CONAN THE BARBARIAN (1982)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

To date the first CONAN film, despite all the changes it made to the Conan mythos of Robert E. Howard, remains the only sword-and-sorcery film to delve into the mythic symbolism of this type of otherworldly fantasy.  Naturally the icon of Conan was made possible in an immediate sense by the perfect casting of bodybuilder-turned-actor Arnold Schwarzenegger.  However, the script by Oliver Stone and director John Milius is most responsible for the deeper aspects of the film, whose lack would become apparent in Schwarzenegger’s only sequel, to say nothing of dozens of other empty-headed barbarian flicks.

The film wears its lofty soul on its sleeve, opening with a Nietzsche quote, images of fiery sword-crafting (in which both Conan’s father and mother participate), and narration by the actor Mako, identifying himself as the “chronicler” of Conan’s rise to prominence.  It also proves to be one of the few films that, though replete with father-images, shows an orientation more Jungian than Freudian.

In the opening, Conan’s father provides his son with a vision of a world where strength is a gift from the gods, incarnate in the forging of steel.  Crom is a distant, uncaring god who lives deep in a mountain, but in olden times certain “giants” stole the Promethean “secret of steel” from Crom.  Crom responded by killing the giants.  Mortal men inherited the secret of the dead giants, and Conan’s father claims that only steel can earn Conan’s trust, unlike men or women.  Conan’s later experience with fast friends Valeria and Subotai will disprove this, but only because they, like he, have made their souls as strong as steel.

Enter the villain; Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones), a ruthless warlord who in Jungian terms takes over from the young barbarian’s father by demonstrating his greater strength.  Doom leads a small army of raiders and decimates Conan’s Cimmerian village, apparently (though it’s not stated) to purloin the magnificent forged steel of Conan’s father—though much later, Doom will reveal that he lost interest in the secret.  To further displace Conan’s father—ignominiously killed by Doom’s trained dogs—the evil wizard himself subdues Conan’s mother, who is prepared to swordfight anyone who threatens her son.  Doom hypnotizes the unnamed mother into yielding her throat to his sword, which some authors might equate with a sexual violation.  Doom shows nothing resembling lust, though.

Young Conan is implicitly traumatized by the loss of his world.  The narrator tells us that the village’s devastation is so total that “no one would ever know that my lord’s people had existed at all”—a sentiment very much in tune with Robert E. Howard’s reflections on the transitory nature of even great races.  Conan submits to the yoke of slavery for the next decade or so, until a new father-figure—billed only as “Red Hair”—purchases the barbarian to use as a pit-fighter.  Conan proves such an excellent fighter that he’s given martial training in the East, taught how to read, and given his own slave-girl-- whom he treats gently, indicating that he hasn’t descended into total bestiality.  Not long after the mature Conan utters the film’s landmark line about “what is good in life,” Red Hair apparently becomes so paternally inclined toward the barbarian that the slave-owner cuts Conan loose and drives him into the wastes to seek his destiny.

Two more encounters take place before Conan even seems to remember his sufferings at Thulsa Doom’s hands.  First, the barbarian flees a pack of wolves and fortuitously stumbles into a cave.  Within the cave lies the remnants of an ancient Atlantean city, where Conan claims a great sword from an enthroned skeletal warrior.  It takes no great leap to see the dead warrior as one with the dead father, once more bestowing the power of steel upon the young warrior.

Second, Conan comes across the hut of a sexy young woman, identified as a “wolf-witch” by Milius on a DVD track.  Only once Conan meets this temptress does he start asking about the “serpent-standard” of Thulsa Doom.  She offers to exchange information for sex.  Conan is happy to oblige, but is more than a little concerned when the witch takes on wolfish characteristics during coitus.  The witch manages to spout a few sibylline prophecies before she tries to tear the warrior to pieces, and even after he flings her into a fire, her spirit survives, zooming away into the night like a will-o’-the-wisp. 

In addition to getting directions to the city of Zamora, Conan also meets and liberates Subotai, apparently being kept as food for the witch’s friends the wolves.  Subotai, being a thief, leads Conan to make an assault on the treasure-room of the Tower of Set in Zamora, where they meet and join up with the lady thief Valeria.  After a deadly battle against the snake-cult of Set and a giant serpent, the three escape the tower.  Then they are captured and recruited by King Osric—himself yet another father-figure, since he was “once a powerful Northman” comparable to Conan’s Cimmerian people.  Osric’s daughter has been drawn into the brainwashing cult of Thulsa Doom, and the king wants her freed.  Valeria (who has become Conan’s lover) and Subotai want no part of such an adventure. Conan sees the mission as his chance for vengeance.

At the “Mountain of Power,” Conan encounters the cultists of Thulsa Doom, who are patently a satire of the hippie movement, in that they walk around chanting and carrying flowers. Conan befriends a local shaman (Mako), who makes his home amid a graveyard of standing skeletons and menhirs, who becomes important later in bringing the barbarian back from the death given him by his “evil father.”

Pretending to be a flower-child—easily the film’s funniest scene—Conan infiltrates Doom’s temple on the Mountain of Power. Doom’s lieutenants Rexor and Thorgrim—also present during the devastation of the village—find him out.  After Conan’s been captured and beaten into helplessness, Doom confronts him, having forgotten their earlier encounter and whatever interest he once possessed in “the secret of steel.”  The villain boasts that he’s found a greater strength, “the strength of flesh”—which ironically, actually connotes Doom’s ability to manipulate humans through the weakness of their will.  For instance, the wizard demonstrates “the strength of flesh” by commanding a random acolyte to dive to her doom.  He also claims credit for the strength that Conan has gained through adversity, as per Nietzsche’s famous “what does not kill me” quote. 

Doom sentences Conan to be crucified on a tree in the wilderness.  This scene is the one most clearly derived from one in a Howard short story, down to Conan killing a vulture with his teeth.  However, in contrast to the Howard story, Conan is rescued from death by his friends, Valeria and Subotai.  Even then, the barbarian remains close to death.  The shaman observes that the death-spirits will come for Conan unless they can be driven away by mortals.  Valeria accepts the mission, even after the shaman’s warning that the gods may levy a price for her defiance.

Valeria succeeds in driving away the death-spirits, and Conan survives as he slowly heals from his ordeal.  Once he is recovered, Valeria and Subotai agree to help Conan storm the temple—though again, as professional thieves they’re not willing to fight Doom; only to liberate Osric’s unnamed daughter.  Conan implicitly agrees, though it’s also a given that he plans to attack Doom if he can.

The raid on the temple—where it’s revealed that the real purpose of Doom’s “enlightenment” is to turn his followers into cannibal-broth—succeeds.  There’s a cost, though: as the liberators ride off with their prize, Doom borrows a trick from the books of Moses: causing a snake to go rigid and using it as an arrow to impale Valeria during her flight.  Valeria perishes but promises her lover that she’ll return if he needs her.

At this point Subotai yields to Conan’s desire for vengeance.  Instead of fleeing, the two warriors stake out the princess on one of the menhirs and wait for Doom’s army.  Doom, his lieutenants and a handful of other soldiers duly attack, only to be decimated as was Conan’s village—though Conan gets some brief last-minute aid from the ghost of Valeria.  Doom survives, but he finally shows his true colors to the princess.  He tries to kill her with another snake-arrow, but Subotai saves her.

Strangely, Subotai is absent from the final scene: Conan enters the temple once more with the help of the princess (though she’s absent in the original release-version).  As Doom addresses his mindless followers, Conan confronts him.  Once more Doom tries the old “I’m-your-true-father” line—an idea possibly indebted to Jones’ previous incarnation as another “evil father” in 1980’s THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.  Conan is briefly enthralled by Doom’s hypnotic influence, but still manages to behead his enemy, scatter his followers and destroy the temple.  The film ends with prophesizing more adventures of Conan as he progresses toward his destiny—though the only sequel with Schwarzenegger doesn’t accord with any aspect of Milius’ vision, much less Robert E. Howard’s.

Often when critics deem films to have a Jungian orientation, they mean that it’s full of many dreamlike fantasy-images.  This is not the case with Milius’ CONAN THE BARBARIAN.  However, Milius uses the sanguinary Howard-esque imagery to show a definite progress of Conan’s soul from his traumatized beginnings to his triumph over the negative image of his father.  “When I am gone, you will have never been,” asserts Thulsa Doom to Conan.  This assertion captures Freud’s notion of the male psyche, eternally enthralled by the influence of the father.  But Conan has internalized his real father’s message as to the “rule of steel,” an internal toughness that goes beyond mere violence, so that he can refuse Doom’s false tidings.

There are other leitmotifs in Milius' version of the mighty barbarian that could reward Jungian investigation, particularly his quasi-Wagnerian uses of fire-imagery.  But this review can't investigate them in detail.

WEREWOLF IN A GIRL’S DORMITORY (1961)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

With a title like this, one might hope for a horrific melodrama that touches on gender issues, but this Italian-Austrian contribution to lycanthropic cinema offers almost no new takes on either werewolfism or gender matters.  The photography is crisp and the actors are reasonably attractive, but the film remains a staid exercise, never rising to the delirious heights of, say, the Spanish werewolf films of Paul Naschy.

DORMITORY is a murder-mystery at a  “school for wayward girls;” one which happens to be built near a forest haunted by wolves.  A new teacher, Mr. Olcott, arrives.  In a gesture signifying female deceptiveness, a student named Mary pretends to faint from an exercise-routine, apparently in the hope of being examined by the handsome instructor, though this never happens.  As Olcott checks in, it comes out that he’s under some sort of cloud: that he used to practice medicine but has taken a post only as a science-teacher.

Later Mary goes wandering in the woods at night, and meets another teacher, whom she’s blackmailing for their past sexual liaisons.  Later a shadowy figure leaps out of the forest and claws Mary to death.  The police are called in, and the film begins lining up suspects.  Is the killer Olcott, who was the most recent to arrive on the scene?  Is the professor who’s being blackmailed?  Or perhaps the creepy groundskeeper, who looks like a cross between Peter Lorre and Dwight Frye?

Since Olcott is such an obvious suspect, I don’t feel I spoil anything by revealing that he’s not the claw-killer.  He does have a past involving lycanthropy, however, in that he attempted to work out a cure for the disease at a prison, where a woman he loved was so afflicted.  The woman committed homicide under the influence of the disease—which in this film-world, can lead to the afflicted’s growth of hair and fangs in a purely scientific context. Olcott’s experiments on the female lycanthrope resulted in her death and his expulsion from the practice of medicine.  His arrival at a school that just happens to have a werewolf running around is therefore just One Big Coincidence.

Compared to some other Euro-horrors of the time, DORMITORY ranks low in the scales for either sex or violence.  The only interesting allusion to gender topics arises when an official of the school criticizes the deceased blackmailing-student for having walked out alone at night, which almost sounds tantamount to saying that “she asked for it.”  But otherwise the motif of the werewolf as a symbol of male brutality is not stressed, and the revelation of the killer doesn’t disclose any interesting motivations.  

MADHOUSE (1974)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological, psychological*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

MADHOUSE, an Amicus/AIP co-production, is best remembered as Vincent Price's last starring film. For the next twentysomething years he would largely appear as a guest star or support-cast member (13 GHOSTS OF SCOOBY-DOO, anyone?)  Reputedly MADHOUSE did not make as much money as earlier and better known Price horror-thrillers, such as THEATER OF BLOOD and the two DR. PHIBES films, and so MADHOUSE may have contributed to Price's career downturn.  However, it might be argued that the "operatic" style of Price's horror films was on the way out anyway, thanks to the influence of grislier fare like THE EXORCIST and TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.

The concept of MADHOUSE clearly follows in the tradition of the Phibes films-- if only because the plot revolves around a mysterious masked figure killing people in bizarre ways. Director Jim Clark--  who spent most of his career as a film editor, with MADHOUSE his only noteworthy directing credit-- proved unable to deliver anything resembling the opulent look of the Phibes films.  Budget could be part of the problem, but many of Clark's setups are unimaginative and seem concerned merely with getting the story told.  This is a shame, because there's more psychological story-potential in MADHOUSE than in the wild but shallow films after which it's patterned.

According to this CINEFANTASTIQUE review, the script, executed by two writers with very little writing experience before or after MADHOUSE, took very little from its supposed source novel, Angus Hall's DEVILDAY, so I tend to credit writers Ken Levison and Greg Morrison with the basic attempt to bring more psychological heft to the story of Paul Toombes, an aging horror-actor who has gained new fame thanks to the reappearance of his old films on television.

However, the film opens on an incident that precedes the main story by several years.  Toombes (Price) holds a lavish party to celebrate his recent marriage to a much younger woman, Ellen Mason.  In attendance are three major players in the story.  First comes Herbert Flay (Peter Cushing), a friend of Toombes from his salad days, both a former actor and the writer-creator of Toombes' best-known character, "Doctor Death."  Second is another actor, Faye (Adrienne Corri), who worked with Toombes in one of his films and who, from her first scene, is clearly smitten with Toombes.  Third is Oliver Quayle (Robert Quarry), who introduces himself to Toombes in a scandalous fashion.  Moments after Toombes has extolled Ellen as the only woman he could ever trust, Quayle snarkily reveals that he is a maker of pornographic films and Ellen was one of his stars.  Quayle gets the reaction he wants: Toombes is furious with his wife-- ostensibly because she didn't mention her checkered past, but possibly because he thought he was getting virgin goods in the marriage-deal.  Toombes storms off, breaking up the party.  Much later, he seeks out his marriage-boudoir, intending to forgive Ellen-- only to find that she's been savagely murdered, and left in such a position that her severed head falls off when Toombes touches her (a pretty good trick if you can pull that off!)

Police suspect the famed horror-star of murder but they can't prove him guilty, and the murder goes unsolved.  Years pass, during which the films of Toombes, particularly with him playing the Phibes-like killer "Doctor Death," gain new fans through TV broadcasts.  Toombes is persuaded to journey from America to England to make a TV series reviving Doctor Death, but on the voyage there, he meets Liz, a young starlet who attempts to cozy up to him, hoping to coattail on his fame.  Not least because this reminds Toombes that he accused Ellen of being a career-climber, he rejects her outright.  Interestingly, just before Toombes encounters Liz, he wakes from sleep as the camera shows us the book he was reading, entitled MY OEDIPUS COMPLEX.  More on that later.

Toombes remains ambivalent about reviving the violent image of Doctor Death, particularly when he meets one of the producers of his show: none other than Quayle.  Toombes drily comments, "I thought television was a family medium," or words to that effect.  He has somewhat better relations with a young publicist named Julia, but Toombes is livid to learn that in this version of "Doctor Death" he's expected to team up with a female assistant, portrayed by Carol, a no-talent protege of Quayle's-- also possibly one of Quayle's bedmates.

Also in England Toombes meets his old friends Herbert and Fay, now married, but Fay is a sad case.  Thanks to a fiery car accident, she lost her natural hair to the blaze and lives in seclusion.  She's also developed a strange mania for mothering a brood of tarantulas, whom she treats as her babies.  Since she mentions that there were spiders in the one film she made with Toombes, clearly she's transferred her desire to bear Toombes' children to the arachnid critters that appeared in their one shared film.

Liz, the scheming starlet, is the first to be killed by a masked maniac dressed as Doctor Death.  Carol is another victim, and so are Liz's parents, who try to blackmail Toombes with evidence that might incriminate the actor in their daughter's death.  Up to this point, it seems fairly possible that Toombes has formed a double identity, in that all the victims are people who have affronted or annoyed him-- and two of them, like his wife of a day Ellen, were nubile career-climbers. Toombes worries that he may have become unhinged from his years of playing horror-figures.  He confesses to an interviewer that the appeal of horror-films is that they allow people to indulge "the impulses we don't admit we have" (a Freudian take if there ever was one).

However, it's the death of the first truly innocent victim, the likeable publicity agent Julia, that ends the suspicions of a double identity.  Following Julia's murder Toombes encounters and fights with the masked killer.  The murderer almost kills Toombes in a special "death-bed" devised for the TV show, but Toombes survives.  However, shortly later he appears to die in a fiery accident.

Only then does the audience learn that the murders were committed by Herbert, who resented that his "Doctor Death" character-- whom he intended to portray himself-- was taken away from him by the studio and given to Toombes.  Fay mopes about at the news of Toombes' death, but she's elated when Toombes appears at the Flay house, revealing that he faked his own death.  Toombes fights with Herbert, but Fay takes the side of her original love, stabbing Herbert to death and allowing his body to be eaten by her spiders.  For a crowning touch, Toombes, having grown sick of his own acting-persona, decides to let his normal identity remain dead, and decides to spend the rest of his days using makeup to masquerade as Herbert Flay, and live with the only woman who really loved him.

Folklorist Alan Dundes made an interesting-- and highly Freudian-- take on Shakespeare's play KING LEAR in an essay entitled "To Love My Father All."  Dundes compares LEAR to folklore-stories in which daughters are almost compelled to marry their own royal fathers, and argues that both in these stories and in LEAR, what is being conveyed is "a projection of incestuous desires on the part of the daughter," rather than the father, as most authorities tend to assume.

MADHOUSE does have some Lear-like overtones. Lear wants to be loved, or at least esteemed, by all of his daughters, but he learns that two of them only want the property he can give them.  Toombes is constantly being assailed by beautiful young women-- he jokes in the first scene about all the women he's "killed"-- but to his regret he learns that none of them want him for anything but career advancement.  Even Fay harbored some hope that Toombes might help her career, though unlike the younger women, she genuinely fell in love with Toombes.  It's clear from the lack of romantic scenes between Herbert and Fay that she married him as a distinct "second choice."

In other words, writers Levinson and Morrison pulled off a "Cordelia sneak."  LEAR is ostensibly about the King but may also (if one agrees with Dundes) be seen as mirroring Cordelia's desire to show herself as the daughter who truly loved her father for himself. MADHOUSE focuses on the aging horror-star, but the lens through which we see him is the lens of Fay's eye.  Toombes' experiences show him that all the younger women are no good for him, with the exception of the one innocent-- and she's not guilty of making any advances upon the older gentleman.  The only fit mate for Toombes is Fay, and she's the one with whom he ends up, having apparently turned as mad as she.

I'm sure many horror-critics have overlooked Fay's role in the story, focusing on the flimsiness of Herbert's motives. Viewers are asked to believe that Herbert decided to murder just one woman in Toombes' life, then apparently was satisfied with that vengeance for several years until the TV revivals stoked up his resentment again.  Even for a horror-thriller, this is weak tea-- though Herbert's weakness as a character makes much more sense in the story's design, if he is in reality of no more consequence than the forgettable King of France, Cordelia's husband in LEAR.

I can't be sure that the screenwriters came up with the bit of business with Toombes having an "Oedipus Complex" book to hand in one scene.  For all I know, that touch could have come from Price, or from Robert Quarry, who claimed he rewrote some of the film's dialogue.  But the book certainly complements the film's Oedipal thrust.  Actress Corri was almost 20 years Vincent Price's junior, so that she could have been his daughter at one point of his life-- yet she's also 20 years older than the "dollybirds" who seem to flock around the older man, trying to leech off him.  In comparison to them, she is more a "mother" than a "sibling"-- creating a confusion not unlike the LEAR play, where, as one source remarks, " Cordelia returns at the end of the play with the intentions of helping him, ultimately reversing her role as daughter to mother."

WRATH OF THE TITANS (2012), IMMORTALS (2011)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, metaphysical*

As is most often the case in Hollywood, the success of a given film—in this case 2010’s CLASH OF THE TITANS—begets sequels and derivatives capable of imitating only the simplest aspects of the thing imitated.

Louis Letterier’s CLASH had its own textual problems. Nevertheless, though it was riffing on the 1981 Ray Harryhausen film, it put forth a reasonably compelling story concerning the nature of the ancient Greeks’ belief in their gods, and managed to explicate the complicated interrelations of the family of the gods, their foes the Titans, and the mortals caught between their struggles.

In contrast to this, the sequel WRATH OF THE TITANS left me with one dominant impression: it knows how to blow stuff up real good.

The most mythic aspect of Letterier’s CLASH—that of the hero Perseus’ protection by and marriage to Io—is abandoned; Io is dead and gone at the time the film begins. In substitute Perseus will be linked up with his original bride from the Greek myth, Andromeda, whom he rescued in CLASH but did not marry. However, Andromeda plays so minor a role in the film that this aspect of Perseus’ adventures hardly matter.

Once more, the plot concerns the plot of vengeful death-god Hades to take over the reign of heaven and earth from his brother Zeus, in part by the device of releasing the long-imprisoned Titans and causing the usual chaos on Earth. In this endeavor Hades is aided by a traitor-god from Olympus, Ares the God of War. However, director Jonathan Leibesman devotes no time as to why Ares turns on his brethren. More time for explosions that way.

Similarly, though Sam Worthington once more essays the role of Perseus, it’s a Perseus who has no time for philosophical debates as to whether or not mortals owe anything to the gods, who, as Shakespeare more or less said, use them for their sport. Perseus gathers an army and proceeds to fight against the minions of Hades until he beats him. The End.

In contrast, Tarsem Singh's IMMORTALS must make a little more effort to provide a setup, for it’s presenting its first-time take on the adventures of the hero Theseus, who like Perseus finds himself caught between a clash of gods and Titans. However, the script provides little in the way of continuity or explication, so that as with WRATH the audience gets what amounts to a big-screen video game.

Most of the scenes in IMMORTALS Theseus feel cribbed either from Letterier’s CLASH or from Zack Snyder’s 300. Theseus—who in Greek mythology was the son of a mortal woman by Poseidon—is simply a mortal bastard who may or may not have been sired by a god. In the humble village where he is raised, the other peasants believe him the sire of soldiers who raped his mother. Theseus’ mother is a believer in the gods while her son is a skeptic. And though she’s right about the existence of the gods, in contrast to the real myths the gods barely interact with mortals. Zeus takes an interest in Theseus for his courage and fearlessness. But Zeus has a strict non-interference policy: gods are not supposed to interfere in the affairs of mortals unless the gods face danger from the peril of the Titans.

Hyperion, leader of a band of non-Greeks given the odd name of “Heraklions,” wishes to lay waste to the Greek nation not only by force of mortal arms but also by releasing the Titans from their rocky tomb. To do this he needs a magical god-weapon called the Bow of Epirus—supposedly forged by Herakles, who in real myth wasn’t exactly known for blacksmithing—with which he can blast open the Titans’ prison. One of Hyperion’s forays takes him to Theseus’ village, where he cuts the throat of the hero’s mother and sentences Theseus to the salt mines. In essence he becomes a symbolic “evil father” like the figure of Acrisius/Calibos in CLASH. However, Hyperion’s obsession with destroying the Greeks is given no more depth than the Persians’ lust for conquest in the Snyder 300.

Transitions take place with no regard for continuity. The oracle Phaedra—love-interest to Theseus, who somehow meets her on his way to the salt-mines—advises Thesesus to venerate his dead mother by going back to the village and burying his mother. This is one of the few sequences where the characters seem like archaic Greeks, reminding one of the Greek horror toward leaving the dead unburied seen in ANTIGONE. But the only real reason the sequence exists is so that he can discover the Epirus Bow hidden in a big rock inside the burial crypt. Who put it there? Was it supposed to be a test of Theseus’faith, which he passed by burying his mother? The script doesn’t bother to say.

Similarly, though logically one might expect Zeus to want to blast with lightning an impious mortal for seeking to free the Titans, instead Zeus wants Theseus to do the deed without help from the gods. To that end Zeus will even kill his own deific family members if they transgress his non-interference policy, though conveniently for the script, Zeus lets some of the gods help Theseus out of tough spots before the thunder-god lays down the law. This seems like a long way to go just to see a particular mortal accomplish his heroic goals—though to be sure, this is in line with IMMORTALS’ clumsy theme: that heroes’ glorious deeds are the only true source of “immortality.”

At some point Hyperion gets the Epirus Bow and approaches the walled city that bars his way to the Titans’ prison. Hyperion and Theseus face off in a pre-battle negotiation of terms, during which Hyperion plays Darth Vader and invites the hero to come over to his dark side, without success. The city’s ruling council is filled with the usual prating politicians seen in 300, and Theseus is forced to override them in order to lead the soldiers into battle with Hyperion’s forces. The battle even employs a version of the Spartan “hot gates” strategy from the Snyder film.

There follows a big battle involving mortals, gods and Titans, but Singh takes a mechanical approach to the battles, apparently emulating 300’s similar fight-choreography. For me this is the polar opposite of the kind of visceral thrills adventure-films should offer, and Singh succeds in this department even less than Zack Snyder in 300.

IMMORTALS outclasses WRATH in making some attempt at a theme. But the later film bungles it so badly that the comparison becomes moot.

THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (2012)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*

Prior to viewing THE HOBBIT I was very skeptical about Peter Jackson's overarching game plan, to adapt the orginal Tolkien work into three movies-- all of which, one presumes, will come close to three hours in length, as the first one was.

I enjoyed Jackson's LORD OF THE RINGS, but that was after all a very different animal: a true literary epic that required such treatment. I was less than enchanted with Jackson's 2005 take on KING KONG, which was crass and self-indulgent in its reinterpretation of an original film whose charm lay partly in its economy and simplicity. The Jackson KONG was a good hour longer than it needed to be, full of unnecessarily padded scenes that (I presume) padded some filmmakers' bank accounts as well.

However, despite my initial feelings, and some negative reviews taking issue with Jackson's deviations from the Canon of Tolkien, I largely enjoyed the first installment of THE HOBBIT-- though with the caveat that I didn't re-read the Tolkien book ahead of time, which may have helped me judge the movie on its own terms.

On one level, HOBBIT is one of the few adventure-films of this current decade that went the extra mile in terms of knocking out the audience's eyes with wild stunts and lively comic relief. I'm current on most of the big splashy adventure-films, but I haven't such a superfluity of stunts since 1980's RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Even the same-year AVENGERS, which keeps the action fast and furious, lost some steam whenever it was obliged to do the characterization scenes.

On a second level, Jackson and his collaborators have continued to profit from the lessons learned in adapting the RINGS films. Rare today is the film (in any genre) that has a composed, painterly look to it, where the visuals are meant to convey a dominant mood as well as basic storytelling info. Of course it goes without saying that Jackson might not have pursued this course if he didn't have to deal with decades of Tolkien-fans who demand a special visual "look" to the author's world. Certainly he wasn't terribly "painterly" when he directed KING KONG. Nevertheless, both natural scenery and CGI enhancements evoke a world where, in keeping with Tolkien, the mundane and the fantastic reinforce and comment upon one another.

I mentioned that I found the comic relief lively, and I did. If the film had any large flaw, it might be that on occasion Jackson allowed the humor to take over at inappropriate moments.

That's not to say that the film lacks philosophical depth, though. The core relationship of the film-- that of Gandalf (Ian McKellen) and Frodo (Martin Freeman)-- must be strong as the oaken shield of Thorinn in order to convince the audience that Gandalf has good reason to drag the reluctant hobbit into danger. Of course both in book and movie, Bilbo must go because the author needs him to do so, but in contrast to many Tolkien imitators, the reluctant hero's acquiescence proceeds out of his own secret love of adventure, rather than in compliance to a villain's depredations or the like.

I may still re-read the book to ferret out which scenes were completely invented by Jackson, probably for the purpose of padding his new "trilogy." But on the whole I feel Jackson gave audiences a fantasy-world strong enough to stand on its own, no matter how much it deviates from its source in Tolkien.

MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET (1947), BABES IN TOYLAND (1961)

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


In deference to the season, I feel I ought to chime in on the classic MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET.  As a perennial favorite, MIRACLE needs no championing. Like the famous 1897 essay on the same theme-- "Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus"-- MIRACLE uses the ideal of Santa Claus to comment upon the tendency of adults to devalue what Jung called "the fantasy principle" in human culture, particularly as it bears on the raising of children.

Unlike dozens of overt fantasy-films that present all the mythology of Santa Claus as objectively real, the script by writer-director George Seaton allows the audience to disbelieve in the "miracle" for the majority of the film's running-time-- and then throws in a final punchline that validates the truth of the prized fantasy. 

I need not reiterate the usual compliments on Edmund Gwenn's note-perfect rendition of Santa Claus, who's all the more believable for being more feisty than most other versions.  John Payne and a gradeschool Natalie Wood turn in fine performances, as do a host of solid support-characters.  Maureen O'Hara is the real surprise here, though.  As Doris, the mother who tries to rear her child  without the delusions of fantasy, O'Hara must represent the "reality principle" in a way that makes her credible and appealing even though she will be proven wrong. In most of her film-roles O'Hara, though a fine example of Classic Hollywood glamour, does not really distinguish herself as being to deliver more than standard characterizations.  Here she impresses one as a fully fleshed-out human being.

Writer-director George Seaton's script is the real star, though.  While the idea came from a prose short-story, Seaton provides a continuous sense of verisimilitude dealing with the mundane details regarding the way harried adults deal with real life pressures.  Two adult methods for dealing with stress in the period-- booze and psychology-- are strongly referenced.  Two minor characters get comically drunk, while the villain of the tale, the heartless Sawyer, entertains himself by preying on the gullible young clerk Alfred by manipulating the naive fellow with psuedo-psychological pronouncements.  In a sense Sawyer is the negative image of Doris, a type of character oriented on trying to "save" others with her understanding of empirical psychology.  Seaton is also extremely strong in terms of providing motivation and just enough backstory to keep the characters' action credible even in the plot's unusual situation.

ADDENDUM 9-6-17: For some rime I've been meaning to amend my original finding, that MIRACLE possesses a marvelous phenomenality. On reconsideration, I've decided that while *something* unusual seems to be going on with Kris Kringle, there's not a full commitment to the proposition that he's the real Santa Claus, with elves and reindeer and all the rest. Since it's unclear as to the provenance of Kringle's strange proclivities, I've decided to assess the film as "uncanny" through its use of the "phantasmal figurations" trope.

In contrast, Disney's 1961 BABES IN TOYLAND is not likely to become a perennial anything, despite its incidental Xmas theme. Even a profoundly silly film like SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS-- which would be one of the overt Santa-films referenced above-- still sticks closer to the theme of Christmas.

The original source of Disney's tale was a 1903 operetta by Victor Herbet, concocted to compete with the contemporaneous success of a stage-play derived from L. Frank Baum's THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ.  I've no acquaintance with any version of the operetta but those adapted to the cinema, but I noticed while watching the 1961 film that it had no concept of a unified fantasy-world.  A city inhabited by characters out of Mother Goose poems exists on the periphery of a "forest of no return," which effectively keeps all of the "Goose-ites" from ever knowing about "Toyland" on the forest's other side.  This resembles what little I know of Baum's approach to fantasy, where odd societies appear chock-a-block on top of one another, with little or no attention to their historical evolution.

The first half of Disney's BABES sticks close to the Mother Goose-town, where the only marvelous entity is Mother Goose's talking pet goose.  Otherwise everything sticks close to the standard operetta-schtick of Young Man Protecting His Beloved from an Evil Old Rich Man-- in this case, "Tom Tom the Piper's Son" (Tommy Sands) protecting Mary Mary Quite Contrary (Annette Funicello) from the advances of the evil Barnaby (Ray Bolger)-- though to be sure, this version of Barnaby has no lustful interest in Mary herself; only in an inheritance to which she's entitled.

Barnaby pays two inept henchmen, Gonzorgo and Rodrigo, to get Tom out of the picture, but they bungle the job and Tom returns to his town and reclaims Mary.  However, one of Barnaby's other schemes to undo Mary's fortunes succeeds, forcing Tom and Mary to go looking for their lost sheep in the Forest of No Return.  After a rather tedious encounter with talking trees-- presumably derived from similar figures in the Baum story-- the heroes are conducted to the town of Toyland, ruled by a dotty old mayor, a sort of Santa Claus manqué called "the Toymaker."  The Toymaker's apprentice Grumio concocts various bizarre inventions, one of which blows up all of the toys intended for children (though apparently not those outside Toyland, since none of the main characters know of the Toymaker's raison d'etre).  Tom, Mary and some of their kid-followers offer to pitch in and make new toys, which is about all the Christmas theme this film can support.

The story quickly rushes back to the operetta-format, for Barnaby and his bumbling accomplices have followed Tom and Mary.  Barnaby gets ahold of a shrinking-ray invented by Grumio and uses it to shrink Tom and the Toymaker.  He forces the Toymaker to officiate a marriage between himself and Mary, but Tom foils him by leading a militia of toy soldiers against Barnaby.  Mary finally makes herself useful by turning the shrink-ray on Barnaby, reducing him to Tom's side so that the two males can have a (nonfatal) duel in approved operetta tradition.  Of course Mary could have just stepped on the miniaturized villain, but maybe that would have destroyed whatever alleged suspense one could derive from BABES.

Aside from Victor Herbert's famous song "I Can't Do the Sum," the music is forgettable, and Disney's dance-routines are no better.  The romantic leads are typically simpering and uninteresting, leaving Bolger-- playing a comic villain much like Disney's version of Captain Hook-- as the only player who can get some fun out of his character.  Bolger performs a few adroit dance-routines, though to be sure, none of them are a patch on his classic work for 1939's THE WIZARD OF OZ.

I've not had a chance to compare this version with the better regarded 1934 film, featuring Laurel and Hardy in the roles of the bungling henchmen.  Oddly, the Disney film casts two actors to look much like the earlier actors, but omits one of the more interesting ideas of the earlier film, in which the toy soldiers are life-size, as I presume they were in the stage play.

[NOTE: I later researched the operetta somewhat, and see no indication that the original stageplay had anything comparable to the giant toy soldiers of the 1934 film, much less the shrink-ray of the Disney effort.]

Most of the comedy is unfunny, aside from one of the Toymaker's lines.  When forced to utter the line to Mary, "Do you take this man to be your husband," he follows up her assent with the comment, "I took him to be your grandfather."

WILD THING (1987), EASY WHEELS (1989)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: (1) *adventure,* (2) *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

Here we have two modern-day meditations on the idea of the “feral child.”  In all likelihood most fantasy-film concordances would leave out both of them, since they contain no marvelous content.  To be sure, there are a fair number of feral-child films—notably Francoise Truffaut’s THE WILD CHILD—that remain confined to the level of the naturalistic.  But both WILD THING and EASY WHEELS transform the mundane nature of their environments by the intrusion of an uncanny figure.  One qualifies largely in terms of the "outre outfits skills and devices" trope, while the other fits the "weird families and societies" trope.

WILD THING, scripted by the renowned John Sayles, is clearly a tongue-in-cheek meditation on the Tarzan mythos—though not so invested in humor as to become a comedy.  The character of “Wild Thing”—who never receives any other name—begins as the small child of a hippie couple.  The child's parents are killed by a crime boss and his policeman stooge.  The kid sees a tattoo on the hand of the head crook, which will later lead to a vengeful confrontation, just as Tarzan has to wait for maturity until he can take revenge on the great ape that kills his father.  In contrast to the Burroughs book, though, there are never any quasi-Freudian aspects to the conflict. 

Instead of being raised by apes, Wild Thing is raised by streetpeople, chiefly by Leah, an addled bag-woman who teaches him to avoid all authority, which she refers to as “the Company.”  She’s been victimized by electroshock in an asylum, causing her to rave about how the Company tries to make everyone alike.  This theme isn’t pursued in detail.  Leah perishes during Wild Thing’s childhood just as Tarzan’s foster-mother dies, both having lived long enough to make it probable that the feral child can pursue his own Rousseau-esque existence.

Roaming about the rooftops of the city (which take the place of jungle-trees), Wild Thing becomes a legend to the land-bound inhabitants. The superstition even becomes incorporated into the local culture as a “rite of passage.”  When young Rasheem wants to join a gang of his fellow Afro-Americans (taking the place of jungle-tribes in the Tarzan books), the gang initiates the boy by tying him to a lamppost at night, to see if he has the courage to meet the Wild Thing.  Instead, Rasheem meets a lady social worker by the name of Jane (of course), and both of them are pursued by the hoods of a crime-boss named Chopper.  Rasheem gets away but Jane must be saved by the intervention of the legend himself.

Much of the time, Wild Thing (Rob Knepper) follows the model of Tarzan in cavorting around with minimal clothing.  He doesn’t command animals, though a cat follows him around, giving rise to a legend somewhat credenced by both black and white locals: that Wild Thing can change into a cat.  Through various misadventures Wild Thing romances Jane, learns that Chopper is the man responsible for his parents’ deaths, and takes the appropriate revenge.

WILD THING is by no means a high-energy adventure: the hero only has a handful of battles, and neither the villain nor the hero’s fights against his forces are impressive.  The film does have some winsome moments, as when Jane initiates Wild Thing in the mysteries of sex, or in the many scenes in which Sayles embraces the individualistic weirdness of the street-culture.  However, at no point is it any competition for Sayles’ better film on this theme, THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET.

EASY WHEELS also has the feel of a romp, though it’s more purely a comic take on the nearly extinct genre of the biker-film.  Many of these films pit destructive, hell-bent-for-leather “bad bikers” against relatively “good” riders of the open road, and EASY WHEELS takes one cue from these.  It also takes a cue from a handful of female-biker films, though most if not all of these stick close to the naturalistic.

EASY’s one touch of the metaphenomenal hinges upon its main (and villainous) character, She-Wolf (Eileen Davidson), for she’s presented as a feral child raised by wolves.  Her background doesn't give She-Wolf any special abilities or cause her to wear unusual attire, but her experience with the wolves somehow convinces her to found her own tribe of lesbian warriors, apparently modeled on the example of the archaic Amazons.  The film spends no time with questions as to how She-Wolf became a functioning human being, or how she gathered together a gang of lesbian bikers.  In contrast to the matriarchal Amazons, who slept with men from other tribes in order to spawn girl babies—while getting rid of the boys along the way—She-Wolf’s group sells the boy babies to black-market adoption agencies and plans to raise the girls to found their new nation under Lesbos.

As noted above, all of this is pursued in very light-hearted fashion. In deference to the growth of “tough girls” in the movies of the 1980s, all of the biker-amazons are as tough as nails, and they pretty much ride roughshod over all of their opponents, including a gang of goodguy male bikers, known as the Bourne Losers, and led by "Bruce" (Paul Le Mat).  She-Wolf’s only vulnerability is that she falls in love with Bruce. In order to scratch this unexpected hetero itch, She-Wolf convinces her lesbo buddies to emulate the ancient Amazons and have a mass orgy with the guys, purely to produce some girl babies of their own.  The lesbians find out about She-Wolf’s “fbrbidden love” and force her to return to baby-stealing, thus setting up the final battle—which the guys only win by dumb luck.

EASY WHEELS is largely enjoyable for its slapstick fight-scenes and the minor wit of its setup.  Despite the mentions of lesbianism this is at best a PG film, most of which could run unedited on any mainstream TV channel.  One of its scripters was Sam Raimi, who would become bettter known as a director and as a producer for a much better-known amazon-adventure, 1995's XENA WARRIOR PRINCESS.