chaos that might be swirling about her. At the film's outset she tells her husband Michel (Tony Kendall) to move out, because she has a new lover, Paul (Jean Sorel). Michel is downcast but not overly upset, so he leaves, expressing the hope that Ruth will change her mind. But for over half an hour, Ruth and Paul live things up in the lap of luxury. Sure, a little chaos intrudes when the brakes on Ruth's car fail, but hey, that could happen to anyone, right? And that gorgeous redhead Daniela (Rosanna Yanni) who moves in next door-- just part of the cheery scenery, right?

No detective-work is required for Ruth to suss out the destructive forces in her life: she simply lucks onto three conspirators openly discussing their plans to murder her. But with no proof of the murder-plot, Ruth must find some way to cause the destructive forces in her life to rebound on her enemies. At one point, she appears to be under the thumbs of two of her oppressors, but Ruth may have one more card to play.

FOX is beautifully photographed and both Gade and Yanni are glamorous, but there's just not enough characterization to make any of the principals seem like more than bare functions of the plot. While in many films like this the predators are eminent, this time it's the potential victim who holds the narrative together. FOX is watchable but strictly non-demanding.     

        

DOUBLE CROSSBONES (1951)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

My justification for reviewing this pleasant if lightweight pirate spoof is similar to the one I gave for including the nominally serious CAPTAIN KIDD AND THE SLAVE GIRL: because the story touches on the unusual idea of a "pirate brotherhood." Oddly, though both movies cite assorted famous pirates who belong to the organization, both name the same three pirates that I find to be "legendary" due to their frequent use in fictional iterations: Captain Kidd, Blackbeard, and Anne Bonney (played respectively in CROSSBONES by Alan Napier, Louis Bacigalupi, and the rather bulky Hope Emerson). As a very small film-fan bonus, Glenn Strange of ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN is reunited with the director of that film, Charles Barton, though Strange only has one line-- the same as when he played the Monster.

CROSSBONES' plot is tighter than some of the other genre-spoofs of the period, possibly borrowing elements from the 1942 BLACK SWAN. Davey Crandall (Donald O'Connor) is a shopkeeper's assistant in Charleston of the 1700s, a harbor city often plagued by the pirates of the Caribbean. Davey's in love with Sylvia (Helena Carter), ward of the well-heeled governor of South Carolina, and she seems to return his feelings. But Governor Elden is a traitor, who sends the pirate brotherhood information about treasure-laden ships bound for Charleston and then fences the pirates' stolen goods for them. Elden first reveals himself as a rotter by proposing marriage to Sylvia, who emphatically rejects the older man. He suspects that she nurtures affection for the age-appropriate Davey, and when Elden stands in danger of having his treason revealed, he frames Davey and his buddy Tom (Will Geer) for the crime of fencing stolen goods.

Davey and Tom go on the run, shipping out on a vessel whose captain is another pirate. By some clever shenanigans, Davey and Tom trick the whole crew into deserting the ship. The guys encounter a sailing-ship on which Elden is traveling with Sylvia. To keep themselves from being taken prisoner, Tom and Davey first create the illusion of a full crew aboard ship and then tell everyone aboard that Davey is actually a pirate captain, "Bloodthirsty Dave," who only masqueraded as a shopkeeper's boy to suss out the defenses of Charleston. Davey and Tom pull off the deception, but Sylvia, outraged by her betrayal, swears to marry her guardian at the earliest opportunity.

Back on the pirate ship, Davey and Tom gain allies by releasing from captivity some men being transported to serve prison sentences abroad, but all aboard are still wanted men with no safe place to go. "Bloodthirsty Dave" decides to seek out Tortuga, haven of the pirate brotherhood, purely to find a sanctuary. Once there, Davey has to swordfight Blackbeard to prove his mettle, after which he arouses the interest of Anne Bonney. (As if to mirror the transgression of Elden, one pirate accuses Bonney of cradle-robbing, but she never makes a sexual pass at Davey. and ends up marrying Tom in the end.) Davey figures out that Elden is the anonymous benefactor of the pirates and tries to convince them to assault Charleston with their fleet to bring down Elden for continually cheating them. However, only Bonney votes to follow Captain Davey's plan, so he and Tom are back to square one.

In one of CROSSBONES' most amusing scenes, Davey sneaks into Charleston and crashes Sylvia's wedding party to dissuade her from marrying Elden. O'Connor is almost unrecognizable made up as an effete English lord, but he's able to convince Sylvia of his innocence, though he's captured anyway. Despite all the setbacks, Davey's pirate buddies come to his rescue after all, resulting in a big sword-battle between them and Elden's henchmen (though Bonny only uses her fists, not a cutlass), and Davey battling Elden for the hand of lovely Sylvia. An amusing end-scene has all of the pirates get pardons for exposing the crooked governor, but they just can't resist pirating and go back to their sinful ways-- except for Davey, who's guided to domesticity by Sylvia. 

O'Connor is extremely likable but only does one dance-routine, aside from various comic duels. He and Helena Carter have good chemistry, and Barton keeps the action rolling along. much more ably than most of the pirate-movies of the fifties. There is one "fallacious figment" that the audience isn't meant to take seriously: when Davey looks through a telescope, it comically elongates to mirror his surprise.

                                                

DEADLY SWEET (1967)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *irony*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

First off, I've long heard the name of erotic filmmaker Tinto Brass, but have only seen a G-rated 1964 film he directed, THE FLYING SAUCER, which is probably not representative of his work. DEADLY SWEET, which also used the title I AM WHAT I AM, may not be any more so.  

Second, SWEET is a hard film to classify. The poster above calls SWEET "a sexy giallo thriller," but aside from the director/co-writer's use of garish color, there's not much here to tie the movie in with the giallos as they later developed. SWEET might be deemed to prefigure the way some later giallos combined psycho-horror with crime thrillers, and indeed this film frequently seems like a sendup of a crime thriller. The only metaphenomenal element is that of a perilous psycho, but Brass approaches the genre-element of "find the killer" with a studied indifference, underscored by two separate references either to director Michelangelo Antonioni or to that director's BLOW-UP from the previous year. Since that movie also concerned a crime that almost gets lost in the protagonist's experiences in the world of Swinging Sixties London, there can't be much doubt that Brass wanted attentive viewers to pick up on his emulations-- for all that BLOW-UP became an international sensation while SWEET was essentially forgotten.

POV character Bernard (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is an out-of-work actor in London, and he's not painted as the brightest bulb, given that he's given to dropping random quotes of persons as different as Lao Tsu and Mao Tse-tung. While in a disco-- where he's been cut off for failure to pay his bar tab-- he spies four well-known upper-class celebrities: blonde heiress Jane Burroughs (Ewa Aulin), her brother Jerome, her stepmother Martha, and an older man, Leris, rumored to be keeping company with Martha since her husband passed away. This sounds a lot like the sort of nuclear family constellation that makes for dramatic explosions, but unlike most giallos, family conflicts get lost in the shuffle.

Bernard drops in on the club's owner and finds the man dead, while in the same room is Jane, who immediately claims, "I didn't do it." Does Bernard do the sane thing and call the cops? No, he decides he's going to play detective (he even wears a trenchcoat during most of the film) and try to exonerate the waifish Jane. When she introduces herself, he responds to the name "Jane Burroughs" with "Me Tarzan," making clear that Bernard nurtures delusions of being a rescuing hero. And Jane seems content to let him squire her around the sights of Swinging London-- at least, until she's seized by kidnappers (one played by a very young David Prowse). Then Bernard has to start playing detective for real, eventually linking up with Brother Jerome to save Jane.

Though in many giallos the kidnappers would be related to the murder, here they seem to be nothing but mundane extortionists. Along the way Leris, the supposed lover of Martha, is also murdered, and toward the movie's conclusion-- amid lots of psychedelia, jump cuts, pop art imagery, and brief shifts from color to black-and-white-- Bernard finally gets around to interviewing Stepmother Martha. She promptly reveals that she wasn't the one Leris was dating on the sly, and Bernard learns that a hero should never trust a blonde waif, even after she lets said hero jump her bones.

Euro-comics master Guido Crepax is credited with having story-boarded SWEET, and most of the time the movie looks like an attempt to apply the sixties' pop art aesthetic to a whole motion picture. Pop art appears in many location backgrounds, including one Batman painting not known to me and one of Lichtenstein's famous "blow-ups" of a single romance-comics panel. In two different scenes violence is punctuated with quick "sound-effects" like "SLAM," a clear shout-out to '66 BATMAN, and Bernard also has a close encounter with Alfred E. Neumann. Even Jane's enigmatic line-- "I am what I am"-- might be derived from a certain salty sailor. I don't think Brass had any particular point to make with these citations, though, any more than his conjurations with the sixties music scene. Swinging London does at times seem to dissolve into a Dionysian chaos far from anything that Humphrey Bogart, or even Jean-Paul Belmondo, ever had to cope with. Thus I classify SWEET as an irony, in that the film depicts a world where even the story's Big Reveal doesn't make things any less chaotic.

                        

 

GARTER COLT (1968)

 

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

Along with 1967's LOLA COLT, the similarly named GARTER COLT stands as one of a very small handful of Euro-westerns starring tough female protagonists. Unfortunately, it also may be the worst of that small group.

The script shows traveling gambler Lulu "Garter" Colt (Nicoletta Machiavelli) as sharing the distanced manner of standard spaghetti male protagonists: emotionally reserved and super-competent. However, Lulu is never interesting, even when she shows off her skills with a pistol, routing stagecoach robbers or protecting a young maiden from rapine. Part of the problem may be that Lulu herself is never in real danger. Her projection of coolness is interrupted when she falls for a French soldier involved in the war between Emperor Maximillian and Juarez, but the lover is killed by a bandit named "Red" (Claudio Camaso).

Though most of the screenplay is filled with jokes and absurdities that go nowhere, the one thing the writers seem to be passionate about is the Red character, who is as "hot" as Lulu is "cold." For once a spaghetti villain has his own romantic arc, for throughout GARTER Red pursues a spicy young lass, Rosy, whom he may have already bedded. Rosy mostly resists Red in favor of a younger swain, but the movie's only real amusement inheres in her vacillations as to which lover to choose. Red tries to persuade her to choose him by tying Rosy above a boiling-hot, muddy spring. Also, he situates an innocent little boy upon her shoulders, so that the kid will die with Rosy if she falls in. The setup doesn't make much sense, but it's relatively original. Lulu comes along at the right minute and propels Red into the boiling spring, which kills the fiend on the spot.

Despite various ludicrous occurrences in the wandering narrative, the only thing that rises to the level of a "fallacious figment" concerns a talking parrot. After some byplay with the bird seeming only to imitate whatever human speech it hears, the creature gets caught between two gun-happy parties-- at which point the parrot cries out, "I'm neutral!"              

A WHISPER KILLS (1988)

 

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

*SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS*

If I ever again get the impulse, "Oh, X Celebrity just died; I'll watch this obscure thing in which he/she appeared," I need to kick myself. In this case I gave this worthless piece of TV fodder a chance because of the passing of June Lockhart. I would have done better to have watched the lousiest episode of her stint on PETTICOAT JUNCTION. The director here is long-time journeyman Christian Nyby II, but I blame the badness of eleven-time screenwriter John Bensick for not putting together even a basically serviceable script.

In some small town, Liz (Loni Anderson) runs a local newspaper in partnership with a guy she once slept with. She wants to keep things all business, he doesn't. Then the viewer (but no one else) sees the partner stabbed to death by what is pretty evidently (as shown in the advertising) a lean woman in a mask. A day or so later, a reporter named Dan (Joe Penny), friend of the deceased, comes to town, wanting to find the killer. Liz and Dan butt heads as a foretaste of their inevitable hookup, but she hires this apparent "bad boy" anyway. The killer announces her intent to kill again by phoning the sheriff and saying so in a forbidding whisper.

For the next half hour, Liz and Dan spin their wheels, wasting time and building no suspense whatever. Finally the script gets around to having Dan interview Liz's mother Mrs. Rogers (Lockhart), who reveals that Liz underwent psychiatric care after her father either was killed by an intruder or killed himself-- the script is vague about which is the case. After this big revelation, Dan suddenly starts seeing Liz in a different light, as a possible psycho-- though at no point does Loni Anderson play her character as anything but a square citizen. There's a suggestion that Liz might have been molested by her dad, and also that she had an affair with her psychiatrist, but it's just more time-killing crap.

I can't do better in pointing out, as did another reviewer, the absurdity of creating a mystery about a female killer in a script that only boasts two prominent female characters (though, curiously enough, former serial queen Phyllis Coates has a small role in the telefilm). So of course it's really Mrs. Rogers, but the lazy writer can't even be bothered to sketch out her motivations. Did she execute her two or three victims because she thought they threatened her daughter? Or (slightly more likely) did she resent her daughter because her husband has sex with Young Liz, and so decided to go after Liz's exes?         

Even in the domain of TV movies, this is one of the laziest scripts I've ever encountered.  

GONE WITH THE WEST (1969/1974)

 

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

In 2012 I did a quickie review of this film, but on rewatching it this year, I decided to write a new one. After I finish this one I'll delete the previous version.

By all accounts director Bernard Girard completed this western, starring James Caan and Stephanie Powers, under a different title in 1969, when the influence on Italian spaghetti westerns on American cinema was at its height. It was finally released in 1974, probably to play off Caan's rising star, and then recut with a frame story and re-released under the title LITTLE MOON AND JUD MCGRAW. Over time a lot of fans have dubbed GONE as one of the worst westerns of all time. However, while it isn't good, it did pick up on the social anomie seen in the original Sergio Leone movies, and formulated the same basic situation seen in 1973's HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER-- that of a pitiless avenger destroying a corrupt town-- long before HPD went into production. I imagine there were other possible ancestors for both. not least Dashiell Hammett's 1929 RED HARVEST.

Also, GONE is not an adventure-story as I previously labeled it, but an irony, just like DRIFTER. One or two IMDB reviews complained of tonal changes in GONE, when it seemed to shift between comedy and ultraviolent adventure. But GONE is an irony, in which everything is meant to have a double meaning. I'm not saying GONE is a good or incisive irony, the way that DRIFTER is. But a lot of the tropes I identified as "fallacious figments"-- like the cutesy end-scene where Caan's character Jed shoots the film's cameraman-- are meant to convey a pseudo-artsy sense that anything-can-happen. 

The flick begins mundanely enough, with Jed being released from prison for some unspecified crime. His mental flashbacks tell us that he holds a man named Nimmo (Aldo Ray) responsible for his sufferings, as well as for the murder of Jed's wife and child. Jed makes a beeline for the unnamed town where Nimmo rules with an iron hand. Jed watches from afar while the corrupt townsfolk carry on at a cockfight, and pitilessly watch as a young Indian female, Little Moon (Powers), is raped. Later Little Moon retreats to a craggy area overlooking the town, where Jed has made his camp.

Jed watches as Little Moon washes herself in a mountain lake. He doesn't watch her nude display too long, for he announces himself by tossing a rock in the water. Moon gets dressed and attacks him, only to be dissuaded by a threatening fist. But because he doesn't show any desire to rape her, she starts hanging out with him, even though she only speaks Spanish. 

Jed makes a few opening assaults on Nimmo's henchmen. This doesn't seem to upset Nimmo, though one of his cronies seeks out the ridge-area. This guy does try to rape Moon, claiming he didn't get his chance earlier. We then get another "fallacious figment" as Jed comes down like Tarzan, swinging down on a rope attached to who-knows-what. Nevertheless, Moon gets the victory because she just happens to have a sling and kills the rapist with a stone.

The rest of the film is just, as others have said, just a smorgasbord of incoherent violent scenes, though one does have the distinction of being among the best catfights in cinema. In short, Nimmo's regular hooker-girlfriend (Barbara Werle) takes objection when another whore (Elizabeth Leigh) tries to get with Nimmo. It's a really well choreographed fight, and I like to think the participants were doing their best to boost their careers as stuntwomen with this big fight. On a minor note, Sammy Davis Jr has a few scenes as a slick gunfighter employed by Nimmo, but Davis has no real impact on the story.

Jed and Moon attack the town with rocks flung by catapults that they whipped up out of nothing. Then Nimmo's men find and capture Jed, which is the first time Nimmo even learns who his nemesis. He's tied to a cross in the center of town, but Moon comes to his rescue, riding into town and lassoing the cross, so as to drag it away. No one seems able to pursue her. Finally Moon somehow devises a kite from which she can drop sticks of dynamite (how?) on the town. This clears out all the corrupt maggots and makes possible a final fatal clash between Jed and Nimmo. Then the triumphant hero kisses his damsel before they walk toward the horizon-- aside from shooting the cameraman, that is.

Though it's naturalistic aside from the injection of "figments" you're not supposed to believe in, the arty approach still places GONE in my category of "weird westerns."      

THE NAKED TRUTH (1992)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

I often don't review films whose fantastic content consists of "fallacious figments" in the naturalistic mode; that is, where characters do things like talking to the movie's viewers (a thing that happens early in NAKED TRUTH). As of this writing I haven't even reviewed what is probably the classic in that category: 1990's AIRPLANE, which movie TRUTH falls all over itself seeking to (badly) imitate. But as it happens the only true thing about TRUTH is how well it shows how NOT to execute this sort of comedy.

Niko Mastorakis, director and co-writer of this fiasco, is largely known for his 1980s formula-flicks, most of which he also co-wrote and of which I've seen a half-dozen. I remember his oeuvre as adequate formula-productions, and I even gave a mildly positive review to 1989's NINJA ACADEMY. Though that film was little more than a riff on the successful POLICE ACADEMY series, Mastorakis and his co-writer seemed to understand what sort of wacky humor such a riff required. But in TRUTH we see the director and his collaborator utterly failing to get on board with AIRPLANE's type of humor.     

One of the first indications of Mastorakis's cluelessness is the naming of his two young male heroes: Frank and Frank. This conceit might have been slightly funny had there been any character differences between the protagonists, like one was daring and the other timid. But no, both are fast-talking slicks aspiring to write for the movies. The only real reason there are two of them is that later they will fall afoul of a murderous drug-dealer and will hide from him the same way Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon did in SOME LIKE IT HOT, by pretending to be women. Mastorakis botches this comedy-model as well, but in fairness he's not really making HOT his primary pattern.

Appropriately, one of the movie's first crummy attempts at an AIRPLANE-style non-sequitur joke takes place on an airplane, while the two Franks are en route to the destination where all the hilarity will ensue. Frank One (not that one can tell them apart) sits in his airline seat asleep, apparently enjoying his dreams. Seventy-year-old stewardess Zsa Zsa Gabor tries to wake Frank, then shakes him and slaps him. When Frank wakes, she tells him she couldn't allow him to have a "dirty dream" about her because she's a "feminist." Now, unlike most of the dumb jokes in TRUTH, the audience is supposed to find this funny because of a real-world event: Gabor being charged in 1989 with having struck a traffic cop -- which resulted in at least one other bit of stunt-casting for Gabor, in the opening scene of the 1989 NAKED GUN sequel. But that bit was over and done in less than a minute. By comparison the TRUTH joke, though milking the same event, lasts too long and fails to deliver a decent punchline.

That said, Gabor at least got a scene focused on her. Most of Mastorakis' previous films starred unknowns and only worked in a few scenes of more prominent actors, which was and is a standard practice in B-movies. But here the director apparently got the idea that the appeal of the Abraham-Zucker movies was that they used a lot of celebrities, particularly in AIRPLANE. So the director worked in blink-and-miss-them cameos by name-actors, where they usually weren't even doing anything funny. Thus one can find in TRUTH the following performers whipping out a few minutes that probably translated to no more than a day's shoot for each: Lou Ferrigno, David Birney, Spice Williams, Alex Cord, Norman Fell, Yvonne deCarlo, Ted Lange, Erik Estrada, Little Richard, Dick Gautier and Bubba Smith. Their appearances are so desultoty they aren't even worth the effort of "star-spotting."

The only half-decent joke in the flick takes place near the end. After the two dudes have escaped various murder-attempts by the drug-dealer (Herb Edelman), they and their FBI contact (Courtney Gibbs) find themselves in a jungle. The drug-dealer corners them, but the good guys are rescued by a gang of LA cops, led by Bubba Smith, who surround the crook and begin beating him with truncheons a la the contemporaneous Rodney King incident. (All of the cops, incidentally, are Black.) The slightly funny part comes at the end, when someone puts up a banner reading, "Police Brutality Tape-- Do Not Cross."

I'd be remiss not to mention that during the Franks' totally tedious female imposture, they get involved with a beauty pageant, and this allows the filmmakers to cast a lot of smokin' babes, including Andrea Parker of THE PRETENDER. But despite a little bit of upper-body nudity, there are dozens of films in which one can find sexcapades superior to those of the (mostly clothed) TRUTH.                               

MARRIED WITH CHILDREN: "THE BALD AND THE BEAUTIFUL" (1989)

 

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

Though Season 3 is generally the season in which MARRIED WITH CHILDREN found its raunchy voice, there were still a fair number of episodes that weren't much better than some of the lesser "absurd comedy" shows from around the same time, like 1991's HERMAN'S HEAD. In fact, with a little rewriting, "The Bald and the Beautiful" probably could have aired as an episode of a bland-com like the sixties DONNA REED SHOW. The main conflict is that both Al and neighbor Steve become obsessed with the possibility of losing their hair. They don't solve this problem, but they get their spirits bolstered when they compare themselves to fully bald guys.

The only noteworthy aspects of "Bald" are a couple of scenes between Bud and Kelly. The demon-children have of course been at each other's throats for the previous seasons, but "Bald" emphasizes Kelly's role as a tormentor for her brother just as Peg exists to torture Al (though Al gets off pretty easy in general in this tale). After Bud is informed that he shares his father's genes and will probably also lose his hair in adulthood, he plaintively asks if his parents had him as a "biological experiment." Kelly teases him relentlessly, and none of his jibes about her promiscuity can compensate for his genetic doom. After Kelly fakes pulling a big clump of hair from Bud's head, and he runs off, Kelly has the following exchange with her mother, who's been watching the prank.

KELLY: "Mom, you don't mind that I'm playing with Bud, do you?"

PEG: "No! That's why we had him!"      

This one good line in a routine story provides a foretaste of the many variations on male/female antagonism that will appear in future seasons, and that trope, more than anything else, makes MARRIED one of the most mythic American sitcoms. 

MARRIED WITH CHILDREN: "GRIME AND PUNISHMENT" (1997)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic* 
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*   

It's "torture Al" time again, though I must give the writers credit. Episodes like ROCK AND ROLL GIRL were pretty obvious that Al set himself up for humiliation as soon as he asked the whole family to contribute money. But GRIME AND PUNISHMENT does a good fake-out, making the episode look like it's going to be a "torture Bud" story.

At the outset, Bud makes the apparent mistake of telling his parents that he's making more money as a talent agent. Al demands that Bud start paying rent on his sumptuous basement lodgings. After a token "running away from home" gag, complete with Bud putting his possessions into a bindle on a stick, the prodigal son returns. Al and Peg for the first time bring out his baby book, and Bud is perplexed to see that there are no pictures. The Parents from Hell claim none were taken because he was such an ugly offspring. Further, the book attests that Bud's first recorded words were, "Bud want food-- Ow." Present-day Bud looks questioningly at Peg, who responds, "Nobody likes a needy baby." This is a rare admission of either Bundy parent using corporal punishment on either kid. It's far more common that when the Bundy parents torture their children, it's through neglect, which is explained by the enormous stupidity and self-centeredness of both Al and Peg.

             

Bud then gives in, but he stoops only to conquer. Once he has a rental contract with Al, Bud brings in a building inspector-- a big fat woman, of course-- to grade the basement as a place for human habitation. Not only does the inspector not give the basement a passing grade, she exerts an authority that only makes sense in Al's World, fitting Al with a shock-collar until he upgrades the dwelling. Al is confined to the basement, and Bud-- well, maybe he goes back to his old upstairs room, or to the couch, since it's improbable that he'd be bunking with Peg or Kelly. Al swears he won't make the improvements, and he even begins enjoying being separated from Peg's wheedling for sex. However, Bud then starts selling tickets to people who want to poke the confined bear. To be sure, Marcy is the only one who explicitly pays for the privilege of forcing Al to listen to her feminist lectures. Kelly's next up, though Bud probably just told her to entertain her daddy with her "improve class" techniques. One of these includes Kelly dressing up as Pocahontas and throwing a tomahawk at an offscreen Al. We don't know where it hits him, but it might hit the lower extremities, since afterward she calls him "Chief Thunder-Pants." (Later the writers can't resist having the pun of Kelly calling her own performances "Chinese daughter torture," even though this takes away from her appearance of innocent sadism.) Then Bud brings out the Big Guns, or maybe the Big 'Uns that Al claims not to like, sending Peg into the cell to take advantage of the fresh meat.

 The Peg-torture finally breaks Al: he agrees to pay for the improvements, and Bud trepidatiously removes the shock collar. However, in a great depiction of twisted Bundy logic, Al's proud of Bud for mousetrapping him, given that long ago Al did the same thing to his father. So for once, Al's victimization leads to a rare moment of father-son bonding, though there's still one last slapstick stunt to keep things on the wacky side.        

NATSUKI CRISIS BATTLE (1994)

 

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

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

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

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

MARRIED WITH CHILDREN: "ONE DOWN, TWO TO GO" (1990)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological* 

This fifth-season episode is one of the more interesting in the "Bundy bonding" department. Contrary to the majority of episodes, this time Al doesn't suffer any major violence or humiliation, and the torment Bud suffers results from his mother giving him a form of humiliation that even husband Al never suffers.

The Al-Kelly relationship takes center stage this time. For the previous four seasons, it's been clear that Kelly is often just as parasitic as both Peg and Bud-- stealing Al's money, putting him in deadly situations, et al. He in turn frequently ignores her, which, as this episode explicitly claims, causes her to seek out casual hookups in the hope that he'll pay her attention and forbid her skanky activities. And Al does at least keep Kelly from messing around in his house, thrashing any boyfriend he catches her with. Of course, this seems more like Al protecting his own domicile, for the sake of his ego, than protecting his daughter to teach her good sense. Not that Kelly humps dozens of guys purely because of daddy issues. Clearly, she just likes sex, and being a hot girl she, unlike Bud, can get laid almost any time she pleases. But in "One," she gets fed up with Al beating up her dates and moves to an apartment. Given Al's many claims of wanting to be free of his whole family, "One Down Two to Go" ought to be his sentiments. Yet a small part of him still likes the idea of being a dad to his daughter, even though he knows the daughter is a lascivious moron. A lot of this sentiment is also driven by Al's egotistical beliefs about his self-image. Yet, when he might be better off doing nothing, Al brings Kelly back home-- albeit to the same status quo that made her leave in the first place. (Actually, Bud puts into Kelly's empty head the idea of demanding her own autonomy at home, which is probably a good reason for her to forget the whole thing.)

Bud pays a heavy price for his encouraging Kelly to leave. As long as Peg has two kids at home, she's able to indulge her own ego and imagine herself as being just as young and attractive as when she snared Al. But once Kelly leaves, Peg-- for the only time in the series, I believe-- becomes intensely invested in Bud's upbringing. She starts smother-mothering him, treating her high school-age son as if he's a small boy-- hugging him over and over, feeding him mashed bananas, and bathing him. She does these things only to feed her fantasy of being young again, and it's one of the few times that the confident Peg seems pathetically needy. In contrast to the co-dependent relationship between Al and Kelly, Peg and Bud usually just ignore each other. In 1990, Peg's temporary psychosis would have strongly resembled those of true smother-mothers like PSYCHO's Norma Bates, seeking to compensate for the lack of sexual gratification by fussing over a growing son. Strangely, Peg isn't nearly as bothered by not getting any action from her husband-- she can always use her deprivation as a weapon to flay Al with-- but the idea that she's not young anymore, and thus not deserving of sexual attention, moves her to quasi-molest her son. But once Kelly's back in the house, Peg's psychosis disappears, because she can once more think herself a young thirty-something. Though Bud doesn't say so, one might imagine that Bud's being tormented by his sister-- from rude remarks to full-on slapstick violence-- is far preferable to being entirely neutered by his mother turning him into a pre-sexual child.

ADDENDUM: I should add that even though both Al and Peg are negligent to both of their kids, they often show favoritism to Kelly because both parents think of themselves as having been "cool kids" in school, and having another cool kid strokes their egos. Bud, the bookish son who often can't get a date, is a nerd and thus they show him statistically greater indifference. That said, on rare occasions Al shows slight concern for Bud's welfare depending on the situation, while Peg almost never shows any sign of caring if he lives or dies.

THE BEAUTIFUL SWORDSWOMAN (1969)

 

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

*SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS*

Getting the phenomenality of the film out of the way, the only "superlative skill" evinced by the titular heroine is that after a killer hurls a knife at her and misses, she throws a big cup at him, and it hits his forehead so hard it embeds itself and draws blood. Not sure if the guy collapses just from pain or from being killed outright. But she never does anything that quasi-superhuman again, so the feat doesn't weigh much in the scales.

Yuan-yuan (Wang Ling) is the daughter of a rich man, credited on HKMDB only as "Father." She, her father, and her brother Ching Tong (like Yuan, about twenty-something) live in apparent serenity together. However, Yuan and her governess (Ching-Hsia Chiang) have a secret. They take lessons in swordplay from a mysterious, unnamed tutor, and when so ordered, they go out and kill particular targets. The subtitles weren't very clear as to why this rich girl and her governess pursue this course of action, and they don't even seem to question why the tutor wants the men dead. But Father knows the men killed, calling them Yuan's "uncles," though this may just be an honorific, not a statement of literal relatedness.              

The fights-- mostly swordplay, though with a little hand-to-hand action mixed in-- don't serve to do anything but fill time until the Big Reveal in the last thirty minutes. Then Yuan finds out that her tutor and the governess know a hidden truth about Yuan's life: the man who raised Yuan is an impostor who killed Yuan's real father and forced Yuan's mother to become his wife, and the mother of Ching Tong. (I think the subs suggested that the impostor might be the murdered man's brother, but that could be a flub.) The film then builds up to its Big Dramatic Moment: to fulfill the duties of filial piety, Yuan must avenge her real father's death by killing the man she's called "Father" for twenty years-- which is the main reason I give SWORDSWOMAN a "fair" rating. There's a climactic swordfight, but like other parts of the film it too is more about dramatic torment than invigorating adventure-- and the brother figures into the tragic conclusion as well.

Wang Ling and her fellow swordswoman probably weren't martially trained, but Wang has good dramatic intensity. It looks like she didn't do much else in the chopsocky genre except a support-role in ZATOICHI AND THE ONE ARMED SWORDSMAN. Unlike many kung-fu films, this one doesn't drown the viewer in a parade of marvels, but the characters are underwritten, and that undermines even the film's best scenes.              

GLADIATOR OF ROME (1962)

 

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

Until I saw the above poster, with Gordon Scott's heroic Marcus on one cross and flanked on either side by two hot crossed babes (sorry, couldn't resist), I didn't notice that the same scene in the film had been intended to crudely replicate the familiar Christian scene of Jesus between the two thieves. I'm not saying that director Mario Costa was using the visual allusion for anything in particular. Although there's some plot-elements in which the good guys are being persecuted by Emperor Caracalls for being Christians, there's almost no Christian or anti-pagan polemic in GLADIATOR. And as other reviewers have noted, there's not even much gladiator-action either.

  If anything, GLADIATOR is a little more of an anti-slavery thing. Two Silicians, Marcus and his princess Nisa (blonde Wandisa Guida) are taken to Rome as slaves, with the former being trained for the arena and the latter becoming a house-slave. It's also in Rome, though, that both of them, who are not romantically involved, pick up romantic partners. Marcus becomes infatuated with a barmaid named Aglae (brunette Ombretta Colli), while a Roman noble, Valerio, becomes enchanted with Nisa. There are a lot of talking-head scenes in which the slaves plot to gain their freedom, with occasional interruptions by Gordon Scott beating up Roman soldiers. Before getting put up on a cross, Marcus is threatened with having his eyes burned out so I guess that's a little more exotic than the usual tortures.     

So, are there no bad women in this particular peplum? Female villainy does get representation from a tertiary character, Tullia (Eleanora Vargas) wife of Anno, both of whom join in tyrannizing over slaves, though I'm not even sure they cared about persecuting Christians. Actress Vargas appears to be significantly older than the other two female performers, though I don't have access to her birthdate. I heard, but did copy down, one line in which she seems to be disapproving of the younger Valerio wasting himself with a commoner female. There are no Mrs. Robinson moments as such though. In a fair number of peplum in this period, I have seen oppositions between good young women and bad older woman, so the writers of this otherwise unremarkable movie may have been playing around with that familiar trope, but not really doing much with it. Anno ends up getting killed in an end-battle that liberates Marcus and the hot crossed babes, Tullia ends up mourning him, and all the good people are freed by the auspices of a brand-new Emperor in town.     

MARRIED WITH CHILDREN: "THE WORST NOEL" (1993)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*                                                                                                                                              While most of the Bundy Xmas-excursions tend to dream of Dark Yuletides, "Worst Noel" is probably as close as MARRIED WITH CHILDREN could get to being "sweet."                                                   

    The two B-plots are unexceptional fare. Al and Peg spend most of the episode on the couch, trying to find something good to watch on cable. Probably the best pop-cultural joke comes when, upon being given an old Nat King Cole record by the kids, Peg remarks, "It'll be the first time I've heard Nat without Natalie for a long time." (Natalie Cole, the daughter of "King," collaborated with her father on a recording, which is almost the only thing anyone remembers about her career.) The second plot involves the D'arcys, holding a party next door. Despite the tendency of Marcy, Jefferson and other revelers to barge into the Bundy house and pilfer supplies (talk about a turnabout), Al never completely catches on that there's a nearby Xmas party to which he's not been invited. Peg manages to sneak away at least once to join the festivities, and naturally does not clue Al in.                                                                                                           

   The A-plot is the source of what sweetness there is in NOEL, though naturally there's plenty of "sour" to mitigate it. Kelly and Bud happened to get hold of an old-timey jukebox (though only because it fell off a delivery truck) and decide to bring it into the house secretly in order to surprise their parents with an offering to their geezer souls. Why do they bother trying to sneak the jukebox in? Couldn't they just unveil it to Al and Peg in the garage? But of course, the reason is so that Bud and Kelly can do their take on Tex Avery's "George and Junior" cartoon series. Even though Bud, "the smart one," is nominally in control of their senseless project, every order he gives to Kelly, "the stupid one," results in his suffering injuries-- which, as I've said elsewhere, is loosely modeled on the sadistic relationship of Peg to Al. Though Kelly is sometimes openly sadistic in other episodes, here she plays the "innocent sadist," who just doesn't foresee causing her brother assorted pains. Yet oddly, the two siblings don't say anything about using their generous gift to butter up their parents. This would be a reasonable conclusion from many other episodes. But here they seem to be making an honest effort just to do something nice-- even if the effort ends in futility, as when the jukebox gets destroyed and the only thing that survives is that one record-- which gets too scratched up to play.  

MARRIED WITH CHILDREN: "ROCK AND ROLL GIRL" (1990)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic* 
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*                                                                                                                                                       Although the "Rock and Roll Girl" of the title is indubitably Kelly, she, Peg and Bud are equally complicit in contriving a new set of tortures for the Bundy paterfamilias. As in many other episodes, the series of unfortunate events comes about when Al dares to go against his destiny to ceaselessly dispense his hard-earned money to his ungrateful family members. Al declares that he will match, at triple value, any money that the three parasites can manage to earn on their own. The declaration is even stupider given that the matching concept comes from Marcy, which should have been enough to warn him off.                                                                       

 Peg, for her part, starts off poorly, though as usual she manages to transfer the penalties of her failure to Al.                                               

Thanks to Bud's talent for scheming, though, he and Kelly come off much better. Bud manages to set Kelly dancing sexily in a music video and he even helps her eliminate some of the competition while scoring with other female performers. Kelly herself even shows a bit of cleverness in getting rid of a rival, though the usual dumb jokes are never in short supply. Al-- who suffers from tunnel vision regarding Kelly's obvious promiscuity-- finds out about the video and charges to the studio, intent on beating down anyone who compromises Kelly's non-existent virtue.                                             

  In the BLONDIE comics, punching-bag Dagwood often gets either physically or financially clobbered, but usually not both, at the same time. Not Al, though. The video-makers turn aside Al's wrath by casting him in the video, as a guy who gets blown up in a car, for realsies, when a cute blonde girl presses a plunger. Who's the cute blonde girl? Who else? (And she does it twice, no less.) Thus not only do Bud and Kelly make money that Al is forced to triple, Peg uses the occasion to profit from Al's injury, and she gets in on the bonanza. Then off the three demons go to spend Al's money, leaving Al to suffer yet more torments. 

MARRIED WITH CHILDREN: "A THREE JOB, NO INCOME FAMILY" (1989)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*                                                                                                                          Though I'm not going to watch every MWC episode in order, I have the general impression that Season 3-- which was the first one to become widely popular on the Fox channel-- is also the season that the showrunners abandoned any pretense of producing a "realistic" sitcom. They began showing the Bundy family as the buttholes of the universe, continually dumped on by the rest of the universe but fully willing to dump back whatever they could upon decent society. At the same time, the Bundy's favorite enemies were one another, and their favorite feud was "the war against men and women"-- a war in which Peg, Kelly, and (sometimes) Marcy won most of the battles.     

     After an opening bit in which Al, Bud and Kelly are scrounging for bits of food about the house (because Peg never buys anything to eat), the red witch herself sashays in, revealing that once again she's frittered away Al's hard-earned money on clothes for herself. In her usual manner, Peg argues that she's the one suffering from the pitiful wages Al brings home due to his job as a lowly shoe salesman. She urges Al to take another job to supplement his meager income, and he refuses. Bud and Kelly refuse to defend their father, as they're eager to take dough from Peg--even though she's only giving them the money Al makes. Despite Al's refusal to take a second job, Peg consults with neighbor Marcy. Marcy naturally thinks Al should become a trainer of pit bulls, but that's the extent of her contribution to the gender-war. Peg comes across an ad for the selling of "Patty Bright Cosmetics," and decides that would be a perfect second job for Al.                                                                                                     

                                                                                                                  When a Patty Bright representative explains how their product "sells itself," Peg takes the job for herself, since she loves the idea of a job where she doesn't have to work. However, because Peg can't sell the cosmetics to any of her friends, she buys the products herself, so that Patty Bright will send her commission checks-- apparently not remembering that her breadwinner will have to pay for the total expenses. The episode's most interesting psychological touch is that before Al figures out Peg's shenanigans, he feels emasculated to think that she makes more money than he does. He ends up getting a second job at a burger joint with a STAR TREK theme, and of course gets further humiliation from the young employees there (including Pauly Shore). The two kids don't have much to do this time, it's almost all Peg vs. Al. The episode ends with Peg having to take over Al's burger job, but it's a given that her punishment won't last long, and that by the next episode she'll be right back on the sofa, busting her spouse's balls at every opportunity.              

THE OUTLAW (1943)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*                                                                                                                                              This naturalistic film, arguably the first in the subgenre of "sex-westerns," just barely qualifies for one of my ten tropes-- that of "bizarre crimes"-- and even then, the crime only takes up about three or four minutes of screen time and is more psychological than physical in nature.                                                                                                   

I'd seen THE OUTLAW a couple of times before my recent rescreening. For several years, I've known a lot of little factoids about the movie. That it was filmed in 1941 but blocked by the Hays Code until 1943. That the cast consists of just four main characters and a tiny number of support-roles. That OUTLAW was the debut film for two of the actors, Jack Buetel and Jane Russell, both under exclusive contract to producer Howard Hughes for the next seven years. I've learned other bits and pieces since my re-watch, but as of this writing I don't know exactly how the project came about, or why it was important enough to Howard Hughes to assume directorial duties on OUTLAW, even though he'd only directed one other film thirteen years ago. But given the fact that Hughes had acquired partial ownership of the studio RKO by 1941, I think his main aim was to win fame with a big, money-making picture with lots of sex appeal, and that he probably outlined his list of story-preferences to screenwriter Jules Furthman and let Furthman figure out how to stitch everything together.                         

The result was an overbaked melodrama that a number of modern viewers have called "campy" or "so bad it's good," though these assessments don't quite capture the nature of OUTLAW. For one thing, Furthman finds some inventive ways to bring together the four essential characters: Billy the Kid (Buetel), Rio McDonald (Russell), famed gunslinger Doc Holiday (Walter Huston), and Pat Garrett (Thomas Mitchell), sheriff to the New Mexico town of Lincoln. All of the film's action takes place either in Lincoln or in the wilderness surrounding it. Garrett and Rio have both lived in town for an unspecified amount of time, while Billy and Holiday converge on the town for separate but related reasons. However, Holiday has been in Lincoln before. At the film's opening he's on foot and chasing down a man who stole his horse, so he comes to Lincoln because unnamed witnesses told him they saw the horse and its rider heading for the town. But Holiday explicitly mentions that he hopes to encounter his old pal there in Lincoln. Holiday is surprised to learn that Garrett has recently become a lawman, and there's a strong suggestion that the two of them may once have been involved in extra-legal activities. Holiday also knows that Rio and her aunt "recently" moved to Lincoln, suggesting that he knew the younger woman-- whom he calls "his girl"-- in her previous residence in Socorro (probably meant to be identical with the town of that name in New Mexico). Given Holiday's greater age, it's not impossible that he set up Rio, apparently more a "mistress" than a girlfriend, on her Lincoln chicken-ranch, though there's no way to prove this speculation.               

Holiday finds his horse in the possession of Billy, who claims he bought the roan from a stranger. Holiday seems not the least bit interested in Billy's excuse, and Garrett prepares to arrest the alleged horse thief before Holiday can gun Billy down. But Holiday is amused by Billy's nerviness, and when the young man decks Garrett in mid-arrest, this also amuses the older gunfighter. But Garrett is enraged at having been one-upped in front of his old comrade, and he orders both men to leave town by sundown.                                                                                                                                                  Before either can do so, that night Billy is attacked in the barn where he stables his horse by a gun-wielding would-be killer. He wrestles down the assailant and finds that it's the lovely Rio. He's never met her, but when she gives her last name and the name of the town she formerly occupied, he realizes that she's the sister of a man Billy killed in self-defense, when the two men quarreled over a woman. While holding Rio down Billy comments on her comeliness. Rio responds by faking Billy out and trying to stab him with a pitchfork. Again Billy restrains her, and they roll in the hay some more, concluding with what might be a scene of Billy raping the nubile Rio in deep shadows-- though clearly Hughes wanted to keep things ambiguous.     

The next day Holiday and Billy have not left town, and an ambitious would-be deputy challenges Billy and gets gunned down. When Garrett seeks to arrest Billy, Holiday sides with the youth, increasing Garrett's sense of betrayal. Billy gets wounded, so Holiday tries to hide him at Rio's ranch, and then leaves to decoy pursuers away from Billy. Rio cooperates but never makes the slightest reference to Billy having ravished her-- again, Hughes playing it as safe as he could in the Hays era. For the month that Billy in in Rio's care, Rio falls in love with Billy, and even her aunt confesses his charms. Billy, who has expressed sentiments about the treachery of women, doesn't reciprocate. Indeed, both Holiday and Billy insult the young woman by implying that their quarrel over the roan takes priority over their rivalry for Rio.                                                                     

Most of the rest of the film's events take place in the wilderness, as Garrett relentlessly pursues the two fugitives. Though Rio stays behind at the ranch, she ensures her future participation by peevishly filling the canteens of both men with sand. Later a vengeful Billy returns to the ranch and utters threats that sound like those of ravishment. But what he actually does is to drag Rio out into the desert and tie her up, so she can suffer the rays of the sun as Billy and Doc did. Garrett and his captive Holiday find Rio, and Garrett, anticipating that Billy will change his mind and return to free the girl, sets a trap. Billy is captured. Yet if he thought Rio's ordeal would "tame" her, he's proved wrong by an incident in which she nearly drowns Billy.                                                                                         

 I won't specify the exact way that the conflicts between Billy, Holiday and Garrett shake out at the climax, except that Rio's role in the story becomes an indirect one. In later years, the three-way male conflict led to many critics divining a homoerotic vibe between the trio. It's not beyond the bounds of possibility, but I would have to see evidence that either Hughes (at least in his capacity as producer) or Furthman had a habit of working such material into a lot of other, ostensibly mainstream movies. However, one of Holiday's last speeches about the precarious friendships between males-- particularly two powerful males-- could have been just as easily written for any number of less risible westerns. Even Garrett's animosity, hating Billy for his having made the sheriff look bad in front of an esteemed friend, could have appeared in a lot of the mainstream movies Furthman had been writing since the 1910s. Also common to a lot of westerns was the idea that sooner or later the roving gunfighter needs to settle down and make babies with a likely spouse. There's more than a little of the "war between men and women" going on throughout the picture, but the conflict between Billy and Rio is resolved as it is in almost every other Hollywood romance-- whereas only death, not sex, resolves the conflict between the three men. There are some campy-sounding lines in OUTLAW, particularly all the odd remarks about how much Billy and Holiday love their little horse. But despite the excessive nature of Jane Russell's feminine assets-- which were more responsible for selling the movie than any of the conflicts of the males-- I tend to think that excess serves the cause of heterosexuality.