THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN (1974)

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

As I did in my review of THUNDERBALL, I reread the 1965 Fleming book prior to rescreening the 1974 adaptation.

I noted that the book and film versions of THUNDERBALL fell into my phenomenal category "the uncanny," for the main aspect they have in common is the use of the metaphenomenal trope "outre outfits skills and weapons," specifically weapons. I mentioned that the book version of villain Emilio Largo also conforms to the trope "freakish flesh" while the film version does not.

Both versions of GOLDEN GUN include the "flesh" trope, even if its manifestation is pretty nugatory: villain Scaramanga has a third nipple. Both in book and movie this detail failed to impress me very much, probably because it isn't front and center, like Ernst Blofeld's "doll-like eyes." The filmic Scaramanga takes on slightly more mythic dimensions than the literary one, not because of his freakiness but because he's essayed by horror-film great Christopher Lee.

The literary Scaramanga, despite Fleming's attempts to make him a "shadow version" of James Bond, complete with gun-and-sex fetishes, didn't grab me. He's not a master schemer, merely a skilled assassin who becomes involved in a plot to ruin U.S. sugar futures-- a plot initiated by the KGB, thus bringing Bond, in his last novel, back into conflict with the sort of Cold War enemies he faced in CASINO ROYALE. Scaramanga seems a small-timer, even though he does play at psychological torture at one point, deceiving Bond into thinking his gal-pal Mary Goodnight is about to be run over by a train. (Shades of bygone silent serials!)

The only "outre weapons" in the novel appear at the beginning. In a continuation from YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, Bond has been brainwashed by the Russians and sent back to MI-5 to kill M. To this end, brainwashed-Bond smuggles a cyanide-spraying gun past security. M counters with a bizarre defense: a glass wall that slams down in time to project him from the spray. After that, when Bond has been rehabilitated and sent on a new mission in jig-time, only conventional weapons are used. Admittedly there's a touch of bizarreness in the fact that Scaramanga favors gold or silver bullets for his murders. He also coats a bullet meant for Bond with snake poison, so in a way Bond attempts poisoning and gets poisoned in return-- even though Bond survives and Scaramanga does not.

The GOLDEN GUN film steps up the "outre weapons" trope somewhat by giving Scaramanga his own private island with a "funhouse" in which he and his armed prey may stalk one another. The deadly funhouse is an amusing touch but I've seen it done much better elsewhere, particularly certain episodes of TV's WILD WILD WEST.

In the book, even though Scaramanga isn't that fascinating a personality, Fleming does at least expend effort on compiling a psychological profile, including a strange Freudian trauma in which Scaramanga becomes invested in casual killing after the death of his favorite circus-elephant. It's not all that deep, but it's positively labyrinthine compared to the flat character Christopher Lee has to work with. Sadly, the cinematic GOLDEN GUN appeared at a time when the Bond franchise was beginning to indulge in some very fatuous humor, as if director Guy Hamilton and his scripters, for all their long acquaintance with the franchise, had become embarrassed by their association with the character. So Lee's Scaramanga tosses out the tale of his pet elephant's death for Bond's amusement, but it doesn't give any insight into his character. Ditto for the villain's odd relationship with his servant Nick Nack-- not in the book in any form- in which the master assassin invites Nick Nack to kill Scaramanga if he can. Further, since by 1974 Communist incursions were less significant to audiences than the energy crisis, the "sugar futures" plot is dropped in favor of hero and villain fighting over a radical new solar-energy device.

There are some decent stunt-sequences in GOLDEN GUN, such as the memorable "overturning car-in-air" stunt that ALMOST redeems the return of an obnoxious Southern-sheriff character introduced in LIVE AND LET DIE. But GUN the movie feels like it's mostly on cruise control. Admittedly it couldn't be a "send-off" for cinematic Bond the way Fleming could send off his literary version. But Hamilton and his cohorts fail to give us the sort of above-average villain that the presence of Christopher Lee merited.

BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY (1949)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological, metaphysical*

Upon reviewing Ford Beebe's BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY, I was surprised to find that this Monogram production emulated the classic MGM TARZAN films so well. I recall later entries in the Bomba series-- most of which Beebe directed-- as little more than amiable time-wasters. Interestingly, Beebe was credited with writing-chores on 1929's TARZAN THE TIGER, reviewed here. It's possible that since the producers chose to cast Johnny Sheffield, formerly Tarzan's "Boy" to the MGM Tarzan, they wanted something in the mold of the moneymaking Weismuller franchise.

Given that the BOMBA books take place in South America, while this film takes place in a cinematic Africa, I'm going to guess that the script for BTJB is liberally swiped from 1932's TARZAN THE APE MAN, with most (though not all) of the strong sexuality excised. This means that the heart of the story revolves around a civilized girl being quasi-abducted by a "savage" teenage boy. On occasion there's a hint of sexual awareness between leads Bomba (Sheffield) and amateur photographer Pat (Peggy Ann Garner), despite the script's efforts to keep things on a child-friendly level.

Though the principal characters are the teenagers, two adults are responsible for bringing them together in the jungle. One is Pat's father George Harland, who has come to Africa to seek out rare photographs of animals but who has no actual appreciation for nature or for the African natives. The other is Andy Barnes, a
district commissioner who has emigrated to Africa because he loves the exotic land. The set-up scenes actually devote a fair amount of time to Barnes describing a mysterious region called "the Rift" with so much trepidation that the modern viewer expects it to be filled with dinosaurs. The region is home to Bomba, but neither Barnes nor the natives seem to have any inkling of his presence prior to encountering the leopard-skinned loner.

This dualistic opposition of these two representaives of white civilization mirrors that of the MGM Tarzans, where the ape-man is visited by emissaries of civilization, usually a devout scholar in the company of a greedy scoundrel. Harland isn't a criminal as such, but he's just as much the "Ugly Civilized Man." At one point Harland wants to get close enough to photograph a rhinoceros, and believes that Barnes should be willing to shoot the animal down if it's provoked by his approach. Harland becomes a little more sympathetic when he's convinced that his daughter's been kidnapped by Bomba, but I for one would have liked him to be forced to eat crow by story's end.

Harland is also the focus of all the bad attitudes toward the black natives, mostly seen as bearers. Barnes has to remind him to let the natives rest when they're tired, and Harland seems convinced that all he has to do is throw money their way to get their cooperation. Modern audiences would probably find the bearers overly deferential, but Barnes at least treats them like human beings.

Pat Harland is the opposite of her father. Her photographic hobby clearly mirrors her father's profession, but she's actually fascinated by the wonders of nature-- which leads her into the Rift. There Bomba attempts (without success) to save her native guide from a leopard, and Pat almost repays the strange white boy by shooting him. As a nice change, Bomba is initially leery of the girl who tried to kill him, and her "abduction" consists of her tagging along after him, trying to cajole Bomba into taking her back to her father. Bomba resists, and then (for reasons unknown) seeks out Harland and Barnes' search party by himself. Harland, rash as always, shoots at Bomba and grazes his shoulder, thus convincing Bomba that he should not take Pat back to her "bad" father.

Incidentally, Harland's dialogue is intersting; since neither he nor Barnes can credence a white savage living out in the wild, Harland refers to Bomba as possibly being an "albino," that is, a Negroid with albino coloration. This adds a new level to his anger. Is he angry only that his daughter has been kidnapped, or does he also fear miscegenation?

Bomba's decision not to guide Pat back may have its own deeper level. When she asks him to take her to a native village, he spirits her off to his secluded jungle lair. No intimations of romance crop up, but it's pretty clear Bomba wants her to be his tree-house pal, to assuage whatever loneliness he feels since losing the man who reared him the jungle, a deceased naturalist described (by Pat) as a "misanthrope." Clearly Bomba is a bit misanthropic himself, but he's not beyond all socialization. The jungle boy even finds time (somehow) to fashion a leopard-skin outfit for Pat after she tears her skirt, as shown in the lobbycard picture above. To be sure, he only does so after first offering to take off his loincloth and give it to her, which was clearly meant to play *very* lightly on possible sexual tension. (For that matter, director Beebe seems to take his time showing Pat climb down from a tree, which entails a certain amount of butt-photography.)

As Harland and Barnes close in on Bomba and his rather-willing "abductee," the script introduces two new elements to forestall any deadly confrontation between Bomba and Harland. One is the presence of a hungry lion, while the other is the presence of several lion-worshipping Masai. Barnes explains to Harland their twofold peril: they can shoot the lion, but the Masai are likely to attack them. The lion does attack Barnes' loyal bearer Eli, and Barnes, acting against his own advice, saves Eli's life by shooting the lion, thus bringing down the wrath of the Masai. By good fortune, however, Bomba and Pat are nearby, and Bomba drives the natives away by starting a grassfire in their path. The picture ends more or less happily, with the white tourists going home while Bomba stays in his native land, where he'll have other G-rated jungle-adventures with other lissome lasses.

In BTJB Bomba is an "uncanny" hero only by virtue of his attire; he possesses no outre skills or weapons. But if one were to remake the film sans the Bomba character, I'd probably still classify it as "uncanny" because I find a certain element of affective "strangeness" in the depiction of the Masai. To be sure, even the tolerant Barnes shows some European bigotry by speaking of their lion-worship as "mumbo jumbo." But even though the Masai are principally seen through the film's ample use of archive nature-photography, they take on a deeper dimension than any of the servile bearers. In Barnes' summation of their religion, he says that their reverence for lions is such that when the animals menace the Masai or their property, the tribe will only allow the lions to be killed by certain designated lion-killers, and that it's an occasion of great sadness.

This element is responsible for my use of the Campbellian classification "metaphysical." Most of BTJB refers to sociological myth-motifs, regarding, say, the inevitable comparisons of savage life with civilized society. But even though the movie's main interest in the Masai religion is to provide a climactic conflict, BTJB isn't incorrect in conveying the deep resonance that primitive tribes often feel for the animals who are their "neighbors," as well as symbols of a mysterious godhood. I'm surprised to find it, even as a tossoff element, in one of the low-budget Monogram productions. But then, a diamond in the rough is still a diamond.

THE CYCLOPS (1957)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological*


I've never been a big fan of most Bert I. Gordon films, with the exception of the peculiar "not-really-for-kids" kiddie-flick THE BOY AND THE PIRATES from 1960 (which I hope to review here some time soon). Next to those, the Colossal Man flicks and TORMENTED are above-average cheese, but a lot of the others aren't all that thrilling, even though I grew up watching them on local SF-movie reruns.

But though I hadn't seen it for a while, I rather liked THE CYCLOPS, which was the first film on which director Gordon didn't share writing-credits with anyone else. In his recent VIDEOSCOPE interview he stated that he wrote it very quickly, but though it's clearly derivative of other stories it has a tighter feel than many of his later outings.

Bereaved Susan Winter, whose test-pilot boyfriend went missing in a mountainous area of Mexico, gets things rolling with a plot-motif clearly borrowed from the cinematic adaptations of KING SOLOMON'S MINES, in which a woman goes hunting in deepest Africa (or some analogue thereof) for a missing fiancee. In fact, at one point, the film's de facto villain, Lon Chaney Jr.'s Marty Melville, calls their trek a "safari." This Melville isn't really interested in hunting for lost husbands; the "white whale" he wants is a uranium find, which happens to be in the same vicinity that Susan's fiancee Bruce went missing. Along for the ride are Lee, a pilot flying the group to their location for mercenary motives, and Russ, an old friend of Bruce. Russ is also in love with Susan and hopes to find evidence of Bruce's death so that Russ can propose to her.

Unfortunately for all of their mixed motivations, the Mexican valley in which they land is replete with a mysterious radiation-- apparently coming from the buried uranium-- which causes animals to grow to ginormous size. This development adds a good ticking-clock element to the story: if the searchers don't leave the valley in due time, they too may become "freak-ified." The searchers encounter a giant lizard, a giant bird, a giant snake, and inevitably, the cyclops of the title, a giant man with one eye. As shown in the picture above, the makeup suggests a ruined visage suggests that at one time he had two eyes, and that one was destroyed. For a little while after Susan's encounter with the giant-- who, though savage, is gentleman enough to wear a big loincloth-- Susan simply thinks he's a local who got unfortunately mutated. Russ, however, figures out early on that it's good old Bruce. Gordon's script never explains the cyclops' mutilated features or his inability to communicate, though possibly Gordon meant to blame the plane-crash for both. In any event, for Russ one-eyed Bruce is the return of a rival who's better off dead. Susan's reaction to the Cyclops' identity is a little harder to suss out, but the dominant feeling is that she too doesn't see any future for a giant man with a face only a mixmaster could (and possibly did) love. Gordon later countered this relative feminine indifference with the ending of 1958's WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST, where the giant's wife pleads with him not to kill himself.

At one point prior to the encounter with the Cyclops, Russ wonders how Bruce could have survived out in the wild for months even if he did survive the plane-crash. The unstated answer is that as the Cyclops Bruce became just as predacious as the other giant animals, presumably feeding off other wildlife. Though his mental capacity is severely diminished, he's still canny enough to trap the foursome in his cave, blocking the entrance with a huge rock, a clear tip of the hat to the Polyphemus episode in Homer's ODYSSEY. But even though the Cyclops sees to recall Susan very vaguely, Gordon's script still situates him as more beast than man, particularly since his original intention in capturing the humans, prior to his recognizing Susan, can only be to eat them. This too is another Homeric borrowing-- as is the Cyclops' fate, for he dies after heroic Russ hurls a flaming homemade javelin into the creature's eye. Analyses of THE ODYSSEY take the Cyclops' blinding to represent the triumph of man's culture over brute nature. I wouldn't say that Bert Gordon ventures into waters quite that deep. However, it is significant that his Cyclops never really does seem fully human. And though he swipes from King Kong's bag of tricks-- wrestling with a giant animal, the snake, even as Kong did, the big monkey outdoes the one-eyed giant in terms of humanity.

Still, I think the metaphor holds, albeit loosely, which is I assign it the "cosmological" function from Joseph Campbell, which deals with mythic recapitulations of the natural world, the physical world beyond the boundaries of human civilization. Gordon's CYCLOPS is one of many radiation-transformations throughout 1950's SF-cinema, but it's one of the few in which the radiation is entirely the product of nature, and no way attributable to the sins of humankind.

Even though the plot is nothing new, or even new-seeming, Gordon keeps a good level of tension thanks to Chaney's Melville. Long before any giant critters show up, it's clear that Melville is out for himself and will almost certainly be The Weakest Link: the guy who constantly screws up or otherwise endangers his supposed allies. During the plane ride to the valley, pilot Lee has to listen to Melville brag about what a smooth, smart operator he is. Moments later, when the plane hits turbulence, Melville panics, slugs Lee and apparently thinks he's going to land the plane himself. Later, once Melville finds the uranium cache, he tries to talk Lee into cutting out the others by flying away and registering a claim on the valuable mineral. To be sure, Melville's still a stock bad egg. But Chaney succeeds in making him more pitiful than pitiable. A viewer can thoroughly enjoys despising such a character; one who has, if anything, less ability to see the world around him than the Cyclops does.

RASPUTIN THE MAD MONK (1966)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical*

The best line in this Hammer take on history's mesmeric madman appears early in the film, when wild country-monk Rasputin justifies his immoral activities to one of his churchly superiors:

When I go to confession I don't offer God small sins, petty squabbles, jealousies... I offer him sins worth forgiving!

I would have loved to have seen a Rasputin who fulfilled this narcissistic credo, one who honestly believed in the religiosity of drinking and whoring because it gave God sins weighty enough to be worth forgiving. However, this line seems to exist only to allow the viewer to get over the conundrum as to how this Russian priest could be so thoroughly devoted to acts of ungodliness, which the film proceeds to chronicle in lavish detail. There's no intention to "psychologize" Rasputin or any other character, which may be fortunate, but I still had the feeling that all the characters in MAD MONK were merely going through the paces given them by director Don Sharp and Anthony Hinds. (Later Hinds' script for 1970's TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA would also dally with Sadean sinfulness, with better results.)

Prior to this review, only my analysis of 1941's KING OF THE ZOMBIES dealt with a case where my category "enthralling hypnotism and stage magic" applied to a film where a hypnotist or magician was the film's *focal presence,* the fictional presence around which the story revolves. Hypnotism is merely a minor effect in 1957's HOLD THAT HYPNOTIST and 1985's JOURNEY OF THE DOOMED, and a hypnotist is the major opponent for Charlie Chan in 1944's BLACK MAGIC. But RASPUTIN is closer than ZOMBIES to the classical "evil hypnotist" story immortalized by Svengali et al. Indeed, RASPUTIN is so much about the mad monk who held the fate of Czarist Russia in his hands that Christopher Lee's take on the character is really the only facet of the film that truly shines. Lee takes full advantage of his own gaunt features by bulging out his eyes when he's either performing his miraculous healing-cures or putting pathetic victims like Barbara Shelley under his aegis. It's a strong performance, but the other characters are so blandly scripted that they don't seem worthy to be in the same film with Lee's Rasputin, much less that some of them actually manage to kill him in the end. Regardless of how the film was conceived, RASPUTIN feels like a one-actor show, in which everyone else is just there to make Lee look good.

In another type of film, one could picture Rasputin's healing arts to verge into the category of "the marvelous." Here, though the film does not suggest how Rasputin's cures work (much less how he executes them, given his domineering attitude), but the default explanation seems to be that the monk's hypnotic abilities simply "jump-start" his subjects into healing themselves. Something similar may underlie how Rasputin throws off the initial efforts of his enemies to kill him with poison and stabbings, though he does prove merely mortal in the end. One Hammer producer commented that if Hammer had faithfully represented the entirety of those efforts-- that is, showing Rasputin survive death as many times as he purportedly did in real life-- the effect then would have been inescapeably comic. In this case, less was definitely more.

I should note that as with the phenomenon of hypnosis itself, the historical figure of Rasputin is one that can bivalent: "uncanny" in one work, and merely "atypical" in another work. I haven't rescreened 1932's RASPUTIN AND THE EMPRESS in many years, but though it too ends with Rasputin's assassins striving with might and main to execute their target, I tend to think the 1932 film would be merely "atypical" in its phenomenality.

THOR (2011) (spoilers)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, metaphysical*


I’m writing this review two weeks after the profitable opening of Marvel Studios' adaptation of the THOR comic book. As with Iron Man, Thor is one of those perennial features which, outside the bubble of comics-fandom, hasn’t been a name with which to conjure. But the cinematic THOR propels the character to a new level of widespread recognition, as did the first IRON MAN film, by tapping into the pre-summer blockbuster anticipation. To be sure, this isn’t the sole reason that THOR THE MOVIE is doing well, for it does present an attractive if mixed-bag package. But good points aside, the thunder-god film doesn’t earn its new fame quite as honestly as did the armored avenger.


In my reviews I generally try to explore whatever literary myth underlies a given work. THOR, however, is a “movie of many parts,” in which the different aspects, good and bad, mitigate against the film’s having any sound structure. Thus, I’m reduced to the old bullet-point approach. Readers who already saw and enjoyed the film--which seems the dominant response--may prefer just to stick with the good points.


GOOD STUFF:

The actors, without a doubt, are THOR’s greatest asset. Chris Hemsworth makes a fine Thor for the slimmed-down, post-Schwarzenegger generation of heroes. The romance between his “god-brought-down-to-earth” and lady scientist Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) is easily the strongest element of the movie. Despite pedestrian dialogue Anthony Hopkins and Idris Elba put across the gravitas of powerful gods, and Tom Hiddleston puts emotional depth into villainous Loki--too often portrayed as a road-company Shakespearean schemer, even by creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby-- though the script makes his motivations murky at best. In contrast to the “serious” gods, the film does an admirable job translating Thor’s buddy-deities, who all have good presence even when they’re not given much to do. Non-fans will probably be puzzled to hear the three guy-warriors--Hogun, Fandral and Volstaag--refer to themselves as “the Warriors Three” even though they’re never seen apart from their unofficial fourth member, tough warrior-woman Sif. In the comic Sif became Thor’s inamorata after Lee and Kirby phased out their version of Jane Foster, but naturally this film allows for no romantic sparks between Sif and the thunder-god.


The costumes are excellent, even if the filmmakers ditch Thor’s iconic helmet for most of the film, probably because it would have been a hassle to deal with in fight-scenes. Loki and Heimdall are particular standouts.


Of the three big fight-scenes, two of them-- Thor and his buddies battling a stunning version of The Destroyer, and Thor versus Loki--are very good. Only the opening salvo, in which Thor and his allies fight a gang of CGI frost-giants, disappoints, as it follows the current trend toward hyperkinetic fast-cuts that (intentionally?) make the action hard to follow.


Finally, two of the strongest plot-elements are derived from the Lee-Kirby comic. Loki’s villainy in the film stems from the insecurity of learning that he’s an adoptive son, which plot-point riffs on a TALES OF ASGARD story in which Odin adopts the son of a slain enemy. And though Odin’s reason for exiling Thor to Earth is very different from the one given by the comic book in the seminal THOR #159, the purpose is still that of imparting humility to an arrogant warrior-god.


However, mentioning the matter of war-gods brings me to the first item of the BAD STUFF.


I don’t expect the cinematic THOR to be a perfect translation of the comic book, any more than the comic accurately adapted the complexities of Norse mythology. Yet no matter how freeform the Lee-Kirby comic book was, the creators always understood the elemental appeal of the Thor myth: the pageantry and sacral violence of a warrior ethic. Movie-THOR clumsily rewrites this key value into a nancy-boy renunciation of the glories of violence. I have only contempt for critics who analyze films as if they were direct allegories of current events. Yet, when Odin dresses down Thor for hauling ass on the frost-giants, I heard in the tedious dialogue some scriptwriter’s fantasy of George H.W. Bush reaming out Dubya for his martial misadventures.


The film pretty much craps on the “high-fantasy” aspects of the Thor comic. The Asgard of Lee and Kirby is a pop-culture mélange where magical menaces are often repelled by weapons that look like Tolkienized versions of howitzers. But even with intrusions of SF-imagery, Lee and Kirby’s Asgard is an endless vista of wonders, and thus fits Tolkien’s chief criterion for a good secondary world: “enchantment.” The Asgard of Kenneth Branagh and his writers is a dreary SF-rationalization of mythology. True, when “science fantasy” does its semi-rational versions of archaic mythology, such stories have their own aesthetic and can’t be judged on precisely the same terms as pure fantasies. But THOR’s visualizations of the only two otherworldly realms of the film--Asgard and Jotunheim--are so bland, so devoid of wonder or even functional design, that I found myself waxing nostalgic for 1987’s MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE.


I said earlier that the character of Loki takes on greater solidity thanks to the film’s adaptation of the “adopted evil son” motif from the comic book. However, in the comics-story the adoption takes place because Odin has slain Loki’s natural father Laufey. But the film bollixes up this plot-thread. In the film’s past, Odin finds baby Loki and believes at the time that the kid's parents are dead. But by present time both he and the audience know that Laufey is quite alive, as he’s the film’s secondary villain. One never knows at what point Odin makes this discovery, but once the audience learns it, Odin’s action of keeping Loki ignorant of his heritage begins to look less like beneficence and more like child-stealing. Loki’s “adoption” also parallels the Agardians’ theft of a mysterious “casket” from their frosty foes, which is some sort of power-source that the Jotuns want back, but this plot-device only exists to set up initial hostilities and fades out of the narrative quickly. At the eleventh hour of the film, in order to give viewers an FX-heavy finale, Loki suddenly unleashes a world-sundering menace that the film never sets up properly. Given how much effort the writers lavish on building the Thor-Jane relationship, it would have been nice if one didn’t get the feeling that they thought they could jerk the other characters around like so many chess-pieces.


Finally, I understand that the rationalization of the Thor-cosmos is an expedient way to get around whatever narrative difficulties the filmmakers had with making the Asgardians “real gods.” Aside from heading off protests from repressive religious forces, the SF-motif emanicipates (word-play intentional) the plot from the idea that these gods must be exclusively Caucasian Nordics. Thus Asgard can be multicultural, with a black Heimdall and an Asian Hogun. (In fairness, Jack Kirby did impart a vague Mongolian design to his Hogun). Yet this nod to multi-culti creates a logical problem. If the Asgardians are extradimensional aliens who enjoyed some independent existence before Earthpeople started worshipping them as gods, why have they become subsumed by Nordic culture? Prose science fantasies usually hypothesize that some advanced culture, whose representatives came to Earth sporting such names as “Apollo” or “Osiris,” come to Earth and that Earthmen copy both their mythology and their archaic culture from the alien gods. But THOR doesn’t veer into that Von Daniken-esque territory, though that may have been the intention. There’s just one scene of archaic Earth-times, in which invading frost-giants attack Earth and the gods come to humanity’s rescue. The implication I got from the scene was that the Scandinavians bestowed Nordic names on the aliens. If my memory’s accurate, then why do the multi-culti aliens keep exclusively Nordic names, instead of having a host of mythological identities? Did no one but the Scandinavians encounter these alien gods?


It’s clear to me that the original comics-idea—that the Nordic gods, whatever their origins, simply existed in some fairy-tale world—is less difficult to put across both logically and aesthetically. I’m aware that the cinematic THOR is also compromised by a grand scheme that will unite Thor and other Marvel heroes in a live-action AVENGERS movie, but I don’t think Asgard had to be purged of all of its wonderment just so that Thor wouldn’t (theoretically) outshine his more mundane colleagues. I didn’t expect Branagh’s alien gods to speak King James English, but a little grandeur in the language department would have gone a long way, as against Thor talking like a well-spoken yuppie with an extreme-sports jones.


I don’t know if other comics-fans yearned to see a cinematic THOR that translated the power and exoticism of the Lee-Kirby Asgard, which would have been fit to stand alongside the best magical fantasies of the cinema. Maybe most fans are just pleased that this Thor doesn’t look like a doofus, as did his previous live-action iteration in 1988’s THE INCREDIBLE HULK RETURNS. But when I see such potential wasted, I’d rather watch a popcorn film—again, like the aforementioned He-Man film-- that never had any potential from the get-go.
Parting thought: the 3-D version sucks. Two dimensions are enough for this two-dimensional flick.

HOODWINKED (2005) & HOODWINKED TOO (2011)

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


Here's the simplest way to describe the appeal of the original HOODWINKED, First creators Cory and Todd Edwards took the basic structure of the typical 1990s Disney cartoon-feature, with its focus on a young protagonist given to singing plaintive "I want" songs at the opening. Then the creators overlaid this basic structure with a variety of narrative devices on loan from Quentin Tarantino-- fragmented narrative, heavy pop-culture referentiality, and an eclectic musical score. This Quentinizing of a "tired old tale" took a few more chances than other recent fairy-tale spoofs, such as SHREK, and did well at the 2005 box-office.

Now the classic folktale of "Little Red Riding Hood" was a favorite target for spoofery in the Golden Age of Theater Animation. Still, though the first HOODWINKED is as strong as the best Disneys in terms of verbal jokes and sight-gags, its real appeal was, like the Disneys, its ability to put across a simple but elemental emotional conflict alongside all the japery. Scholars like Bettleheim have speculated that the original folktale was meant to serve as an admonition young girls received from their mothers about the dangers of strange wolves in the woods. The Edwardses don't aim to get quite that profound, but I doubt it's coincidence that the central conflict of HOODWINKED is between young Red, the film's preteen protagonist, and Granny Puckett. But the Edwardses invert the folktale's lesson-giving structure. Instead of Little Red learning the perils, both to her and her granny, of messing with wolves, this Red, who yearns for a more fulfilling life than delivering goodies for the Puckett Bakery, finds out that her granny is secretly living the "extreme" life Red years for, and keeps it secret from Red for no clear reason. A probable model for this conflict may be that of Ariel and Triton in LITTLE MERMAID, where the young heroine again chafes under the heavy hand of an adult perceptor, only to bond later against a more deep-dyed villain.

The real villain of HOODWINKED, incidentally, is not handled in the Disney manner, but is hidden in plain sight along the lines of an animated Keyzer Soze. Because the film keeps the villain (SPOILERS-- the bunny did it) out of the main narrative, the script is free to focus on more hijinks with the various heroes. The Wolf (a crusading reporter instead of a hungry/lusty assailant) and his squirrel-buddy Twitchy are the "B-team" to Red and Granny's "A-team," but the two teams don't really interact in any meaningful way, which doesn't hurt HOODWINKED but does present a problem for the sequel. Other characters, such as Kirk, "the Woodsman", Japheth the Goat and Nicky Flippers (a fun in-joke derived from cinematic sleuth Nick Charles), are really just there to funnel jokes, and vary from annoying to admirable.

Having come to a rousing conclusion (though strangely, lacking a concluding song as good as the ones given Red and Japheth), HOODWINKED ends with a very unsubtle set-up for a sequel, implying that Nicky is going to corral most of these lone wolves (excepting Kirk the Woodsman-- wise choice to leave him out) and get them to work with him in a secret organization that makes sure all fairytales have happy endings. And it's this problematic idea that HOODWINKED TOO, scripted by pretty much the same people but with a new director, has to build from.




The problem inherent in this idea is that while being fairy-tale enforcement agents sounds great for the A-team, the script has to dance around the fact that it makes little sense for Wolf and Twitchy. What we have in TOO is a pale rendering of your basic "buddy action-comedy." It's not infrequent in such stories to have some super-competent enforcement-agent obliged to join forces with a character who's at best a noob and at worst a total screwup. But, even granting a lot of leeway to the motivations of cartoon animals, Wolf and Twitchy simply aren't believeable doing the crimefighting thing of their own conscious volition, rather than being, as in the first film, forced into it by circumstance.

This is particularly tough to sell because, the conflict between Red and Granny having been settled, for TOO the Edwardses opt to generate a bland "conflict" between the super-tough but unsubtle Red and the tricky but maladroit Wolf. The scenes of them carping at each other for imagined offenses are painfully dull, usually only relieved by some comic business by Twitchy.

The villains are weaker, too. Whereas the first film set up the revelation of "the last bunny you'd expect," the sequel gives away the game about halfway through the narrative. This might not be a bad thing if the Real Villains had any presence, but neither they nor their Bungling Assistant Who Later Turns Good are anything to write home about. The bad guys even turn colossal at the end, as if to signal that the writers were again cribbing from LITTLE MERMAID-- but this time, in a bad way. Fortunately, the filmmakers give us a guest appearance of the Boingo Bunny, though the bad bunny's character naturally puts the lesser fiends to shame.

There are a lot of good jokes and sight-gags (though no songs) in TOO, so it's not entirely a waste of time. And it's at least funnier than any of the SHREK sequels. But TOO won't be making very many lists of "movies where the sequels were better than the originals."

DICK TRACY (1990)

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


"If deformity and disfigurement were not to be worn as stains, then what indeed was punishment?"-- Jay Maeder, DICK TRACY: THE OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHY, p. 57.


Warren Beatty's DICK TRACY, for which he wore two hats as star and director, makes an interesting study in contrasts.

For my AUM system the original Chester Gould comic strip is an important exemplar of two major tropes of the uncanny-metaphenomenal. In TRACY "outre outfits skills and weapons" usually comes down to unconventional but not-quite-marvelous weapons, sometimes used by police but more often by criminals. But the TRACY strip is far better known for the trope of "freakish flesh" in that Gould created a host of bizarre villains with all manner of peculiar deformities: Flat Top, the Brow, Little Face, the Mole, Pruneface, and even a man who apparently had no face at all: the Blank.





The Beatty film technically reproduces both tropes, though the only really weird weapon in the film is the Blank's method of dosing the hero into dreamland with sleep-gas flowers. As for the freaky villains-- well, they are there, though the script by writing-team Jim Cash and Jack Epps crams so many TRACY villains into the mix that hardly any of them score well on the strange-o-meter. The Brow, Pruneface, Littleface and others are often relegated to minor player-status, and aside from the Blank-- who merits special attention-- the only Gould villains who come off particularly well are Flat Top and Itchy, who are simply hired muscle for the chief villain, Big Boy Caprice. Caprice was TRACY's first major villain, but he like most of the early Gould-ghouls was not freakish in the least. Cash and Epps attempt to make him "fit in" by giving him a hunchback, but the film's Caprice is played by Al Pacino more for borscht-belt comedy than for grotesquerie.


SPOILER ALERT


In the comic strip the Blank was simply a contract killer who had a maimed, PHANTOM OF THE OPERA-style face and chose to make a new name for himself by covering that face with a cheesecloth mask. However, the film's Blank is revealed to be that femme fatale Breathless Mahoney (Madonna), a chanteuse who works for (and maybe under) Big Boy but who plans to usurp Big Boy's crime empire by setting him up for a fall. Breathless also plans to use Dick Tracy to accomplish her ends, but wants to seduce him to a life of crime as well. Ironically, in Warren Beatty's take on Chester Gould, the strongest villain is one of the "beautiful people." (It's also Madonnna's best film-performance-- which I know isn't saying much, but still.)

Jay Maeder comments that the element of physical deformity in DICK TRACY gives Chester Gould's world a note of savage cruelty, one which was often reflected in the (literally) hardnosed POV of the strip's protagonist. Beatty's TRACY reflects none of Gould's cruel rigor in either the film or the hero, though as it happens one year after TRACY Beatty would play Bugsy Malone with exactly the sort of noir nastiness one finds in the Gould Tracy. Beatty's version of the Gould-verse has clearly been influenced by the earlier success of Tim Burton's BATMAN. Hence, Beatty's Tracy is something of a tough but often bemused idealist not unlike Burton's Bruce Wayne, and Beatty's decision to emphasize brilliant pastels as a backdrop to Tracy's city, while enjoyable, is also more Burtonesque than Gould-esque. One need not even comment on Beatty enlisting Danny Elfman, hot off Burton's BATMAN, for TRACY's score.

The strongest myth-symbolism here is one seen in many allegorial Renaissance myths: the hero's struggle between Virtue and Vice. Tess Trueheart (Glenne Headley), Tracy's pretty but homespun girlfriend-- to whom he'd like to propose, but can't quite get there-- is obviously "Virtue," even if her demeanor sometimes suggests
she'd rather not become the de facto "mother figure" to "the Kid," a street kid who more or less "adopts" Tracy as his new dad. Madonna's Breathless musters all the glamors of "Vice," and though Tracy is too straight-arrow for her to manipulate him, Beatty at least shows the hero being sorely tempted.

I don't exactly dislike the Beatty TRACY. Still, I'd like to see the real world of Chester Gould come to cinema some day-- preferably with only one or two featured villains, the better to give the full effect of their freaky glory.