CREEPING DEATH (1972)

 

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

CREEPING DEATH is certainly a better title for this unwieldy mix of spaghetti western and giallo than KILL THE POKER PLAYER. The odd thing about this failed fusion is that many of the more violent spaghettis sometimes show elements in common with equally violent giallos. However, westerns in general have a harder time dealing with "slow burn suspense"-- and despite DEATH's quota of saloon brawls, that seems to have been the intent of director/co-writer Mario Bianci, a prolific filmmaker though most of his works have not been translated into English.

Like many spaghettis DEATH begins with a double cross and centers upon a hunt for hidden riches. However, two-fisted federal agent John Pinkerton (Robert Woods) lacks the usual cynical motive of the spaghetti fortune-seeker. He seeks to locate a cache of bank money stolen by three outlaws, one of whom kills the other two. Pinkerton centers his investigation on a particular town where one or two persons have been killed by poisonous snakes. The same town plays host to a herpetologist, suggesting that some malcontent in the populace decided to weaponize the reptiles to eliminate witnesses.

The snakes, and the "bizarre crimes" for which they're used, aren't all that important to the story until the climax, and Pinkerton's detective work seems at best random. DEATH is generally boring and wastes the lovely Nieves Navarro in a purely decorative role. A better meld of western and murder-mystery appears in 1974's A KNIFE FOR THE LADIES.   

      

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED, SEASON ONE (2004-05)

 

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

The two seasons of JUSTICE LEAGUE were better than average superhero entertainment. But the format-- consisting of episodes that were always either two or three parts long-- didn't take advantage of the greater story-time, except that the fights were longer and more spectacular. UNLIMITED tended to focus upon done-in-one episodes with occasional multi-parters and generally made the narratives tighter and more streamlined. 

Taking place a few years after the previous show, JLU now encompasses a plethora of DC's heroes, both famous and obscure. I imagine newbies were confused by a lot of characters who were given little or no introduction, but arguably there's a simple anti-military sociological theme this time, involving the attempts of world governments to manufacture their own superheroes.

INITIATION (P)-- The opening episode isn't particularly complex on any level. A nuclear-powered robot goes on a rampage in Asia, and three heroes-- Green Arrow, Captain Atom, and Supergirl-- are assigned to stop the marauding automaton. Arrow plays the role of reluctant candidate, a street-level hero who's drafted into the more cosmic adventures of the JLU. The episode ends by suggesting Arrow's interest in female member Black Canary, but this does not pay off until Season Two.

FOR THE MAN WHO HAS EVERYTHING (F)-- I've never agreed with the many fans who raved about the Alan Moore comics-story on which this was based, as I found it predictable. Batman and Wonder Woman visit the Fortress of Solitude to celebrate the Man of Steel's birthday, and they find Superman paralyzed by an alien plant. The plant feeds the hero pleasant visions of his enjoying a happy married life on Krypton, and while he slowly tries to overcome his Lotus-eater fate, his friends fight the villain responsible for the attack, alien overlord Mongul. The story is somewhat simplified but is adequate.

HAWK AND DOVE (P)-- Wonder Woman's Olympian foe, Ares God of War, gives a giant robot, the Annihilator, to one of two warring Euro-nations. The Amazon thinks it's a good idea to choose as her team-mates two warring brothers, warlike Hawk and peacenik Dove, to end this threat. The Dove gets the main role of managing to pacify the killer robot, which only works because the script says it does.

FEARFUL SYMMETRY (F)-- Supergirl's having bad dreams in which she kills people, so she turns to the JLU for aid. Green Arrow and The Question (the latter now re-imagined as a conspiracy freak) help the Girl of Steel uncover a government project, Project Cadmus, the first of many covert US government operations. Cadmus has created a clone of Supergirl, known as Galatea (after the Greek myth of the statue-that-comes-to-life). This evil Supergirl, designed to look like the comics-character Power Girl, is one of the show's better concepts and provides lots of action. In addition, this episode re-introduces Professor Emil Hamilton, who had been a semi-regular character on SUPERMAN THE ANIMATED SERIES. In the comics, Hamilton is a goodguy-scientist-who-turns-bad, and from here on in, he plays a major role in unleashing the monsters of Cadmus on the League.  

KID STUFF (G)-- The season's only concrescent myth-tale plays with an idea that's probably occurred to every child: "what would it be like to be free of adult oversight?" Sorceress Morgaine Le Fay is betrayed by her immortal (and permanently juvenile) son Modred, who exiles all adults on Earth to another dimension, including the League. But Morgaine can make it possible for the heroes to cross back to the Earth-plane, by de-aging them to kids. Writer Henry Gilroy does a fine job giving kid-personas to Wonder Woman, Batman, Superman, and Green Lantern. (Somehow Morgaine's spell also de-ages her comics-foe The Demon to an even younger age, but I'll allow it because it made for good comedy.) Eventually all is set right, except for Modred, who pays a substantial price for his desire for independence.

THIS LITTLE PIGGY (F)-- The sorceress Circe escapes captivity but instead of seeking revenge, she simply wants to let loose and have fun. However, on encountering Batman and Wonder Woman, the witch resorts to tradition and changes the Amazon into a pig. No longer able to think, the little piggy gets loose and Batman must engage the unusual talents of the super-obscure hero B'wana Beast to find her. But the standout moment takes place when Batman has to exercise a hidden talent to save Wonder Woman from becoming pork rinds.

THE GREATEST STORY NEVER TOLD (F)-- Here's the first JLU episode to spotlight one of the C-list heroes. Booster Gold, a guy whose tendency to showboat compromises his position in the League, is given minor crowd control duty during a crisis, only to find another crisis in the making. It's a reasonably clever script, though I didn't come out of it thinking BG any more than a C-lister.

THE RETURN (F)-- At the end of the episode "Tabula Rasa," the super-android Amazo, created by Luthor to destroy the League, transcended his programming in Nietzschean fashion and zoomed off into space. Here, he becomes assailed by doubt and returns to Earth to demand that his creator give him a meaning to his existence. Neither the League, nor a special weapon designed by Luthor and The Atom, can stop him, but Luthor does give the android a satisfying lecture on self-determinism that also has a certain Nietzschean ring, and even suits Luthor's megalomania.  

ULTIMATUM (F)-- More Cadmus clone-antics, as they unleash five new heroes plainly patterned after five SUPER FRIENDS characters: Super Samurai, Apache Chief, Black Vulcan, Zan and Jayna. However, the clones soon learn that they all have limited lifespans, and they go on a rampage, forcing the League to take them down. There's a cute in-joke when the "Apache Chief" character squares off against the JL version of Giganta, since the two characters contended in the SUPER FRIENDS show.      

DARK HEART (F)-- Self-replicating nanobot-aliens invade Earth, and the League must stop them. There's some decent sci-fi concepts here, though it's never more than a standard invasion yarn. General Eiling, a CAPTAIN ATOM villain who will become part of Cadmus in Season Two.

WAKE THE DEAD (P)-- Solomon Grundy is revived, becoming a mindless force of destruction with a special magic that even Amazo and Doctor Fate cannot overcome. This simple story is mostly meant to spotlight the return of Hawkgirl to the League, though many citizens, and even some heroes, still resent her.

THE ONCE AND FUTURE THING (F)-- The season's only two-parter takes League members into two different time-eras: the Old American West and the future of BATMAN BEYOND, thanks to a new version of the classic . The first part is a mini-celebration of DC's various Western characters-- Bat Lash, Jonah Hex, El Diablo, and Pow-Wow Smith-- though there are so many characters, along with three Leaguers, that El Diablo doesn't get any lines. In addition to all that, their main villain in Part 1 is Tobias Manning, which is the regular cognomen of Terra-Man. Part 2 allies the League with Future-Batman, Future Bruce Wayne, and various others to track down Chronos, who suffers a unique, extra-legal punishment.

 

                           

EL ROJO (1966)

 

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

The "fair mythicity" rating on EL ROJO isn't at all for the generally routine spaghetti-western plot, but for an assortment of odd little touches writer-director Leopoldo Savona throws into the mix. 

We open on the scene of a wagon-train family arriving at the site of their newly acquired land, where they intend to work a gold mine. Then everyone in the family gets shot dead by arrows-- yet we don't see any marauding Indians about. Years later, four stalwart citizens of a nearby town are celebrating how rich they are before the admiring townfolk. Then a mysterious arrow is shot from an unknown Indian assailant, just missing the luminaries-- all on the very same day that a laconic stranger named Joe (Richard Harrison) arrives in town. Can there be a connection between all of these events?

No surprises here: the four rich guys-- Navarro, Wallace, Laskey and Ortega-- made their riches by killing off the family of goldminers and then by acquiring their mine. However, one member of the family wasn't there to be slaughtered, and it's the laconic stranger named Joe, who's looking for revenge. The Indian sniper, who has no lines in the picture, witnessed the slaughter of the family. Maybe the association of their bloody deaths is why Joe is called "Rojo" just once-- not counting a very oblique reference at the movie's end.

Though Joe has four obnoxious targets for his revenge-- one of whom, Laskey, married a local girl, Consuelo, who was apparently Joe's girl at some time-- director Savona doesn't play up the action/violence scenes as one might expect of a 1966 spaghetti western. Yet ROJO does maintain a curious offbeat charm in some little details Savona throws in. On a couple of occasions, Joe offers cubes of sugar to acquaintances and never explains where he picked up this habit. During one of Joe's revenge-plots, an accomplice-- also a patent-medicine peddler-- sets up a means of distracting the town by offering to burn the Devil in effigy, an odd ritual that the locals immediately embrace. Joe snipes at Consuelo for having sold her soul to one of the rich guys, and the script seems to agree with Joe, for unlike the majority of spaghetti-heroines Consuelo bites the dust.

However, the oddest thing in ROJO is also the only element that makes the film an uncanny western. At one point, a gunhawk comes to town, wearing a black mask over the lower part of his face-- except once, when he removes the scarf and displays an extensive scar that would do Jonah Hex proud. One assumes that one of the villains summoned the outlaw, not least because he's billed as "Nero Burt"-- in English, "Black Bart." Yet Bart (Angelo Boscariol) doesn't make any moves on Rojo. Then, near the movie's end, when Joe has wiped out the last enemy, Bart shows up and utters some cryptic line to Joe about how "the red and the black are together at last." Then the movie just ends, implying-- possibly-- some equivalence between the righteous vengeance-seeker and the Man in Black.

Savona directed four or five westerns I've not seen, some period historicals and one horror movie with the wild-sounding title, "Byleth the Demon of Incest." I may check out other sagebrush sagas in Savona's ouevre to see if any of them are as oddball as ROJO.                 

         

STEEL FRONTIER (1995)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*

Now THIS, unlike some of the sludge I've recently reviewed from the defunct PM Entertainment, is what the company was capable of when it put good people in charge of their low-budget action-movies. I've seen other good formula-flicks from director/co-writer Jacobsen Hart and co-writer Paul Volk, but STEEL FRONTIER is an exceptionally good reworking of the post-apoc subgenre and of the westerns that partly inspired them.

Once again, some idiot dropped the Bomb, and that instantly flung the remnants of humanity back into the framework of the Old West, with scattered enclaves of hard-working tillers of the soil, continually menaced by wasteland savages (cannibals called "roach-eaters") and by a roving gang of ruthless bandits. In deference to the influence of MAD MAX, this gang of "Death Riders" use automobiles rather than horses to cross the desert, and the bandits themselves seem to be rogue members of the US army. That their leader (Brion James) is given the name "Quantrell," emulating that of the post-Civil War raider, indicates that the writers wanted to allude to the power of the military to foster tyranny. Other members of the Riders include Quantell's second in command Acker (Bo Svenson), the leader's wimpy son Julias (John C Victor), and other weirdos, one of whom is named Chickenboy in reference to his feathery attire.        

 We meet the hero first, though, when he has to mercy-kill one of the Death Riders' victims: a man with his legs torn off, left to die in the desert. This is the taciturn Yuma (Joe Lara), whose origins are never revealed, though there's the suggestion that he might have been, like Mad Max, an enforcer of the law. Some reviewers compared Yuma to Jesus, I guess because he has long hair and because late in the film he gets wounded in the side. But there's a clever allusion to Yuma's real nature in a conversation between Quantell and Acker, where Quantrell opines that he doesn't like his gang's name because "Death rides alone." And who does director Hart immediately cut to, riding alone on his motorcycle to his death-dealing conflict with evil? Only one guess allowed.

 There are no great surprises to the plot. The Riders take over a peaceful town and began heaping indignities upon the residents, including beautiful Sarah (Stacie Foster) and her young boy. Yuma shows up and joins the Riders in order to whittle them down from within, before making an all-out assault, aided by Sarah and some of the more courageous townfolk. Quantrell, who's left town to coordinate with other members of his gang, finds out about the rebellion and leads more bandits to wipe out the whole town. Instead the bad guys are taken out and heroic Yuma gets the de rigeur final battle with the main villain, before cycling off into the sunset.

Aside from the allusions to Yuma being both Jesus and Death, the writers provided the actors with lots of quick emotional moments. Quantell, raging when he finds that Yuma killed his son. Sarah trying to get the cowardly populace to fight back. Sarah's son trying to save his mother from rape with a slingshot and undergoing a rite of passage as he manages to kill the idiot Chickenboy. Svenson confessing to Yuma that before the Bomb fell, he'd hoped to become an astronaut, and wondering if some of them are still in orbit above the ruined world. And though I've rarely been impressed with Joe Lara, here he does a fine job of putting across his version of a "man with no past." And for once, the usual PM policy of punctuating the drama with explosions, gun-battles and fistfights works to good effect.    

THE LEGEND OF FRENCHIE KING (1971)

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

               

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!"              

THE VALLEY OF VANISHING MEN (1942)

 

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

This is one of the more solid Columbia serials, not showing the tendency toward ruthless cost-cutting seen in later years, nor the barren strategy of keeping all the filmed action in one or two restrictive sets. In fact, of all the works of Spenser G. Bennett, credited with directing more serials than any other individual, I'd probably rate VALLEY in the top five.

VALLEY opens at the conclusion of the Civil War, with the amicable meeting of two field commanders on opposite sides, one of whom is hero Bill Tolliver (Bill Elliott). I don't remember if the script mentions what state Bill fought for, but the dissolution of the Confederacy frees him up to seek out his father, who's prospecting in the New Mexico territory. He and his wartime-buddy Missouri (Slim Summerville) ride west, leaving the turmoil of North and South behind (a motif also found in the classic western novel THE VIRGINIAN).

Bill and Missouri soon learn that Bill's father has gone missing, and that the nearest city is dominated by an outlaw gang run by Jonathan Kincaid (the superbly oily Kenneth MacDonald, forgotten these days except for THREE STOOGES shorts). Kincaid's gang has abducted several locals-- the "vanishing men"-- to labor as slaves in a hidden gold mine. Further, Kincaid is funneling the gold to Emperor Maximillian, supporting the French conqueror against the forces of Juarez. Two female agents of Juarez-- young Consuela (Carmen Morales) and her duenna-- seek to figure out who's sending the gold and how, but neither woman does much but provide exposition for the benefit of the main hero and his sidekick.

As with most serials the action comes down to various back-and-forth struggles between the hero and the villain's henchmen, but Bennett and his writers provide enough variety that the serial's 15 chapters don't become tedious. Elliott, a popular B-western actor, handles all the fisticuffs and riding-stunts very well, while his sidekick provides good comic relief, due to his being more of an "ornery cuss" rather than the more standard dopey doofus. In fact, the writers got into the antics of Missouri that for one episode alone, they had him talking to his horse, which answered him back a la "Mister Ed."

The limited sets of Kincaid's mine are given some cool decorations, such as a big Aztec deity-statue posed behind the bib boss's desk. Said desk has an uncanny execution-gimmick built into it: a concealed gun that "fires" any henchman who displeases Kincaid. The standout gimmick, however, was left behind by the vanished Aztecs: a giant mounted prism able to focus the sun's rays and start fires where directed. This device is used for the chapterplay's best cliffhanger: Bill tied to a stake and surrounded by flammable brush, while a weight-device slowly causes the prism to move toward Bill and his death-trap. Naturally, after the outlaws take all this trouble to give the hero a ghastly death, they decide to leave and do something else, making it easy for Bill to escape. 

In one of the serial's best touches, the credits-sequence for each episode plays over scenes of the vanished men (including Bill's dad) laboring in the mine, pushing a wheel connected to a rock-crushing press. In the last episode, Bill almost dies under the press. But not only are the hero and the kidnapped men liberated, Kincaid perishes beneath another crushing weight: that of the pagan idol in his office. The end of Kincaid's rule isn't quite on the symbolic level of the Philistine carnage wrought by Samson, but there's a little more religious resonance here than in the majority of serial conclusions.          

       

        

A KNIFE FOR THE LADIES (1974)

 

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

*SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS*

I saw a cut-down version of this film, running about sixty minutes, under the title JACK THE RIPPER GOES WEST. The version under this title runs a little under 90 minutes, and until I saw that, I couldn't be sure if there was any justification for the "Ripper" allusion-- which indeed there is none. Yet, going by the above poster, the lack of a genuine "Saucy Jack" in the story didn't prevent someone from claiming that the psycho-killer in the story was "The Ripper." The hyperbolic ad even attributes a Jason-like invulnerability to the lady-killer, and it highlights his alleged "blood lust for ladies naked and dead." All of this ballyhoo proves very ironic when one finds out the true nature of the character whose pustule-covered face is implied to be the referenced "Ripper."

There had been a small number of movies or TV shows about psycho-killers in the Old West before KNIFE. However, neither the three credited writers nor the director had any facility with the horror-genre, and KNIFE spotlights those limitations. Of the three writers, one has no other IMDB credits, the second went on mostly to cartoons and variety shows, and the third, Seton Miller, had distinguished himself in Hollywood Classic films, not least a favorite of mine, THE BLACK SWAN-- but Miller passed right around the time of KNIFE's release. Director Larry Spangler never worked on another horror film before or after this one, and one can see that he barely knows how to build suspense or display gory effects. In fact, at its heart KNIFE is a revisionist western, not unlike the two "Nigger Charley" films Spangler completed before it. The horror-plot is just an excuse to present a conflict of "the old generation and the new"-- though the film's handling of the theme is jejune at best.  

 

The mining-town of Mescal (named for its long-dead founder) was once prosperous, but with the mine's failure Mescal is a dying burg. Out of this poverty a serial killer arises, knocking off three ladies of the evening, one of whom is slain for an opening scene. In contrast to the governmental indifference to the fate of prostitutes in many Ripper-films, Mescal's banker wants the killer caught right away. Having no confidence in Jarrod (Jack Elam), the town's old, drunken sheriff, the banker hires a big-city detective, Burns (a big-haired Jeff Cooper). Burns never really does much detecting. He does interview a few people, notably the widow of the founder, Elizabeth Mescal (Ruth Roman), who provides the tossed-off info that she also had an adult son, Travis, by her late husband, and that he too has recently died. But Jarrod hates Burns at first sight, and eventually the two end up proving their mutual manhood with a fistfight. But because there aren't that many more murders during the film's second act, Spangler makes up the difference with a side-plot about finding the men who lynched an innocent suspect.

Both the main plot and the side-plots are dull and poorly acted, but these were apparently what grabbed Spangler and the writers, because when it comes time to deliver on the premise, they rush through it. The big reveal is that Travis Mescal-- who's been mentioned as having been a big man with the ladies in life-- never died. Elizabeth faked the story of his death and kept him in a cage within her mansion, allowing him to become both physically and mentally disfigured by a "social disease." So Travis hasn't actually been lurching around displaying his blood lust for dead, naked ladies; his momma done did it all. Elizabeth, then, is really the centric icon whom the two dull crime-solvers pursue. But the script doesn't have the stones to explore Elizaeth's maternal version of the Oedipus complex. One can guess that she resented Travis's dalliances with prostitutes, and that resentment, as well as community reputation, led her to fake her son's death and deny him whatever care might have been available in the 1880s. Yet she also blamed the whores for her son's decay and started killing them-- only to decide at the last moment to give Travis a "virgin bride," Jarrod's niece. A better script could have subtly alluded to Elizabeth's incestuous nature, as was done in the 1962 MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. But as I said, it looks like none of the principals cared about getting the horror-story right. Once the crazy mother and her spawn are both dead, the film ends with Burns, Jarrod and Jarrod's niece leaving Mescal to its decaying fate-- which doesn't seem like a very happy ending for the townsfolk.

                    

THE PHANTOM RIDER (1946)

 

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

Although the 1946 PHANTOM RIDER is mostly a by-the-numbers "costumed cowboy" serial, it has some points that elevate it above the level of the routine. 

For one thing, it has nothing to do with the Universal chapterplay of the same title, which was essentially just another outre-outfit oater. In that 1936 offering, Buck Jones just donned an all-white outfit, possibly with the idea of suggesting that he was ghostly, like The Ghost Rider of the comics, who appeared in 1949. In the 1946 serial, Doctor Jim Sterling (Robert Kent) ends up donning a costume designed to make him look like an ancient Indian spirit, consisting of buckskins, a feathered headdress, and a rubber mask covering his entire face, purportedly to make others think that he's Indian. The Rider never fools any white villains into thinking him a spirit, though a good number of the local Indians-- never given a tribal name-- apparently can't tell red-hued rubber from crimson flesh.

For the other thing, RIDER possesses some good progressive (back when that word meant something) political content. Easterner Sterling is on his way to become the doctor to a small western town, whose name might be Big Tree, like the nearby Indian reservation. On his way to town in a buckboard, Sterling gives a lift to Blue Feather (George J. Lewis), the college-educated son of the Indians' chief. Blue Feather provides exposition about how he educated himself so that he could improve the lot of his people in living in the white man's world, especially in dealing with the bandits menacing both the whites and the Indians. Blue Feather's main ambition is to create an Indian police force, vetted by the federal government and with the power to arrest the lawless. Sterling shows his approval of this lofty goal-- and within the first chapter, gets direct evidence of bandit predations. Blue Feather is wounded and sidelined, so the noble doctor decides to take over the young Indian's mission. With the help of schoolmarm Doris (Peggy Stewart), Sterling decides to assume the appearance of an ancient Indian savior, The Phantom Rider, to convince the Indians to follow the white man's way of fighting oppression.

As in the 1938 LONE RANGER serial, the bandits are hiding under the cloak of counterfeit authority. Local Indian agent Carson (LeRoy Mason) is not the real person assigned to the post, but an otherwise unnamed schemer using the position to coordinate his gang's activities. The Rider pops up and starts preying on the predators, they try to stop him, rinse and repeat. 

Despite a cool setup, RIDER falls into a lot of pedestrian situations, with no memorable cliffhangers and mostly gun-action. According to THE FILES OF JERRY BLAKE, the hero's rubber-mask disguise had a restrictive effect on what both Robert Kent and any doubles could do in fight-scenes. But the photography here is much crisper, and thus more involving, than in many later serials, so RIDER always looks good even if one has seen the same business a dozen times before. The story would have gained some heft had it built up conflicts between Sterling's profession and his avocation, or the character of Schoolmarm Doris. JERRY BLAKE liked the comedy relief of "Nugget," a grizzled miner, but he didn't do anything for me. The villains are also ordinary and no better than they have to be, and the formation of the Indian police force comes about a little too easily. I'm glad I had the chance to see it but will probably not watch it again. I suppose Bad Progressives would sneer at the serial for placing a "white savior" in charge, but to me it makes a world of difference when the savior, whatever his race, is helping others save themselves         

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."      

HOLY GHOST AND THE FIVE MAGNIFICENT SCOUNDRELS (1972)

 

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

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

This spaghetti western-- the third of three by director Roberto Mauri, apparently all copying from this Gianni Garko vehicle-- just barely qualifies for uncanny status. But this time the uncanny phenomenality stems not from the hero; whatever "Spirito Santo" might have been in the first two films, here he's just a standard ingenious cowpoke, and his spiritual name connotes his general goodness-- though he's not really much more noble than a dozen other Sabata-types.

Santo (Vassili Karis, playing the role in all three Mauri movies) is called upon to stop an elusive arms dealer, The Loner, who goes about in an all-black costume. The guy hiring Santo-- I didn't catch his name-- compares the Loner to the Scarlet Pimpernel, though the Pimpernel wasn't in print until the stage play came out in 1903. Santo also has a meet-cute with the official's cousin Elizabeth (Daria Norman), but she has so little to do with the main story that halfway through I suspected she was the Loner, who's on the small side. Anyway, Santo thinks he needs to engage the services of the five "scoundrels" of the title, all of whom had odd but not memorable idiosyncracies (one thinks he's a pirate, the other a priest-- that sort of thing). I have to admit that because these characters burn up a lot of screen time, that makes the original Italian title much more appropriate than the current streaming title, "Gunmen and the Holy Ghost."

So Santo gets involved with various side-characters, all tedious, and only toward the end does the film work back around to preventing the Loner's scheme, which to hijack some gold. Santo and his goons kill the Loner, who is unmasked as the town sheriff. In a "big reveal" scene that FIVE does nothing to set up, Santo figures out that his boss is behind the Loner's activities, and that the sheriff was just a pawn. The boss is also jealous of Santo's attentions to Elizabeth, who, the boss also reveals, is not really his cousin, and that he plans to marry her. Providentially, even though the big boss has Santo dead to rights, Elizabeth shoots him dead. However, then it's revealed that Elizabeth was also in the big scheme, and she gets killed in a shootout with a deputy. So why, if they both knew they weren't cousins, did they perpetuate the fiction? Because the screenwriter was drunk or ill or stupid, I guess. I've seen more boring spaghettis than this one, though whenever the "scoundrels" were on the screen I stopped paying attention. Oh, one exception-- one guy's a conman who claims that he got jailed because he was selling a miracle cream that enlarged women's breasts-- but which had a deleterious effect if the cream got rubbed off on a man's chest.

              

THE WILD WILD WEST: "THE NIGHT OF THE UNDEAD" (1968)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*

The four seasons of THE WILD WILD WEST were replete with all sorts of "wild" supernormal phenomena, almost always explained through the rationale of "the scientific-Gothic;" that someone came up with a new scientific discovery that emulated the effect of a supernatural phenomenon. In "Night of the Undead," though, writer Calvin Clements Jr-- a long-time TV scribe-- also throws in a plot with a strong sense of Gothic transgression.

West and Gordon (Robert Conrad, Ross Martin) are in New Orleans, on some vague government mission to protect a valuable scientist, Armbruster. Armbruster disappears and West has an encounter with what seems to be a voodoo ceremony. One of the worshippers, a bulky fellow (Rosie Grier), tosses West around and initially seems unharmed by a gunshot. Later the agents find the man's dead body and take a medallion off him. This device is simply present to give Gordon an excuse to pursue a separate course with his disguise-antics (more on which later), while West chases down the main thread of the story. Fortunately for him, Armbruster's old colleague Eddington (John Zaremba) happens to live in the same city where the agents were to meet Armbruster, so West interviews him. West also encounters Mariah (Joan Delaney), whom he saw earlier at the voodoo ceremony, apparently as a worshipper, seen walking barefoot over burning coals. Eddington mentions that he and Armbruster once worked with a disgraced scientist, Articulus, against whom they planned to bring charges of illegal experimentation. However, Articulus supposedly died in a lab accident. West keeps snooping around and ends up a captive in the house of the supposedly dead scientist. More specifically, he ends up beneath the house, in a mine where Articulus (Hurd Hatfield) maintains a small workforce of men-- including Armbruster-- enslaved by a potion that makes them as will-less as zombies. (That word is never used, though strangely West uses the term "robots" many years before it was invented in the 20th century.)      

   I'm not sure where writer Clements might've got the name of Articulus, which obviously suggests the word "articulate." Possibly Clements was being ironic, since what Articulus does is to render all of his slaves "inarticulate"-- including his new acquisition Mariah, who's now under his control and whom he plans to marry. (If he had her under his control enough to make her participate in a voodoo ceremony, why'd he let her go back to her father? I guess so that she'd be around when West got the first part of the story from Eddington.) The second part of the story, as Articulus helpfully provides, is that after he faked his death, he also allowed his bereaved fiancee to think him dead. Eddington then moved in and convinced the fiancee to marry him instead. Since the mother is absent and is meant to have passed on, Mariah is the naughty scientist's way of possessing the mother, through the daughter. However, Articulus also has in his service an age-appropriate housekeeper-confidante, with the odd name of "Phalah," and Phalah is clearly in love with Articulus and resents his plan to consummate his lost nuptials with a younger woman. 

Gordon dons two disguises in his endeavors. While in the first disguise, he flashes the medallion around in a tavern. This results in Gordon being directed to a certain house by a young Black woman named Domino, who plays no further role in the story. Maybe she was a contact between the all-White gang of the scientist and the Blacks who were helping Articulus perpetrate some voodoo illusion for unspecified reasons. That alliance might also explain her name, since a domino is both white and black. The house in New Orleans is never really explained, but that's where Gordon encounters Phalah, who feels the bumps on his head and gives every impression of her being a student of phrenology. There seems no particular reason for Phalah, if she was just a housekeeper, to be living in town, so it may be that she set up the phrenology shop as a way of maintaining contact with other agents in New Orleans. Does her practice of phrenology have anything to do with her collaboration with a guy who messes with brains? Quien sabe? 

Anyway, Phalah sends Gordon on to the house of Articulus and also sends a subordinate to tail the disguised agent. But apparently Gordon loses the tail, for the agent next shows up at the scientist's house in a different disguise. But Phalah is there too, and she recognizes Gordon by the bumps on his head. The two agents are imprisoned together but inevitably work their Bond-mojo, escape, liberate the villain's enslaved minions, and blow up the house. But this time West doesn't get to kill the villain. While West struggles with the demented scientist, Phalah gets fed up with Articulus' wedding plans and shoots him, causing him to fall to his death. 

One detail I omitted from the episode's "cold open" is that West sees the mesmerized Mariah wield a machete and chop down a dummy made up to resemble her father Eddington. The script never states outright that Articulus plans to have Mariah kill her father, but this too sets up reverberations with early Gothic prose fiction. The prototypical Gothic plot is that of a young woman menaced by an older man, sometimes a symbolic substitution for a "bad father." "Undead" presents Mariah as being caught between "good father" Eddington and "bad father" Articulus, and this time the latter's relationship is not entirely symbolic, given that Mariah could have been Articulus's daughter had he married her mother. If one took Eddington out of the equation, "Undead" could be the story of a natural daughter menaced by her transgressive daddy, but willing to fend him off with a deadly weapon in self-defense. Additionally, Phalah could be replaced with a genuine, and very censorious, mother, who's out to kill the bad dad for his unwholesome pursuits-- and maybe for finding the daughter more attractive than the mother. For a voodoo story set in New Orleans, "Undead" has far less to do with race than with incestuous sexuality. (It's also one of the few episodes where James West doesn't get to romance even a single female.)

            

BIG CALIBRE (1935)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*                                                                                                                                               The best thing about this routine B-western is the villain's use of a "diabolical device" to commit murder. While cowboy Bob Neal (played by sound-alike performer Bob Steele) is away from home, Bob's father is robbed and killed. But the killer, instead of simply shooting the father, uses a smoldering corrosive chemical in a jar to suffocate the victim. Neal and the sheriff examine the curious weapon-- to whose fumes they're also exposed-- and decide to ask local assayer Otto Zenz (William Quinn), the only guy in town who knows chemistry, to analyze the substance. They stumble across the fact that Zenz is the killer, but he escapes using the smoking chemical concoction again. Zenz doesn't go far; he hides out in some podunk town nearby, using a comical disguise to establish a new identity. (Maybe he didn't manage to get away with the dough he stole?) Neal goes looking for the killer but only stumbles across him by accident, in the process of getting accused of a separate murder of the father of your standard pretty young thing. Finally, at the climax Zenz tries to kill Neal with that smoking acid but of course he fails while the hero survives. I suppose this setup is mildly preferable to sitting through a tedious mystery about some mystery killer's true identity, but since the viewer already knows the villain's ID, the whole middle portion is a waste of time even for a B-western.   

THE MARK OF ZORRO (1974)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*, 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*                                                                                                                          Director Don McDougall, whose long list of TV episodes includes some very nice work for shows like RAWHIDE and Classic TREK, probably had to make the best of things when he drew this assignment. He had to take the script for the 1940 MARK OF ZORRO, one of the most sumptuous swashbucklers of the Classical Hollywood era and squish its plot and action down into about 75 minutes. Still, enough of the mythic aspects of the 20th-Century Fox version of Zorro come through that I can give this 1974 MARK a fair rating.                                                                                                       

 The telefilm's best asset is star Frank Langella in the dual role of Zorro and his foppish civilian ID Diego Vega. The actor had to follow closely in the shoes of Tyrone Power, but I thought he gave both characters as much mojo as anyone could under the circumstances. Ricardo Montalban is in a similar position, playing Esteban, the military power behind the corrupt alcalde's rule, but in some ways he's better off, since his normal acting-style was more florid than that of his predecessor, and thus his Esteban doesn't seem too derivative. The rest of the cast deliver decent perfs, from Gilbert Roland and Yvonne deCarlo as Diego's dad and mom, to Robert Middleton and Louise Sorel as the alcalde and his perhaps unfaithful wife. Anne Archer gets one good scene as the romantic interest Teresa-- the one taking place in the church, where Zorro's pretending to be a priest-- but her character doesn't get nearly as much attention as the Linda Darnell version did. She doesn't even get a final clinch with the hero at the conclusion. Her casting in terms of her age is a bit odd too. In the 1940 film, Gale Sondergaard, then a little over forty, played the aunt of Teresa, and that role was played by Linda Darnell, who was then seventeen. In contrast, Anne Archer was only seven years younger than Louise Sorel. There's an odd remark by Middleton's character about how some figure akin to Zorro may have been observed in "The Pyrenees" of Spain, which was perhaps meant to address where Diego got the idea of Zorro. Possibly this remark was in the 1940 film too, but I'm not inspired to find out.

ZORRO IN THE COURT OF SPAIN (1962)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*, 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*                                                                                                                          ZORRO IN THE COURT OF SPAIN starts rather slowly but soon shapes up into a decent little swashbuckler. Most of the movie's alternate titles seem to emphasize the titular masked hero swashing his buckles in Spain, so I've no idea why the English dub I saw claims that the action all takes place in "Lusitania," which in recent centuries usually connoted Portugal. All the names involved in the court-intrigue are almost certainly fictional, so the change wasn't made to offset political connotations.                                                       

As with some of the other "Euro-Zorros" around this time, being set in Europe raises the stakes from the more modest adventures of the California-based Fox. A new grand duke, brother of the previous and deceased duke, has challenged the widowed duchess for the throne of Lusitania. The duchess has gone into hiding with her allies, but for some reason she's separated from her small daughter, and one of those allies takes the little girl to Lusitania Capital (I'll call it) to hide her from the enemy in a monastery/orphanage. The Duke either lives in the Capital or close to it, doing various tyrannical things with the help of his main henchman Captain Miguel (Alberto Lupo), so this choice of locations doesn't seem like the swiftest idea. In due time the Duke and Miguel will get their hands on the kid in order to force the duchess to abdicate. In addition, evil Miguel has been pestering Marquise di Villa Verde to let him marry beauteous Bianca (Nadia Marlowa), despite the fact that Bianca is betrothed to marry the Marquise's son Riccardo (George Ardisson), also Bianca's cousin. Riccardo comes to the Capital just in time for all these events, having been to Mexico for training as a young cavalier (one of two major flippings of the usual Zorro-script).                                                 

     
Apparently, Riccardo and his factotum Paquito got some advance intel on the troubles in Lusitania, because as soon as he arrives, he's already got the whole Zorro idea thought out. He immediately plays the part of the jaded aristocrat with no interest in local politics, so as to allay any suspicions from Captain Miguel and his sister Isabella, who oddly is currently married to the Marquise. The father of Riccardo and Isabella have no interpersonal relations, though, so this may be a change made by a translator. Some Zorro-stories give the main heroine an interfering aunt, which may be where Isabella comes from, but she only has one scene relevant to the narrative and totally disappears from the latter part of the movie. Anyway, Riccardo's louche act alienates both his father and Bianca, but it works to allow the hero to listen in on the plots of his enemies and work to counter them as-- Zorro!                                                           

   
   The fight-scenes are passable and Ardisson makes an okay masked avenger, even though he gets more mileage out of the Riccardo role. But the most interesting change is that although the heroine goes through the usual process of rejecting Riccardo while going gaga over his costumed identity, this time Zorro marries the heroine in his non-costumed identity.    No rationale is presented, though possibly Riccardo does this to block Miguel from forcing Bianca to marry him. Riccardo, knowing that Bianca doesn't love his false identity, refrains from making her share his marriage-bed. But of course, once he rescues the little girl from the evildoers and gives the duchess the chance to oust the evil Duke, Zorro can unmask and the two enjoy connubial bliss. The villains are not very stylish this time, but the romance is much better developed than in the majority of B-Zorros.