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.

                                                

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.        

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.              

BEOWULF AND GRENDEL (2005)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*                                                                                                                          Sturla Gunnarson's take on the medieval poem "Beowulf" is never less than diverting, not least thanks to the film's gorgeous cinematography of the stark but beautiful Icelandic locations. It's deliberately an inversion of the moral certainties of the poem, wherein Evil is identical with physical monstrosity. The script's take might have been influenced by John Gardner's 1971 book GRENDEL, which told the Beowulf story from the POV of the monstrous titular man-slayer.                                                                     

BEOWULF is constructed much like the sort of mystery in which the audience sees a crime committed and then watches to find out how and when the hero will dope out the truth. Twenty years before the story proper, the Danish king Hrothgar (Stellan Skarsgard) leads some of his men to chase down a petty thief, a big hairy man whom the Danes consider to be a "troll." The big man flees the hunters in the company of his young son Grendel, but when they are both cornered on a cliffside, the father orders his son to hide in a crevice. The "troll" then faces the Danes and is killed by their arrows. Hrothgar spies the hiding boy but does not reveal his presence.                                                   

  Grendel grows into a savage beast-man (Ingvar Sigurdsson), and finally initiates a war against his father's slayers, killing twenty men in the king's mead-hall. Hrothgar is now old and befuddled, and he half suspects the origins of the killer. News of the murders reaches the tribe of the Geats, and their great hero Beowulf (Gerard Butler) journeys to Denmark with his retinue of warriors. Unlike the hero of the poem, this Beowulf is intensely curious as to the origins of Grendel. He's perplexed that the savage man simply avoids fighting with the Geats, while continuing his crusade against the men of Hrothgar.                                        

A new character, a witch named Selma (Sarah Polley), provides some of the answers to Beowulf's questions: that Grendel refuses to engage with the Geats because they, unlike the Geats, have done him no harm. It's strongly suggested that Selma's claim to witchy powers is a pretense to give her some immunity from attacks by brutish men, for she tells Beowulf that she was forced into prostitution by evil slavers before setting up her witch-hut. She, as much as Grendel (who rather clumsily raped her at one point, but in ignorance of his crime), is an outcast from the rude Scandinavian society that recognizes only physical strength as a virtue.

Even after Hrothgar confesses his past offenses against Grendel, Beowulf remains committed to ending the savage's rampage. In the poem the hero is mighty enough to rip the monster-man's arm from his body, but since no one here possesses supernatural powers, this Beowulf sets a mechanical trap that tears off Grendel's limb. Dying, Grendel flees to the sea, where his body is claimed by his mother, billed as "The Sea Hag." Later, when the prideful Danes hang up Grendel's arm as a trophy, the Hag emerges at night, kills various warriors, and steals the arm as well. Beowulf pursues the hag to an underground cave, and the monstrous woman, who possesses fangs and great strength, almost kills the hero. Beowulf only triumphs (slightly as in the poem) because he acquires a sword from the Hag's treasure-trove and kills her with it. Though the script isn't able to assert the true nature of the Hag and her son without breaking out of its own continuity, I think it's implied that both are offshoots from humankind, whom the primitive tribesmen mistake for "trolls." The tone of BEOWULF is uniformly dour, and the warriors' limited knowledge about the world's nature provides some dramatic moments. But as a whole this Grendel-sympathetic take on the poem is just fair in terms of its symbolic discourse.                                    

 

ANGELS' WILD WOMEN (1972)

 

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

Many of the films helmed by Al Adamson have a jigsaw quality to them, because Adamson and his crew frequently tinkered with them to add new exploitation-elements. ANGELS' WILD WOMEN is no exception to that tendency. According to Sam Sherman, Adamson's co-producer on the film, WILD had been completed as a biker-gang movie, SCREAMING EAGLES, but that iteration failed to find a distributor because biker-movies had fallen out of favor by 1972. Adamson and his colleagues added a new plotline which seems to have shoved out whatever the original idea was-- which may be the reason WILD doesn't seem like an assemblage of puzzle-pieces.

Some reviewers have found WILD incoherent, which makes me wonder if any of them had ever seen a biker picture. The genre was either started or at least boosted by Roger Corman's 1966 WILD ANGELS, and in my experience most if not all entries in the category are loosely plotted, full of random sex and violence. And biker-films are technically a subset of the counterculture cinema that evolved in the same period, and most of those follow the same patterns. 

Possibly the original plot just focused on Speed (headliner Ross Hagen) going around having fights with other bikers, since there are at least two such guy-on-guy battles that aren't strictly germane to the new plot. Said plot plays up the half-dozen "motorcycle mamas" who accompany Speed's gang, and they're first seen kicking the crap out of a couple of attempted rapists, led by Margo (Regina Carroll, wife of Adamson). Later, the male members of Speed's gang (never called "Angels" as far as I recall) decide they want to go off boozing with other male bikers, and they don't want their "mamas" going along because the guys always get into major fights over the women. 

So Margo and the other ladies-- including Speed's girl Donna (Jill Woefel)-- decide to hang out at a local commune for the weekend. Three of them, Margo and two others, even waylay a hunky hick. While they don't precisely "rape" the guy, they are the dominant ones in the "orgy" while the hick is the one uttering various weak non-consensual protests. (As a minor bit of trivia, the only female in the trio who actively humps the hick is played by Vicki Volante, who had been Adamson's go-to female lead until Carroll entered the picture.)

Unfortunately, the commune's run by a cult-leader named King (William Bonner), and although the ranch is owned by an old guy named Parker (1940s actor Kent "GANGBUSTERS" Taylor), King and his goons have been dealing drugs on the premises, as well as doping up some airhead females. Not a lot happens in the middle of the movie, and indeed Margo gets her own little romantic arc with a drifter named Turk, seen earlier getting his ass kicked by Speed for coming on to Donna. 

Then for some vague reason King, who never shows any real belief in whatever faith he professes as cult-leader, decides that he needs to sacrifice a woman to his god, and so he kills Donna. The "wild women" don't take much action, aside from one woman hitting a guy with a plank. However, somehow Speed's gang shows up in the nick of time and beats up the cultists. King tries to escape in a car, but Speed follows and manages to run the villain off the road to a fiery doom.

Hagen is just okay in his role as the quasi-heroic biker, though there's a nice moment when, after decking Turk, Speed lights a cigarette after striking a match on the fallen man's boot. Margo gets the most to do-- wielding a whip to throttle a rapist, gang-seducing the hunky hick, and having a heart-to-heart with Turk about her childhood-- and for that reason I'd say she and Speed are the focal icons of the story. (Margo, unlike Speed, even gets to complete her romantic arc.) I was a little surprised that Donna was so summarily killed off. But it's no great loss, because Jill Woefel was terrible here. I could see her staring toward the camera, trying for something like a Peggy Lipton soulfulness, and failing utterly. Oh, and the Spahn movie ranch plays the commune. A few years earlier, Adamson's crew worked on another project at the ranch, when a fellow named Manson was one of the occupants. A little later, Manson's followers committed the famous Tate-LaBianca murders, and it's likely that Adamson conceived King in reaction to the real-life cult-leader.

Some viewers didn't like all the fish-eye lensing and soft-focus in the cinematography, but to me that's the way a period counterculture movie should look. There's not much skin bared and only the opening scene, the trouncing of the rapists, is memorable in terms of action. But even if WILD isn't all that wild, I found it an OK time-killer.  

CAPTAIN KIDD AND THE SLAVE GIRL (1954)

 

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

Though the writers of this mediocre pirate-flick were responsible for THE MAN FROM PLANET X, and the director for THE RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE, the film's only slightly relevant to my project in providing one of cinema's few "crossovers" of famous pirates in their own pirate-society.

Rather surprisingly, the story actually has some slight historical fidelity with regard to the titular pirate captain. In real history, the governor of New York, then under English rule, gave William Kidd the duty of becoming a privateer for the English crown. Kidd was accused of having become a pirate and the governor betrayed Kidd, luring him into a trap and having him hanged.

KIDD picks up with the captain (semi-dashing Anthony Dexter) in a New York jail, about to be hanged. Evil Governor Bellomont arranges to fake the execution with the idea that once Kidd is freed, he'll make a beeline for his buried treasure, along with his hook-handed buddy Simpson (Alan "The Skipper" Hale Jr). In order to keep tabs on the pirate as he ships out for his treasure isle, Bellomont arranges for a confederate to be on the same ship as Kidd and Simpson: Judith (Eva Gabor), a woman of dubious repute but no specific background.

Naturally, during the trip Kidd and Judith fall hard for one another, though he's less than pleased to learn that she's an agent for his enemy. Once he uses his reputation to take over the ship, Kidd subjects the seductress to various indignities-- chaining her to a desk, forcing her to do manual labor-- though she's never any sort of literal "slave girl." Assorted things happen and the two of them end up on the treasure isle, which is also where a brotherhood of pirates meets. Bellomont and his henchmen show up and there's a big fight, so that unlike real life, the evil governor meets his doom and dashing Captain Kidd gets away with his lover, though not his treasure. 

Dexter's a pretty routine swashbuckler, though he's better than Gabor, who's nowhere near evincing the charm the actress showed in GREEN ACRES. She's not even interesting when she gets into a catfight with pirate-girl Anne Bonney, as played by Sonia Sorel, a minor B-actress who still shows more moxie than anyone else in this dud. Of the other "name pirates" standing alongside Kidd and Bonney, only Blackbeard (Mike Ross) has anything much to do. The names of Calico Jack, Stede Bonnet and James Avery are tossed out haphazardly and with no real characters attached, while another famous pirate, Bartholomew Roberts, gets both of his names farmed out to two separate characters, a Captain Bartholomew and a Captain Roberts. I guess the writers got a short list of famous pirate-names and ran out. Anyway, as far as crossovers of legendary historical characters are concerned, only Kidd, Bonney and Blackbeard rate.

 

SIGN OF THE GLADIATOR (1959)

 

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

If one's not too demanding, the movie sometimes advertised as NEL SIGNE DI ROMA (translated as "Under the Sign of Rome") is probably an OK time-killer. But for a variety of reasons I found that it was more notable for all the odd things that went wrong with it-- though none of them are sufficient to make this a "so bad it's good" film.

The U.S. marketing is the first odd thing, for apparently it played here under two separate titles. The better known one is SIGN OF THE GLADIATOR, in which some marketing guy decided to stick in a random reference to someone being a gladiator (even though there are no actual games or combatants in the story). A second retitling is SHEBA AND THE GLADIATOR, which is more amusing. I hypothesize that some marketer noticed that the cast list included a character named "Bathsheba," and thought he could put more butts in seats if the title implied that the movie was about the Biblical Queen of Sheba.

There is a queen, though a lot of 1959 Americans might not have heard of Zenobia (Anita Ekberg), who ruled the land of Palmyra (modern-day Syria) in the third century. Naturally, SIGN does not seek to reproduce exact history, but it seems that the real Zenobia did rebel against the dominion of Rome-- and this is also the main conflict of the movie.

SIGN is not primarily an adventure-movie like various other "gladiator films" of the era, but a romantic drama. After Zenobia defeats a Roman legion, Rome sends more soldiers to quell the revolt. However, before Roman forces engage with the Palmyran army, Roman consul Marcus (French actor George Marchal) seeks to treat with Zenobia, though his real purpose is espionage. Zenobia doesn't deign to meet with this envoy and sends him to work in the mines, where he's punished by being hung upon (not nailed to) a cross. Then Zenobia changes her mind and invites Marcus to her court. With ridiculous ease Marcus manages to convince the queen that he's willing to turn his coat to her cause, and she promotes Marcus over native Palmyran officers.

All of this would satisfy the usual romantic formula if one could believe for an instant that Zenobia had fallen for Marcus in the early scenes. There are some more sustained romantic moments halfway through the movie, but Ekberg and Marchal have zero chemistry. Possibly stories of a chaotic shoot contributed to this basic problem.

Two other subplots are lumped in. One concerns a Palmyran plotter named Semantio (Folco Lulli), a heavyset chap who intends to take advantage of the rebellion to usurp Zenobia and bring in Rome's rivals the Persians to take over the realm. Semantio is aided by a comely dancer played by Cuban beauty Chelo Alonso, who'd soon become a celebrated peplum actress, and who bears the unusual Scandinavian name of "Erica." Erica is there just to trade lines with Semantio and do one sexy dance, after which she disappears.

The other plotline is more confusing. The aforementioned Bathsheba is a virgin dedicated to the temple of Vesta, whose worship apparently infiltrated Palmyra due to Roman influence. Bathsheba falls in love with a guy and flees her temple, so the religious authorities seek to find Bathsheba and execute her. The writers make a lame attempt to sync up Bathsheba's story with that of Semantio, as the usurper is killed by Marcus when Semantio attempts to sacrifice Bathsheba. There's not a lot of time devoted to describing the religion of Roman Vesta or its social functions-- though one online source claims that the Vestal hierarchy was somehow related to confirming Roman emperors-- but the sacerdotal references qualify in my book as a naturalistic version of the "weird societies" trope.

Though Marcus frets about betraying his newfound love, he follows through on his true mission and undermines the Palmyran forces in the field, bringing about the triumph of the Roman legions. In the movie's one memorable scene, Zenobia-- portrayed as commanding her troops in the field, though not actually fighting-- takes issue with Marcus' betrayal and impales him with a handy spear. There's a  funny line in which a doctor says such a thrust would have slain anyone less manly than Marcus, or something like that. Palmyra becomes a vassal of Rome once more. Yet Zenobia seems okay with it once she knows of the Persian threat, so she and Marcus end up in a concluding romantic clinch.

Despite Ekberg's impressive assets, her lack of chemistry with Marchal-- who isn't that great either-- isn't her sole problem. Ekberg had her positive aspects as an actress, but she couldn't put across the sense of being regal, in contrast to a few dozen actresses who labored in the vineyards of heroic adventure flicks. Yet it's hard to grade Ekberg harshly given the data that main director Guido Brignone was sidelined by illness, forcing some replacement direction from none other than Michelangelo Antonioni. I didn't see any signs of New Wave artiness in this thoroughly ordinary period flick, though. Long time Italian journeyman Riccardo Freda handled the battle scenes.

For me the film's main interest lies in its giving Ekberg her only starring "femme formidable" role. For those viewers not already devoted to period-films of the period, I don't imagine that SIGN will show any "signs" of earning a better reputation.

MARRIED WITH CHILDREN: "BREAKING UP IS EASY TO DO" (1997)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*

The oddest thing about this three-part episode BREAKING (etc.) appears in the opening scene of the third section-- but first, a little backstory. In the previous two episodes, Al and Peg quarrel, and Al takes up separate residence, thinking that he's now going to score with hot young women. (This runs totally counter to his general tendency to avoid cheating on Peg, not out of devotion but out of a perverse sense of being doomed to be "married with children," as seen in this early episode). 

OK, back to the odd thing. Griff and Jefferson visit Al at his new digs, and observe that Al now sports a black eye. Now the viewer knows from the previous episode that Al got a visit from a hot young babe, but not for a reason he would've liked. She just wanted him to fix her shoe heel, him being a shoe-man and all. Al does so, but then  receives another knock at the door, following by a punch in the face from the girl's apish boyfriend. The girl of course does not apologize for her BF's action, but just blandly thanks Al for fixing her shoe.

The viewer knows all this, but before Al can make any explanations, Jefferson says, "Marcy predicted that some woman would beat holy hell out of you." Now, much though Marcy hates Al, and celebrates the possibility of his being permanently kicked out by Peg, this is a weird statement. Al's a big man; why would any average sized woman be able to beat him up? Of course Marcy has seen years' worth of evidence that Peg has verbally emasculated Al-- he even makes a "nutcracker" remark about Peg in this storyline-- but that's not quite the same as physical assault. Al does suffer such indignities at the hands of Peg and other females-- indeed, in this three-parter there's a flashback-montage in which Peg kicks Al off a bunkbed so that he crashes through the floor-- but it's not the sort of thing one sees every episode. My armchair-analysis is that the writers were having fun conflating Al's general humiliation with the idea of physical abuse, even though the viewer has clearly seen that Al did not, in this case, get beat up even by some giant-economy-size female (though this also happened in other episodes).

The actual plot of BREAKING doesn't merit much discussion, since this is probably the weakest episode of the eleventh and final season. The viewer knows that Al and Peg will get back together, and the script doesn't really come up with any good takes on their ongoing war of the sexes, except in one minor respect. While Al can't score to save his life, Peg puts herself out there and almost immediately snaps up rich suitor Bruce (Alan Thicke). Peg is at least ambivalent: she likes the idea of being a rich man's wife but regrets that Bruce does not have Al's "animal magnetism." Kelly and Bud retaliate for Al's years of indifferent neglect by being largely indifferent to his absence, and of course they pin their hopes on a wealthy daddy who's certainly not a shoe salesman. Bruce, though, makes it easy for Peg and the kids to dump him. Not only does he expect that if he marries Peg she'll have to learn to cook and clean, he also wants the kids to leave and make their own way. So, exit Bruce, leading to the reconciliation of Peg and Al.

Though Al doesn't take any lumps from the gentler sex this time, Jefferson and Bud do. Jefferson again lies to Marcy, leading her to both deck him and drag him home by his leg. As for Bud, once again he gets in trouble functioning as an agent to Kelly's acting career. The two siblings encounter Heather, another blonde bimbo who frequently steals Kelly's acting roles. The two young ladies decide to have it out in the boxing ring, and Bud gets caught in the middle, though he does endeavor to take advantage of Kelly as well. When Kelly trains for her bout by jumping rope, Bud sells tickets to young boys so they can watch her bouncing up and down. But when Bud tries to help Kelly train for her fight, she ends up punching him out twice. On top of that, during the boxing match between Kelly and Heather, Heather swings at Kelly but takes no small pleasure in having hit Bud instead. This leads to one of the few good lines of the story, from Kelly: "Hey! Nobody hits my brother! At least not without dating him first!"

So does that mean that all of the times Kelly has hit Bud-- not only with her fists, but with such things as a jukebox, an electrical barrage, and an arrow aimed at his skull (technically a miss)-- she has felt justified to do so because-- they're "dating?"

HARD TARGET 2 (2016)

 

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

This very belated (25 years!) sequel-in-name-only to 1993's HARD TARGET is an efficient if unremarkable action-opus built on the chopsocky skills of star Scott Adkins as the titular target. But my main interest in it is that its execution is one more demonstration of my trope-theory. 

Prior to this review, I've bracketed two other "hunting humans" films for comparison in order to show that this "bizarre crime" trope, like others in my other categories, can always have "naturalistic" as well as "uncanny" permutations. The distinction between each phenomenality-domain always depends on the absence or presence of narrative motifs that suggest an essential "strangeness" about the events depicted. 

The 1993 Van Damme film takes the concept of the DANGEROUS GAME short story, in which a madman hunts human beings for sport, and turns the practice into a business run by sane but ruthless mercenaries, who offer rich assholes the chance to hunt impoverished homeless people in big cities. The motif of the Promethean madman is gone, but in its place is the idea of transporting a perilous criminal activity to the streets of big cities, where the possibility of exposure is extremely high.

TARGET 2 duplicates the business practices of the first film in that villain Aldrich (Rob Knepper) also organizes hunts of human beings for the entertainment of rich assholes. However, Aldrich centers his operations in the wilds of Myanmar, paying off officials to look the other way while he preys upon poor locals. This is an atypical crime, but given the location the viewer is not as likely to be incredulous that something like this could happen, so there's nothing uncanny about it.

New hero Wes Baylor (Adkins) ends up appearing virtually on Aldrich's doorstep. Baylor, a MMA fighter, accidentally kills a fellow fighter in a tournament, and becomes so distraught that he gives up on life, traveling to Thailand and eking out a living in underground cage fights. Aldrich invites Baylor to Myanmar with the lure of a new fight, and when Adkins arrives, he learns that he's expected to run for his life from armed thrill-seekers.

Aldrich is a flat villain, though ably portrayed by Knepper, whom I knew only from a very different role in 1987's WILD THING, and the rest of his accomplices are no better, with one exception: Sofia (Rhona Mitra). She not only gets one of the most extensive fight-scenes with her quarry-- probably because the actress had established herself for her fake-fighting skills in movies like 2008's DOOMSDAY-- she even has a minor psychological motivation, in that she's hunting men because her despised father was a hunter. Not that motivation is very important in an American chopsocky, but one should acknowledge even small extra touches.

But action sells TARGET 2, and as I said, Adkins delivers on the fight-scenes, and his character gets some romantic support when he succors local native Tha (Ann Truong), whose brother escaped the last hunt. Tha gets a little action of her own, knife-killing a hunter who attempts to rape her, and later managing to kill Sofia, largely by dumb luck more than superior fighting-skill. There's another small arc with one of the hunters being a web-game designer seeking to use the experience for a "first-person shooter" game, but this comes to nothing special, any more than Baylor's predictable redemption.

If a viewer is not interested in sussing out the phenomenality of action flicks, one could probably get the best out of TARGET 2 by fast-forwarding through any scenes that don't involve either Adkins or Mitra fighting.

THE LADIES CLUB (1985)

 

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

Like ACT OF VENGEANCE, Janet (SPELLBINDER) Greek's LADIES CLUB revolves around a group of women who band together to battle the societally neglected crime of rape. CLUB is also like VENGEANCE is containing elements that border on the uncanny but are treated in a mundane manner, rendering the movie naturalistic.

Three young punks break into a house and learn that it belongs to a lady cop, Joan (Karen Austin). The guys are so horny that they don't care that she may be armed, and when Joan comes home a little later, they ambush her. Though Joan gives a good account of herself, she's overpowered and raped by at least one of the punks. The scene actually reflects a number of contemporary priorities about the cinematic depiction of the crime, for Joan remains clothed as she's violated, with Greek focusing more upon her mental humiliation.

Being a cop buys Joan no free rides. The punks are captured but a tricky lawyer convinces a jury that Joan invited the guys to a wild party. The only upside of Joan's ordeal is that during her treatment she finds a sympathetic ear in Constance (Christine Belford), a doctor who lost her child to a pedophile attacker. In addition, the sensation-seeking press publicizes the freeing of the rapists, causing several women to reach out and contact the aggrieved policewoman. When a group of them meet in person, they rage at the way rapists keep getting released to repeat their crimes, and one of them floats the idea that such men should be castrated. Then Constance brings up the possibility that a doctor like her could perform such operations without killing the victims-- and in no time, about seven or eight of the women decide to hunt down repeat offenders and make sure that they cannot offend in that particular way again.

CLUB was based on a novel, THE SISTERHOOD, and it's likely that Greek followed the book's lead on framing this extravagant premise in very down-to-earth terms. The film particularly focuses on the members of the Club tracking down the men who particularly offended against them or their relations. Though the film only shows the ladies successfully snipping off two or three offenders, their actions net them notoriety in the newspapers. However, in marked contrast to many vigilante films, the cops are at most amused by the development, rather than feeling the need to put down competitors. In fact, the only thing Joan's fellow cops do in the film is that they continue monitoring the activities of the three punks, in an attempt to put them away on some other charge.

Possibly this police scrutiny of Joan's tormentors is the reason she and her friends don't go after the punks. There are some ancillary plot-developments, most of which are boring, including a scene in which Constance goes over the line. This almost causes the vigilante club to break up. However, the lead punk decides to go after Joan again, and this leads to a combative conclusion. Joan defeats the guy, but implicitly makes the decision that he'll be the next victim of the Club. This is meant to be inspiring, but since this is a case where the victim knows the identity of the woman he accosted, it's hard to imagine how Joan would get away with this particular downsizing.

Austin is OK in the lead, but she's not an overly charismatic actress compared to support-actresses Belford and Diana Scarwid. LADIES CLUB is a watchable though low-key exploitation drama, and though it hits some strong emotional beats, I can't say the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

WAR CAT (1987)

 

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

This 1987 film was given the bland title ANGEL OF VENGEANCE in DVD releases, but I still prefer the title from its VHS incarnation, WAR CAT. The heroine of the story isn't especially cat-like, but she does show an ability to turn savage, in contrast to having zero angelic qualities. In terms of phenomenality this flick is largely relevant for being a naturalistic take on the "most dangerous game" trope of human-hunting. 

Heroine Tina Davenport (Jannina Poynter), daughter of a deceased armed forces officer, decides to take up temporary residence in a small American town in order to write a book about her late dad (a motif possibly borrowed from 1979's I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE). Because Tina's hot and runs around the town for daily exercise, she's noticed by a neighboring survivalist group. This group is made of its leader Major Hargrove and about half a dozen hangers-on. Hargrove honestly thinks that the country's about to be consumed by chaos at any minute, while most of his followers just seem to be in the group because it gives them the chance for antisocial activities.

Tina uses an elbow-strike to repel an assault by the most lustful member of the survivalists and then gets him charged by the local cops. Apparently, he gets bailed out by his cohorts, but after one shot of a cop-car there's no sense of any local law enforcement on the scene. Hargrove's survivalists take down an equally scuzzy biker-gang and take their women prisoner. The desire for more feminine company leads the faux-soldiers to kidnap Tina as well, after which at least one of them rapes her.

Hargrove, dedicated to his martial mission, does not rape her, but he decides to execute her. Tina requests a fighting chance: to run ahead and let her oppressors hunt her down. The guys all think she's going to be a sitting duck, but Tina's father trained her in guerilla tactics. One by one, she takes out each of her armed enemies, with an admirable variety-- miniature spears jabbed in one guy's eyes, a noose-trap and a grenade for another one, a throat-slitting for her rapist, and a "fighting chance" fate for Hargrove. 

While the killings are the best part, they're all in the last twenty minutes of this short flick, and most of the rest of the film displays director Ted Mikels' legendary talent for wasting time. One review commented that no one in the film could act, and it's true that almost everyone is a bad amateur, particularly the guy playing Hargrove, who looks like he ought to be a manager at a Wendy's. But if it's true that Poynter came to the film after having been a cocktail waitress, she actually acquits herself fairly well for a non-professional. It's still a blah film, of course, but Mikels had done, and would continue to do, many movies of far worse quality.

KUNG FU: SEASON 3, EPISODES 10-12 (1974)

PHENOMENALITY: (1,2) *naturalistic,* (3) *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: (1. 2) *fair,* (2) *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological, sociological*

The next three episodes of Season Three were all directed by David Carradine.

“Beseiged” is yet another two-parter set in China, and once again, the starting-point arises from the vagaries of the Imperial will toward the Shaolin priesthood. A huge hairy hermit named Tamo (Victor Sen Yung, nearly unrecognizable in the makeup) comes to Caine’s monastery in Honan, announcing that one of the Emperor’s warlords, Sing Lu Chen, has razed the temple in Fukien with an imported Western device, a long-range cannon. Only a few survivors escaped to take refuge with Tamo, and since some are injured, Tamo needs help to transport the fugitives to Honan for sanctuary. Both Caine and Master Po accompany the hermit back to his lair.

However, the warlord’s soldiers, directly commanded by a secondary villain named Shao, remain on the lookout for escapees. Thus Caine, Po, Tamo, and the two remaining Fukien disciples have a rough time of it, though they eventually make it back to Honan. Caine gets some personal trouble from one of the disciples, a girl in boy’s garb, name of Nan Chi and played by Barbara Hershey (who then went by the name “Barbara Seagull,” as well as being in a short-term romantic relationship with the star of the show). Nan Chi has been given some informal training in martial arts, and, given his upbringing, Caine is rather offended by seeing a female encroach on male prerogatives. The two of them spar briefly, though they produce more romantic sparks than split lips. (For some reason Caine seems to get a lot more action in old China than in the Old West.)

It’s belatedly mentioned that Warlord Sing, in addition to destroying the Fukien Temple in service to the Emperor, also sought to take possession of Nan Chi. Thus he’s presumably acting on his own when he and his subordinate Shao besiege the Honan Temple. Nan Chi does the heroic thing and surrenders herself, but Shao still wants to destroy the Shaolin sanctum. Caine succeeds in foiling the plot, but Nan Chi is written out of Caine’s life with a convenient death-scene. It’s a decent enough adventure, but meager in terms of philosophical aspects.

“The Demon God” weaves a more complex tapestry, as well allowing Radames Pera (the actor playing Young Caine) his most challenging episode. Usually Pera didn’t get to do anything but stand around allowing the Shaolin masters to bounce Taoist observations off his shaven skull. This time, he and Master Kan visit the home of an unnamed old mandarin, who feels himself near death and has spent his declining years plumbing the mysteries beyond the grave. Shen, the mandarin’s son, gets the idea to poison Young Caine, so that Shen can garner knowledge from the young postulant as he nears death. Young Caine, though suffering the effects of the poison, must find a way to manipulate his enemy into saving his life.

In a sort of “flash-forward” loosely connected with the adventure of his youthful self, adult Caine is caught in a cave-in and stung by a scorpion. He then suffers what initially seem like delusions brought on by the poison, as a high priest materializes in the cavern, exhorting Caine to become a worshipper of the fire-god Athil. Caine resists both the violence of the priest and the blandishments of a beautiful seductress, who claims that all of her people once worshipped the Aztec deity Quetzalcoatl, but deserted him for Athil, who gave them everlasting life. This bit of backstory seems to transport the tale out of the realm of the “delirious dream,” since there should be no way that a Shaolin priest of the 1800s should know even the name of an Aztec deity. The script does not attempt to rationalize the mystery, but given all the talk about being on the verge of death in both plotlines, but it’s possible to imagine that Caine has been in contact with the ghosts of a long-dead people, and possibly that of a vanished “demon god” as well.

DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY (1991)

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, sociological*


Though there are a lot of naturalistic psychos in action-adventure films, the one in DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY is a little more layered than most, thus making him an interesting topic for this blog.

The plot of IMMUNITY, in which a tough American invades a foreign country to avenge his slain daughter, sounds a lot like 2008's TAKEN. And the source-novel for the movie, Theodore Taylor's 1987 THE STALKER, has even more resemblance to the Liam Neeson flick, since in the novel the avenging hero goes after the villain, a West German diplomat, across "Germany, Denmark, and Sweden," whereas the film confines the action to one location, Paraguay. I assume that Taylor's original novel is the reason that villain Klaus Hermann is a bit more complex in the "perilous psycho" department.

That said, the screenplay and director Peter Maris get some mileage out of alterations that probably were rooted in cutting costs. Career military man Cole (Bruce Boxleitner, who's not a monolithic enough actor to fit this subgenre) has already lost his wife to cancer, and he's fiercely protective of his grown daughter Ellen, whom he claims is the spitting image of her mother. Before he meets Ellen's impending date Klaus, Ellen tells him not to be suspicious of the German youth: saying something like, "Not every German from South America is an ex-Nazi!" Ellen meets Klaus and they leave Cole behind, glowering. That same night, Klaus loses his pretense of cool. Not only does he rape and kill Ellen, he takes sadistic pictures of her before his local handler, to whose diplomatic office Klaus is attached, takes him away. The law apprehends Klaus but is forced to release him because he's immune to immediate prosecution. Authorities give Cole no real hope for extradition, and so down he goes to Paraguay, to avenge his darling daughter.

Though Cole is the star of the show, he's never as interesting as the Hermann family, which seems somewhat modeled after Freud's reading of HAMLET. In fact, the matriarch of the family is even named "Gerta," which has a strong resemblance to Shakespeare's "Gertrude." However, whereas Gertrude only married the brother of her late husband, Gerta seems to have directly contributed to making her son Klaus into a scopophilic pervert. Once the chief security man Stefan returns Klaus to his loving mother, she's less angry about his committing murder than the fact that he "wastes" himself on such women. Of the three scenes that involve Gerta (Meg Foster) and Klaus (Tom Bresnahan), they continually suggest that Gerta has on some past occasion seduced her son, although she sometimes keeps him at a distance by slapping or kicking him. In one scene, she comes to his room, and, thinking that Klaus is on the other side, tells him that he's never been able to hide from her before.

Though the movie doesn't quite say that the incestuous relationship is also sadomasochistic, this is suggested when Cole tries to get at Klaus by tracking down his mistress Teresa. Teresa initially disbelieves Cole's accusation because she's always found him to be a submissive-- suggesting that Teresa is a mother-substitute. Nevertheless, in this world every masochist hides a sadist, and when Klaus turns on Teresa, she becomes Cole's ally. To round out the HAMLET parallel, Klaus is also jealous of Stefan's relationship with Gerta, and one scene does show Gerta making out with Klaus. Gerta asserts that Klaus resents Srefan for taking his (Klaus's) place. This line suggests that Stefan is a father-substitute, even as Freud considered Claudius a daddy-doppelganger, so that the implication is that Klaus expected to be a de facto "husband" to Gerta once the patriarch passed. An additional interesting detail is that the deceased Hermann patriarch, though not definitely an ex-Nazi, earned his wealth and diplomatic prominence through munitions, and Gerta only gained her vaunted social position as Hermann's wife because she had been a "stripper" and so was good at manipulating men. For a closing touch, Gerta is killed and before he dies, Klaus takes a picture of her dead body just as he did with Ellen. Ah, those perverse Germans!

None of Cole's explosive attempts at vengeance are as interesting as the weird Hermann family, though things do blow up pretty good, and the film offers a nice sampling of familiar faces, like Billy Drago, Matthias Hues, Fabiana Udenio (as Teresa), and Robert Forster. Forster's role is sociologically interesting, for Cole and Forster's character served together in Vietnam, but the latter soldier was guilty of killing Vietnamese prisoners. This would seem to have no real pertinence to the main story, but maybe in the original novel it served to make Cole look less like "the Ugly American" by comparison.

THE TERROR OF THE TONGS (1961)

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


TERROR OF THE TONGS is reputedly a remake of Hammer's STRANGLERS OF BOMBAY, which I have not seen, and which concerned the Thuggee in British India rather than the Tong organization in British Hong Kong circa 1910. The film's main significance to metaphenomenal film-fans is that, though TERROR is not a metaphenomenal film itself, it anticipates British actor Christopher Lee's "yellowface" performance as Fu Manchu, beginning with 1965's THE FACE OF FU MANCHU. Lee's villain here may have been loosely influenced by the example of Fu Manchu in various media, but he lacks the devil-doctor's formidable character, and suffers from a risible name that just happens to be the same as that of several modern restaurants: "Chung King."

The film opens by illustrating the Tong's power in Hong Kong, which local police and civic organizations are powerless to combat. The Tong men usually keep their activities of vice and drug-smuggling confined to their fellow Asians, but two of Chung King's men make the mistake of killing the daughter of a prominent, two-fisted British seaman, Captain Sale. Sale then rushes from pillar to post like an early version of TAKEN's Liam Neeson, seeking to find his daughter's murderers, and the Tong proves incompetent to kill him. Eventually Chung King's men manage to take Sale prisoner, which leads to the film's one memorable line, "Have you ever had your bones scraped, Captain?" Sure enough, Chung King's torturer demonstrates the technique of inserting a blade into Sale's flesh in order to affect the bone beneath. Sale only survives because an agent opposed to the Tong-- one of the civic organizations I mentioned-- saves his life. Eventually there's a public confrontation between
Sale and a Tong killer, and Sale's victory backfires on Chung King's organization, as the tyrannized populace storms the Tong HQ and the villain commits suicide, thus avenging Sale's daughter.

The script by Jimmy Sangster is reasonably tight, and though most of the Asians are played by British actors, there's a saving grace in the fact that the only reason Sale makes so much progress is because he's given covert aid by the anti-Tong group. Thus, this isn't entirely a "white savior" film, but one in which he acts more as a catalyst to help the Chinese people save themselves. On the minus side, a hot young Chinese woman named Lee attaches herself to Sale, and it's implied that she gives him some romantic recompense for helping free her from her Tong slavemaster. There's no romance as such between the characters of Lee and Sale, and it may be fairly argued that Lee is just a standard "hot Asian babe" fantasy. I don't always object to such fantasies, but here its presence highlights the superficiality of the characters.

The Tong registers as a "weird society," and their one use of torture-- later quoted in 1986's ARMED RESPONSE-- qualifies as a "bizarre crime." But both of these are entirely naturalistic in tone.