YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES (1985)

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

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS


YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES isn't technically a hybrid of genres, like BILLY THE KID VS. DRACULA, but it feels like one, being a patchwork of influences from other films: sort of INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM meets THE GOONIES-- where the "goony" kids are juvenile versions of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.

I've never looked into the history of the film's genesis.  I doubt it was a dream project for director Barry Levinson, who would soon make his mark with more realistic fare like GOOD MORNING VIETNAM and RAIN MAN.  As for Steven Spielberg, he only served as executive producer on HOLMES.  I'd speculate that the idea might've sprung from HOLMES writer Chris Columbus, also the writer of the screenplay for Spielberg's GOONIES tale, which arrived in theaters about six months before HOLMES.  Given that Spielberg's TEMPLE OF DOOM had been a big (if controversial) hit the previous year, the idea of combining juvenile protagonists with evil cults and wild pulp action-- plus the name-recognition of the Holmes icon-- must have seemed a natural to someone.

A pulpish Sherlock Holmes isn't a total derangement of the Doyle character, in that a few of the canonical stories get fairly wild-and-woolly.  Still, the the majority of the Doyle tales are ratiocinative exercises which fit the mythos of "drama" better than that of "adventure."  In this film Holmes' detective efforts are no more than cues to initiate new outbursts of extravagant action, rather than pieces of a well-made puzzle.

The plot bears a loose resemblance to Doyle's SIGN OF FOUR.  In that novel, the members of a secretive group, all of whom profited by smuggling a treasure out of India during the period of the Mutiny, are being killed one by one by a mysterious malefactor.  Here, something similar obtains; certain residents of London begin dying as a result of having wild hallucinations that end up claiming their lives.  The juvenile Holmes and Watson become involved because one of the first victims is the father of Holmes' girlfriend Elizabeth (more on whom later).  Their roundabout pursuit of the criminals eventually leads the heroes to an Egyptian cult (albeit one made up of disaffected Englishmen) and results in a myriad of lively set-pieces that would not be out of place in an Indiana Jones film.  (Actually, I like them better than some of the ones selected for LAST CRUSADE, which I've always found rather anemic.)

The base idea of depicting Holmes and Watson as teenagers might not be beyond all redemption, but even if hardcore fans could get past the concept's first violation of Canon (changing the way in which the Great Detective met his confidante), I doubt if any of them appreciated seeing Sherlock depicted as a brilliant but overly emotional teenager.  Columbus' script tries to have it both ways: depicting Holmes with enough emotionality to please modern audiences, but positing that the experiences of this story cause him to formulate his low-affect persona in adulthood.  Indeed, one of his schoolteachers, fencing-master Rathe, encourages young Holmes to become as emotionally controlled as possible-- which gives away pretty early in the game that he's more than a simple teacher.  As mentioned before, young Holmes also has a girlfriend whose nugatory characterization pretty much screams "sacrificial victim."  By film's end she takes a dirt nap in order to provide a pedestrian, psuedo-romantic reason for the mature Holmes' disinterest in women.

Columbus is of course far from the first pastiche-artist to attempt psychologizing Sherlock Holmes.  One scenario put forth by Michael Kurland was that Holmes' obsession with Moriarty in HIS LAST BOW stemmed from an extramarital affair between Moriarty and Holmes' mother.  Columbus' script touches on similar territory.  During one sequence Holmes, Watson and the girl are all exposed to the illusion-potion.  The illusions seen by the girl prefigures her own moribund destiny, and those seen by Watson are played for comedy (a pudgy kid, Watson is attacked by animated confections in the movie's most ill-fitting scene).  Holmes, however, experiences a loose rewriting of Freud's Primal Scene, for he relives an experience in which he "detected" his father's infidelity and his mother's disgrace-- though this trauma from the past seems to have done little to remove Sherlock's passion for detection.

This motif of the hero being psychologically distant from his real father was seen later in another Spielberg-associated work, 1989s INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE, opening the possibility that Columbus' "origin of Holmes" had a decided effect on that film's "origin of Jones."  As Holmes pursues clues to the mysterious Egyptian cult, he finds that it had its roots in the evils of British imperialism.  The murdered men undertook a money-making project in Egypt (where labor was cheap).  They accidentally uncovered a buried Egyptian tomb, and when local Egyptians protested the tomb's despoilment, a whole townful of natives were slain by overzealous British forces.  But an Egyptian named Eh Tar escaped the chaos, and after 10-15 years of effort, he built the cult and devised the illusion-making potion to avenge himself on the Englishmen. 

Aside from this anti-imperialist theme-- again, probably extrapolated from SIGN OF FOUR-- the most interesting thing about YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES is that his enemy becomes his mentor, which was also a prominent theme in LAST CRUSADE, authored by George Lucas and two other scripters.  The patrician fencing-master Rathe is pretty much the only likely suspect to be the mystery villain, even without the jokey rearrangement of his name into "Eh Tar."  In the final scene, some time after the hero conquers the villain, Sherlock dons the cloak of his adversary, telling Watson that it's like a "leopard's skin" trophy.  (Could he have meant to reference the Greek Heracles' donning of the skin of the Nemean Lion after hero killed beast?)  However, following the credits the viewer learns that this film will not be the last encounter of the hero and his "bad father," for Rathe survives to take on the name of Moriarty.

I have only contempt for the Spielberg-Haters who revile him as juvenile, imitative, etc.  Still, Spielberg's particular genius doesn't lend itself to working and playing well with other people's material, as seen in HOOK, WAR OF THE WORLDS, TWILIGHT ZONE and most though not all of his adaptations.  The most one can say for HOLMES is that it's far from the worst depiction Sherlock's ever had in the Case of the Public Domain Detective.

THE FOG (1980), THEY LIVE (1988)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: (1) *poor*, (2) fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: (1) *drama*, (2) irony
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

TCM's recent double-dose of John Carpenter films led me to give some thought as to why I find Carpenter's work so uneven.  Both of the films TCM showed, THE FOG and THEY LIVE, happen to be films I consider lesser efforts compared to HALLOWEEN, THE THING and BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA.  And yet they're still interesting efforts, as opposed to works that I found pretty tedious, like VAMPIRES and PRINCE OF DARKNESS.

It may be hubristic to assign "thematic concerns" to any director with as varied a pallette as Carpenter.  I'm sure that like most directors, he picks his projects not out of lofty literary motives but as a way of anticipating what the public will buy, the better that he can continue doing the work he enjoys.  Still, I do see a prevalent motif in Carpenter's work, which takes on deeper resonance according to individual treatment-- and that motif is essentially that of his first great success, HALLOWEEN: "what happens when vulnerable mortals encounter an unstoppable force?"

Although, to be sure, the "force" can also be a "fraud," to reference the old Latin distinction between crimes of *forza* and crimes of *froda.*  THE FOG, lensed about two years after HALLOWEEN, is about an unstoppable force stalking a small community of near-defenseless individuals.  In contrast, 1988's THEY LIVE is about a pervasive fraud perpetuated upon all mankind, and so holds more in common with more insidious menaces like Carpenter's shape-changing THING.

THE FOG feels much like a recrudescent EC Comics story, particularly in terms of its extremely slow build.  Just as the small fishing-town of Antonio Bay is about to celebrate its centenary anniversay, strange things begin happening, often (though not exclusively) in connection with a bizarre fogbank.  Father Malone (Hal Holbrook) is the only one who slowly pieces together the town's guilty secret: that one of the town's founders was guilty of killing a shipload of sailors for their gold, in order to build Antonio Bay.  Soon the town is besieged by the spectres of the dead sailors, returned to avenge themselves on the figurative descendants of their slayer.

Carpenter's use of the supernatural here does attempt a certain metaphorical complexity. In a sense the rise of the vengeance-seeking corpses isn't just a routine menace, but captures the unpredictability and imponderability of man's place in the universe.  All that said, however, Carpenter doesn't succeed in diversifying his cast of characters.  Malone seems intense and tortured even before he uncovers the mystery, but his character-arc doesn't seem to have a pay-off comparable (say) to that of Father Karras in THE EXORCIST (both book and film).  Adrienne Barbeau gives a strong performance as late-night disc jockey Stevie, who beguiles her male listeners with slightly erotic come-ons (like the Greek sirens?) while in real life she's a single mom worrying about raising her son.  The irony seems intentional, yet Stevie's character-arc never comes to a good focus.  Also in the cast are Jamie Lee Curtis, Carpenter's "final girl" star from HALLOWEEN, but neither her character nor the character essayed by Curtis' real-life mother Janet Leigh seem compelling.  Because the characters lack substance, their struggles against the unstoppable powers of death lack the resonance found in the broad but intriguing cast of HALLOWEEN.  The theme of the "collective guilt of the society" never quite shapes up either.

Society is again its own worst enemy in THEY LIVE, as Carpenter pits one of his more macho protagonists against a subtle alien conspiracy.  In contrast to the kineticism of 1986's BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, Carpenter again builds his story slowly at the outset of LIVE, focusing on the economic travails of itinerant worker John Nada (note the name; which is Spanish for "nothing.")  Nada bums around looking for work until he happens upon a Hooverville-like community of disenfranchised workers.  Nada is bemused by some of the claims he hears about a government conspiracy, but that bemusement is nothing beside his exposure to the truth: that skull-faced aliens have infiltrated every facet of American culture, using "hidden persuaders" to encourage humans to stop thinking and conform.  Nada-- played by wrestler Roddy Piper as a not-too-bright ordinary guy-- reacts unthinkingly to this revelation by first insulting the aliens to their faces and then going after them with all guns blazing.

Whereas THE FOG is a straightforward horror-drama, LIVE is plainly an ironic satire dressed up with action-adventure spectacle.  Nada tries to open the eyes of his pacified fellow humans to their plight, but he's not exactly Mister Persuasive.  He takes a woman named Holly prisoner to get the use of her car, but she won't listen to his wild stories and ends up pushing him out of a high window.  He does get his fellow worker Frank to see the aliens, but only after Nada has a long bone-crunching hand-to-hand fight with Frank.  Eventually Frank and Nada do infiltrate the alien sanctum-- improbable, given that all the human quislings in the place dress to the nines while the two heroes look like the construction workers they are.  The film ends on a cautious positive note, in that Nada manages to expose the conspiracy.  Yet any satisfaction this ending might have is surely dulled by the audience's knowledge that their own culture may be enforcing no less conformity than the film's alien masters.

LIVE is good fun, but the brainwashing scenarios are so blatantly over-the-top that they come to seem like a cartoon adaptation of Karl Marx.  This situation isn't much helped by an in-joke in which an alien TV-pundit is seen decrying the works of "George Romero and John Carpenter."  Still, the scenes of economic depression still carry a formidable charge, particularly in today's post-meltdown economy.   

THE CASTLE OF CAGLIOSTRO (1979)

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


In terms of phenomenality, the franchise LUPIN III is all over the map.  Some of the manga stories are zany erotic adventure-tales published for a PLAYBOY-like demographic audience in Japan, but which have no metaphenomenality.  The first animated film is outright marvelous, pitting the wild Japanese thief (named for his grandfather, famed French thief Arsene Lupin) against a mad scientist seeking the all-powerful philosopher's stone.  CASTLE, the second animated feature starring Lupin, best fits the "uncanny" category given that most of the peculiar devices used by or against Lupin are not quite marvelous-- automatic laser-beams, for example-- but carry the vibe of the metaphenomenal.  On a related note, Lupin is aided by two formidable henchmen: Jigen and Goemon.  Jigen is simply a skilled marksman, but Goemon is a samurai possessed of such "outre skills" that he can cut clothes right off of his opponents-- which usually discourages them from making further attacks.

CASTLE was one of the best-known anime feature in the United States during the first anime boom, possibly because by the time it reached American shores, its director Hayao Miyazaki had already garnered considerable fame for his later, more personalized works, such as 1984's NAUSICAA.  Miyazaki has stated publicly that he would have preferred to do another story for this film, but that time-constraints forced him to use CASTLE instead.  Still, much of Miyazaki's fondness for strong sentiment-- diametrically opposed to the cavalier attitude of the original manga from author "Monkey Punch"-- informs the structure of CASTLE.

Following a rousing burglary of a casino, Lupin and his aide Jigen find that they've ripped off counterfeit money.  This inspires Lupin to seek out the source of the operation-- for the thieves' monetary benefit, of course-- in the postage-stamp nation of Cagliostro.  However, Lupin's mercenary motives take a back seat to rescuing a fair damsel named Clarisse, seen initially as a literal "runaway bride," fleeing a group of soldiers in a car.  Despite Lupin's efforts Clarisse is re-captured by the soldiers and taken back to the castle of Count Cagliostro, who plans to force Clarisse to wed him and join the fortunes of the "two houses of Cagliostro."

Lupin figures out that the Count is the one behind the massive counterfeiting scheme, but he later confesses an even more involved motive for combating the villain.  He eventually reveals to Jigen that as a young man Lupin made a previous assault on the Castle, again to steal the counterfeiting plates.  He was shot and almost killed, only to be saved from death by a young school-girl. Perhaps ten years later, he recognizes that Clarisse is that schoolgirl grown to young womanhood, though she never recognizes him as the thief of yesteryear.

The action-kinetics between Lupin's group and the Count's men are always above-average, particularly a climactic duel between hero and villain in a clock-tower.  However, the psychological subtext is most interesting.  At one point in the Japanese subbing, Lupin calls the Count a pedophile for wanting to marry a girl much younger than himself, though Clarisse is no longer a child.  So on one level Lupin seeks to prevent a dirty old "playboy" (like the readers of Monkey Punch?) from despoiling a virgin girl.  However, Clarisse falls in love with Lupin-- despite a similar age-difference-- and it's strongly suggested that Lupin is tempted, though in the end he does the right thing and forswears her.

However, after killing the villain he still does escape with a lot of filthy lucre, so there's some compensations to be had, after all.

SHEENA (1984)

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


Sheena of the Jungle, created for Fiction House Comics in 1937 by Will Eisner and Samuel Iger, was a tough babe who swung around the jungle, trouncing marauding white traders and misbehaving black tribesmen alike.  There had been jungle girls in prose and film prior to Sheena, but none of them ever exerted as much of an iconic hold as this leopard-skinned blonde goddess.  To some extent the syndicated 1955-56 TV series, starring buxom Irish McCalla, had a similar effect on 1950s viewers, though the comic's publishers had faded into the mists by the time of the TV series.  Following that series, the 1984 film was thus the first major attempt to reviving the Sheena icon.

I don't know precisely what greased the wheels for this revival, but I'd imagine it had something to do with the success of both comic-book films like SUPERMAN I and II and pulp-style adventure films like RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK.  Unfortunately, most of the films that attempted to coattail on these big-budget successes crashed and burned.  SHEENA-- sometimes given the subtitle "QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE" though I've never seen the subtitle on any version-- was one of these.

In my kidhood I only knew Sheena very vaguely, until I encountered a few reprints of the Fiction House comics.  I admired their straightforward approach to pulp-style action.  When SHEENA was announced as a big-screen project, I didn't expect another RAIDERS, but I hoped that it would at least be a good basic action-adventure, if only on the level of the better Tarzan flicks.

To say the least, I was massively disappointed in 1984, even though SHEENA's director was John Guillerman, who in the late 1950s was responsible for making one of the best of the Tarzan films, TARZAN'S GREATEST ADVENTURE.   Although Tanya Roberts was no less buxom than Irish McCalla, both the action and dialogue, which should have been RAIDERS-snappy, had the weaknesses of the SUPERMAN films with none of the virtues.  While it's probably impossible to blame a script penned by many hands on any single writer, I suspect that the culprit was David Newman, who had worked on screenplays for the first three SUPERMAN films.  I could tell that the 1984 SHEENA was straining for profundity in place of offering the sort of strong jungle-queen action seen in the comics.

Strong plotting is not the highest virtue in action-adventure films.  Many of the best ones, from THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN MARVEL to the aforementioned RAIDERS, work well by creating some "maguffin" that both heroes and villains must pursue in order to sort out their differences.  The fault of SHEENA is not that the plot is loosely constructed, but that none of the scenarios it supports are very impressive.

The opening is the only place where the film touches on the mythic with any success.  Sheena begins as a small girl named Janet, who goes along for an African adventure with her parents.  Her father, a doctor, seeks out a mysterious tribe called the Zambulis because it's rumored that their land contains a special earth able to heal almost any injury.  Almost as soon as the doctor and his family arrive in Zambuli territory, they find evidence that the healing rumor is true.  The Zambulis don't appreciate the white people snooping around their sacred grounds, but don't drive them away either.  Janet's mom and dad take it into their heads that the secret of the healing earth may lie in the local sacred mountain Gudjara, and descend into a cave to investigate it.  Gudjara, apparently more irritated than the Zambulis at these incursions, shivers in the throes of an earthquake that buries both intruders. Little Janet tries to save her parents but fails.  As the tribe arrives on the scene, they spy the orphaned Janet apparently coming out of the cave.  The tribe's female shaman then proclaims that there's an old Zambuli prophecy asserting that "when the sacred mountain cries out, a golden girl-child shall come from the depths of Gudjara"-- a girl who will grow to become the protector of the Zambulis.  The tribe thus adopts Janet, rechristening her as "Sheena," and for the rest of the film, Sheena acts pretty much as if she was in truth spawned by the mountain, frolicing with animals and making no further reference to her lost parents.

As origins go, this isn't a bad one, though it has only minor points in common with the one from the comic books.  The 1984 film does expunge any sense that Sheena might be worshipped as a "white goddess," as was the case with many of the original Sheena's predecessors: instead, the white heroine is simply a protector to a marginalized tribe, thus removing the stigma of the "superstitious African."  Further, the healing earth isn't the only real magic in Zambuli country: the tribal sorceress's visions are real, and she has a talent for telepathically summoning animals, a talent she teaches to Sheena.  The only major problem with this section of the film is the decision of the writers to name the tribe's shaman "Shaman."  As most readers of this review will know, this is not a word of African origin. It's about as ridiculous as inventing a Celtic wizard and naming him "Houngan."

Shaman's next vision sets up the action for Sheena to venture out of her Edenic world.  The sorceress foresees that someone will try to assassinate the king of their land of Tigora realm, and that this will result in the oppression of the Zambulis.  Shaman goes to the city in the hope of warning the king.  However, she first encounters the two conspirators planning the assassination: the king's envious brother  Prince Otwani and his evil lady-love Zanda (who styles herself, a little risibly, as "the most wicked woman in Tigora.") These villains decide to use Shaman as a fall guy, and after they pull off the king's murder they try to blame it on Shaman and her tribe.

Two heroic figures interfere with their plans.  First is reporter Vic Casey, who accidentally obtain proof that Otwani and Zanda are the real assassins.  Second, Sheena, summoned by the mental waves of the imprisoned Shaman, comes to Shaman's rescue with an animal army (possibly the most enjoyable action-scene in the film).  With a little help from Vic, who's enamored with the jungle-girl at first sight, Sheena spirits Shaman out of the city, but to no avail: Shaman dies and charges Sheena with protecting the tribe against Otwani.  Meanwhile Vic chases down Sheena and manages to tag along with her as she tries to return to her people and rouse them back to their long-forgotten ways of war to fight their enemy.  On the way Sheena and Vic enjoy a little romance.

As I said before, there's nothing wrong with a loose plot-structure for an adventure-film.  The plot is reasonably functional, with Otwani chasing Vic to get the incriminating evidence and chasing Sheena to keep her from warning her people, whom Otwani plans to scapegoat.  There's even a minor subplot about Otwani giving Sheena lustful looks, so that jealous Zanda tries to kill the heroine and makes it possible for Sheena to win free.  Sheena does lead her tribe against Otwani's armed soldiers, defeating machine guns with rocks and arrows (remember, this came out one year after RETURN OF THE JEDI).  Sheena and Vic have a final confrontation with Otwani: Otwani dies but Vic almost perishes as well.  Only the healing earth saves him-- a nice circular return to the imagery the film starts with.  Sheena plans to leave with Vic to see the outside world, but Vic nobly tells her that her native beauty would be despoiled by the vulgar world of modern man.  (Yeah, dude, that sounds like a good excuse for ditching your booty call.)  Vic leaves and Sheena remains in the tribal world, riding her pet zebra.

Everything I've described works well enough in terms of pure function.  The problem is, there's no fire to any of it: nothing that makes one want to embrace the fantasy.  The scripting by the four writers (one of whom is BATMAN's Lorenzo Semple Jr.) is usually heavy-handed and graceless, though thankfully, not usually "campy."  The romance-scenes between Sheena and Vic are tedious despite some brief scenes with Tanya Robert's bared breasts.  But most of all, the idea of Sheena as an unblemished jungle-dwelling virginal presence simply robs the central character of any power. The comic-book Sheena wasn't especially complex, but she was marvelously tough and could endure any number of knocks on the head before rocketing back to trounce the villains.  Even had the producers selected some actress less willowy than Tanya Roberts-- say, Sandahl Bergman-- I believe their Sheena would still have come across as a "weak sister."

On a minor sociological note, Otwani is an African who seems to have been entirely Americanized, without a trace of African culture in him.  Apparently the fame he obtained from playing football in America went to his head and created in him the desire to supplant his brother.  Usually African villains in jungle-films tend to go the other way-- reactionary defenders of tribal ways-- so seeing an African transformed into an "Ugly Black American" has a small degree of appeal.

The original comic-book Sheena, who had no super-powers and only rarely encountered supernormal threats, fits my "uncanny category" under the trope of "outre outfits skills and devices." This Sheena dwells in a more fantastic world of telepathy, healing dirt and prophecies that come true, so the film itself falls into the "marvelous" category.  The 2000-02 SHEENA teleseries borrowed several ideas from the movie.  That Sheena (Gena Lee Nolin) goes from being a telepath to a shapeshifter, but keeps approximately the same costume (no leopard-skin bikini again, doggone it) and the idea of a female teacher who initates the white heroine into the tribe.  Thankfully, Nolin's Sheena does know how to roughhouse as well as the Fiction House Sheena, so the appeal of the original comic book got some props in that series as well.

 

IF LOOKS COULD KILL (1991), THE CHOSEN ONE (1998)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: (1) *sociological*, (2) *metaphysical*

I'm frequently appalled by IMDB reviews that take certain films-- films I regard as ordinary but spirited formula-works-- and treat them as if their mediocrity was an offense against nature.  I've often thought said posters need to be introduced to REALLY bad films to give them some perspective.

Take, for a compare and contrast example, two very lightweight films, both vaguely superhero-ish (if like me you include the superspies in with the superheroes): William Dear's IF LOOKS COULD KILL (with a screenplay by 90210 creator Darren Star) and Lawrence Lanoff's THE CHOSEN ONE.

Admittedly, though both are B-films in substance, LOOKS has a fair amount of money behind it, making for decent explosions, fast car-driving, and other copious spy-movie FX.  CHOSEN looks like it was filmed for whatever the creators could cull out of the wishing fountain.  A lot of small-time productions have proven clever about getting a lot of bang over very small bucks.  CHOSEN is not among their number.

Back to LOOKS: this was one of a handful of 1990s films that promoted Richard Grieco, heartthrob of TV series 21 JUMP STREET, as a possible big-screen star.  Obviously for whatever reason he didn't grab the viewing public, though I think he's fairly charming in this "Brat Pack-spy" concoction.  Like screenwriter Star's most prominent TV successes, LOOKS is all about G-rated sex.  Here it's a young hot-looking American having adventures in Europe with hot Euro ladies (Gabrielle Anwar, Carole Davis) and obnoxious, borderline-campy villains-- Roger Rees and an apparently slumming Linda Hunt.

(Some twenty years later, Linda Hunt now portrays a more beneficient spy-type in TV's NCIS: LOS ANGELES-- and yes, I know the TV-character's not a spy as such, but the NCIS shows definitely inhabit a grey area between spywork and copwork.)

A confusion of identities causes high-schooler Michael (Grieco) to be pulled into various spyjinks involving Rees' threat to dominate the European financial world-- you know, back when there was something left of it to dominate.  There are just enough wild sci-fi gadgets in the story to propel this tale into the category of the marvelous, particularly when Grieco dons special shoes that let him walk down the side of a wall.

There's not an original idea in the mix, but the actors manage to have fun with it without falling into self-parody.  The closest thing LOOKS has to any sort of theme *might* be in your basic spy-world "clash of cultures," but I'm not arguing it very vigorously.

CHOSEN ONE, however, is the film to which I'd send anyone who heaped opprobrium on a mild formula-item like LOOKS.  CHOSEN is poorly directed, poorly photographed hokum from a guy whose main credits consist of Playboy "video documentaries."  Surprisingly, Lanoff has one other genre credit: a supernatural-possession tale called TEMPTRESS with Kim Delaney.  TEMPTRESS was dull but CHOSEN is in a boredom category all its own.

 Short and sweet: after Carmen Electra's sister is killed, Carmen finds out that the sister was some sort of Amerindian superhero/tribal protector, "The Raven."  Carmen also finds out that she's got to take over the burder of being the tribe's new superhero, though of course neither sister looks the least bit like a Native American.  Whatever powers the sister had are transferred to Carmen through a talisman, but unfortunately they also get transferred to Bad Girl Debra Xavier.  After many long softcore exhibition-scenes (only a few of which include actual sex), Carmen-- who has donned perhaps the worst superhero costume this side of Halle Berry's CATWOMAN (see above illo)-- fights Debra and wins.  The End.

Like most persons who peruse softcore films, I certainly don't expect superior plotting, as no one rents these films for the plots.  In fact, such films are best served by plots which are substantially invisible, providing quick setups that allow transition from one scene to another.  However, Lanoff and his scripters blunder by trying to justify Carmen Electra's new tribe-protector identity by including lots of ponderous voice-overs by the Native American father of the two sisters (who's never a character in the film as such).  The voice-overs are apparently there just to fill the viewer in on the mythic psuedo-Indian powers inherited by Carmen and Debra, but this tactic unfortunatly may instill the viewer with some small expectation that there ought to be a *visible* plot.  For instance, there are apparently a bunch of drug-smugglers running around the town where the sister dies, but they never really have much of anything to do with the conflict between Carmen and Debra, which mainly springs from their mutual regard for a hunky sheriff.

Further, this is probably the most anemic superhero film of all time, with but one poorly-choreographed fight at the end.  Even CATWOMAN sported some strong capoeira moves.

Perhaps the unkindest cut I can give CHOSEN is to say that even though it sports some nudity (though purportedly body doubles stand in for its star), the fully-clothed seduction-scene between Carole Davis and Richard Grieco in LOOKS is more enjoyable than anything in Lanoff's limp entry.

BOMBA ON PANTHER ISLAND (1949); THE LOST VOLCANO (1950)

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

With the second and third entries in the 12-film BOMBA series, a sense of sameness already sets in. For the most part one enjoys the films largely on the virtues of the performers, without even a middling interest in the plot found in Tarzan mellers of the same period.

BOMBA ON PANTHER ISLAND is certainly the better of the two, in that it carries over the quasi-ecological theme of the first film.  The "island" of the story holds a white man's plantation, to which Bomba journeys in search of a man-killing panther (though technically Bomba's after the animal because it killed his pet monkey).  On the island, an experimental farm is worked by natives, who take orders from the callow-looking owner of the farm, Robert Maitland.  Maitland's farm is also inhabited by his tenderfoot sister Judy, who continually complains about moving back to civlization (at least until she gets a look at Bomba's pectorals) and by a French serving-girl (albeit garbed in a sarong), Losana (Lita Baron). 

Losana also has a yen for Bomba, who does take out a little time from panther-hunting to let the two girls compete over him.  In fact, the film's most amusing moment shows Losana getting friendly (in a G-rated manner) with Bomba by a riverside.  Judy comes along and tries to draw Bomba away.  She fails and leaves in a huff, at which action Bomba leaves the hot saronged babe and chases after the pretty but uptight one.  Who said jungle boys had to be smart?

There's also a very minor plot-line in which the natives consider Losana to be a were-panther, which  adds an extra uncanny appeal to the story.  Accordingly this film (unlike VOLCANO) fits the trope of "phantasmal figurations," though very little happens to convince the viewer that Losana might be a cat-woman.  (She doesn't even get into a catfight with Judy!)

Callow Robert, though, does continue in the tradition of callous white invaders seen in BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY.  In the first film, Bomba had to deal with an arrogant white hunter who refused to listen to the advice of seasoned jungle sage Commissioner Barnes.  Barnes does appear in PANTHER, advising Robert not to attempt bending the jungle to his will, but the sage quickly disappears from the story (and never appears again in a BOMBA movie).  Robert then tries to eradicate the pesky jungle with a backfire, which naturally gets out of control about the same time Bomba tracks down the killer panther.  In the end both fire and panther are cheated of their victims.  In contrast to the first film, where the arrogant white guy never admitted doing wrong, Robert does at least see the error of his ways.  Bomba then takes his leave, not even promising to call either Judy or Losana.

PANTHER doesn't have a lot of excitement or humor, but it's more than VOLCANO does.  This time Bomba, moved by loneliness, befriends David, a young white boy dwelling on yet another African plantation run by his father and mother (Marjorie Lord of MAKE ROOM FOR DADDY fame).  David's father isn't high in Bomba's book in that the former goes around capturing animals to make his bailiwick safe, animals whom Bomba sets free at every opportunity.  The parents don't believe that Bomba is real until their serving-girl Nona (Elena Verdugo, also sarong-clad!) testifies as to his existence.

After all this set-up, the villains are brought in: two white guides working for an archaeologist.  David makes the mistake of showing all three visitors a jeweled dagger given him by Bomba, taken from an apparently slumbering volcano.  (How a volcano can get lost, I'll never know!)  The archaeologist thinks the dagger can lead him to a lost city, but the guides see only the jewels.  They kidnap the boy to get him to lead them to the lost ruins, which entails assorted run-ins with Bomba until the final volcanic climax.

Aside from Bomba's release of the caged animals, there's no evocation of the other two film's quasi-ecological theme.  Serving-girl Nona is perhaps the most interesting character, as she takes an almost feral protective interest in David, even threatening one of the villains with a knife to the throat on David's behalf.  But all the rest is pretty weak tea.

CORRECTION: Contrary to what I wrote above, the character of Commissioner Barnes did re-appear, starting with 1951's ELEPHANT STAMPEDE; he's simply played by a different actor.

SHERLOCK HOLMES (1922)

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

"Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable."-- Conan Doyle, "A Case of Identity."

As an intro the 1922 SHERLOCK HOLMES begins with the first two sentences of this Doyle passage and reworks the third sentence portentously warning the audience of an impending conflict between "good and evil."  Unfortunately, there's nothing in the film-- adapting the successful William Gillette play-- to justify this attempt to evoke a mood of "strangeness."

Many of Doyle's Holmes tales inhabit a world between the naturalistic and the uncanny.  In contrast to many detectives, who seem merely clever, Holmes repeatedly conveys the impression of an all-knowing psychic.  However, this impression is always (both in original stories and media-adaptations)  quickly dispelled by Holmes himself explaining his intuitions in terms of empirical observations.  Holmes' deductive skills thus always register in the naturalistic mode and never in the uncanny.

Some of the mysteries Holmes solves do have strong elements of the uncanny, which could justify the opening appeal to the idea of life's infinite strangeness.  However, the Doyle story from which playwright Gillette largely cobbled his play's plot-- which in turn director Albert Parker followed-- isn't in this mode.   Said plot-influence stems from the very naturalistic "A Scandal in Bohemia," in which the Great Detective meets Irene Adler, a woman perhaps as clever as he is.  She seeks to keep Holmes from recovering certain incriminating love-letters which could set off an international scandal.  Parker, following the lead of Gillette, changes Adler's name to Alice Faulkner and downgrades her from the position of adversary to love-interest-- the better to place emphasis on Holmes' encounter with his famed nemesis Professor Moriarty, though said encounter takes a very different shape than the version seen in the Doyle canon.

Going on my memory of the two Doyle stories in which Moriarty is an active presence, I classify him as a naturalistic villain.  He takes on uncanny or marvelous aspects in other adaptations: the Universal film THE WOMAN IN GREEN for the first, Alan Moore's LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN for the second.  But Doyle's depiction of Moriarty never goes beyond the natural, and so neither does the depiction of the character in the Albert Parker film.  Despite Moriarty being characterized as a "giant menace" by Holmes, the muddy plot never gives the audience much of an idea as to what end the villain seeks to gain.  Apparently it has something to do with having control over foreign affairs in some manner, but the script doesn't dwell on this much.

Some of Holmes' villains, notably Grimesby Roylott of "The Speckled Band," commit crimes that are weird enough to qualify as "uncanny."  But the only "bizarre crime" that this Moriarty commits is an attempt to flood Holmes' house with natural gas in order to asphixiate him-- complete with a Sadean line about how the villain wants the hero to expire slowly.  That's not quite bizarre enough in my book, and though the film strains to depict the clash of Holmes and Moriarty in Biblical terms, their personalities are too thinly drawn to sustain the hero-villain myth Doyle created.  I will note that actor Gustav von Seyffertitz is made up to look like such a Dickensian grotesque that his appearance reminds one of star Barrymore's own makeup in 1920's DOCTOR JEKYLL AND MISTER HYDE.

Speaking of Barrymore, his take on Holmes lacks much conviction.  The Gillette play takes away the image of Holmes as an oracle of empiricism.  Here he's simply a brilliant student who drifts into detecting-work (somewhat based on his image from A STUDY IN SCARLET) and who ultimately makes it his life-work to bring Moriarty to justice.  Unlike Doyle's Holmes, this one mourns some unspecified lost love, and promptly finds romantic surcease of sorrow in the character of Alice (Carol Dempster).  Many Holmes fans were aghast at seeing their confirmed-bachelor hero depicted as a romantic swain.  I'll only say that I could live with the notion if it were well done, but the romance angle of the script is pedestrian.  Moreover, Barrymore and Dempster possess zero chemistry.

The most I can say of Parker's direction is that for a film based on a stage-play, it doesn't seem excessively stagey; there are a good number of outdoor scenes that break up the talking-heads scenes.  Von Seyffertitz gives the most memorable performance, though it's noteworthy that this was the film debut of both Roland Young (in a very brief turn as Doctor Watson) and an almost unrecognizeable William Powell.