FIREFOX (1982)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*


This Cold War spy-drama was adapted from a novel I've not read, by one Craig Thomas, an early innovator in the subgenre of "techno-thrillers." I found the film version pretty much bereft of thrills, as it's directed by star Clint Eastwood with a leaden hand.  For my theory the sole interest of FIREFOX is that it's the closest superstar Eastwood has ever got to what I've called the "superhero idiom."

Unlike the generation of action-stars who followed Eastwood-- principally Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and Willis-- Eastwood largely stayed away from "metaphenomenal cinema" once he attained stardom.  Prior to FIREFOX, his best-known metaphenomenal exploit was that of playing the unnamed "jet squadron leader" who destroys the big spider of 1955's TARANTULA. After becoming a star, Eastwood characters sometimes fought psychotic villains, but they were of a naturalistic streak, whether they manifested as stalkers like the female psycho of 1971's PLAY MISTY FOR ME or the master assassin in 1993's IN THE LINE OF FIRE.  HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER presents a mixed bag in that the film suggests that Eastwood's avenging hero may be a ghost returned from death, though apparently this was not the original intention of the script.

The titular Firefox is a revolutionary new Soviet plane gifted with super-technology, in that it can become invisible to radar and can respond to the pilot's direct thought-impulses.  In a plotline better done in the STAR TREK episode "The Enterprise Incident," the Americans send Russian-speaking Air Force veteran Mitchell Gant (Eastwood) into Soviet territory.  Gant masquerades as a Soviet pilot in order to gain access to the Firefox project.  He is aided in this by Soviet dissidents, most notably those of Jewish extraction.  At one point Gant asks one of them if he isn't angry at how the U.S. uses him, knowing that the dissidents involved will probably die.  However, the fellow thinks it's worth it to take a shot at the evil KGB.

The film's emphasis on suspense over action leads me to label it a "drama" rather than an "adventure," even though there's precious little of the sort of personality conflict that usually dominates drama.  Gant has been traumatized by his experiences in Vietnam, symbolized by his regret at having seen an innocent young Vietnamese girl perish. His antipathy for killing-- perhaps intended as a change from hardasses like Dirty Harry-- causes him to miss the chance to kill a Soviet officer named Voskov.  Later, when Gant successfully steals the Firefox, Voskov follows Gant in a second Firefox-prototype.  This results in the film's one moderately strong action-sequence, in which Gant triumphs.  The film certainly intends the narrative to build to this clash, making it a "combative drama."  But there's no real emotional payoff, either in terms of Gant's emnity for Voskov or in terms of his purging his personal demons.

Oddly, in the latter part of the same year, 1982's FIRST BLOOD would introduce to film audiences a much more popular Commie-fighting hero, the redoubtable John Rambo.  Eastwood was certainly pursuing some anti-Communist themes here, but in his quest to keep things relatively realistic, he sapped his storyline of any potential for either high adventure or suspenseful skullduggery.

KONGA (1961), THE BLACK SLEEP (1956)

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


Here we have two fairly typical "mad doctor" films.  I only give THE BLACK SLEEP a "fair" rating in terms of mythic symbolism because of some suggestive psychological content, though I don't think the film evokes that content as well as, say, a similar 1950s mad-science film like THE SON OF DR. JEKYLL.

KONGA is, without a doubt, a fun film, in spite of John Lemont's direction, which I found pedestrian even when he was trying to be saucy.  Happily the script-- co-written by producer Herman Cohen and frequent collaborator Aben Kandel-- keeps the action percolating along.

This was Cohen's second outing with star Michael Gough, previously in 1959'S HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM.  Gough gives a good performance as the obsessed Doctor Decker, who will stop at nothing to test his unique theories on producing gigantized forms of life.  There's not much depth to Decker, though, even in comparison to a simple figure like Prof. Deemer in 1955's TARANTULA.  Decker, after having been lost in Africa for months, returns to his native England, bringing with him a baby chimpanzee and two drugs.  One drug will promote amazing levels of growth, allowing Decker to mutate the chimp into a gorilla (!), whom Decker dubs Konga.  The other drug gives Decker the power to control Konga mentally, which comes in handy when Decker wants to kill various enemies.

Decker's first proxy-murder is quickly discovered by his lab assistant Margaret, a woman of mature years. Margaret, though horrified by the crime, has been in love with Decker for years, and puts aside her scruples in order to blackmail Decker into marrying her.  Surprisingly, Decker doesn't simply sic Konga on her, but allows Margaret to hang around while Decker pursues a more tantalizing female-- his busty young student Sandra.  Sandra, as portrayed by Claire Gordon (above), is probably one of the least likely females ever to profess an interest in science.  But though her close student-teacher relationship with Decker irks her boyfriend Bob, Sandra registers only shock when Decker finally makes a move-- very much in contrast to the young golddigger who takes up with older man Vincent Price in Cohen's DIARY OF A MADMAN.  Decker's pass at Sandra aggravates Margaret into giving Konga extra doses of growth drug in order to turn the giant gorilla against Decker.  Instead, both she and the rogue scientist meet their dooms, as does Sandra-- though she perishes in the mad doctor's garden of man-eating plants.

Since the bestial Konga is in no way a "character" the way his namesake was, the only mythic symbolism here is the idea of the "white man who brings back secrets from the dark pagan continent."  This motif is somewhat evoked by Decker's curious decision to create a garden of evil plants in his English laboratory, but the script doesn't pursue racial myths.  Indeed, the only time Decker talks about the culture of the Africans whom the doctor met during his sojourn, he characterizes them as decent people who like to dance a lot.  And no, I don't think that was necessarily a negative stereotype: it was probably just tossed in because Decker shows a few home-movies of the Africans dancing.  The line was probably dictated by whatever film-footage the producers had available.

THE BLACK SLEEP doesn't move along as briskly as KONGA, but it does deliver a more coherent story.  Young Doctor Ramsey (Herbert Rudley), about to be executed for a crime he didn't commit, is rescued from the hangman by Doctor Joel Cadman (Basil Rathbone).  Cadman slips Ramsey a drug-- the "Black Sleep" of the title-- that causes Ramsey to fall into a deathlike coma.  Cadman then acquires Ramsey's supposedly dead body, substitutes rocks in the official casket, and restores Ramsey to life.  Cadman wants Ramsey to assist him in his surgical procedures at his private estate.  Ramsey is so grateful to have had his sentence commuted on any terms that he agrees, even though he sees that Cadman has a relationship with a scuzzy bodysnatcher named Odo (Akim Tamiroff).

Ramsey finds Cadman's estate somewhat less than aseptic.  Shortly after meeting Cadman's mute butler (Bela Lugosi), Ramsey witnesses Cadman's young nurse Laurie (Patricia Blair) being chased into the foyer by a hulking, moronic-looking fellow named Mungo (Lon Chaney Jr).  Ramsey can't stop this behemoth, but Cadman's other nurse-- an older woman named Daphne-- is able to command Mungo to halt and go away.  Ramsey questions why Cadman allows the demented man to roam the halls of his house, and Cadman really doesn't give him much of an answer.

The audience is then made privy to another occupant of the house whom Ramsey does not meet: Cadman's beloved wife Angelina, a woman rendered comatose by a "brain malignancy."  The audience sees that Cadman is entirely obsessed with finding a technique that will revive her, and also that Daphne conceals an unrequited affection for her doctor-master.

It doesn't take long for Cadman to show his true colors during Ramsey's first surgical collaboration with the mad doctor.  Further, Mungo makes another attack on Laurie, and it's specified that he only attacks her.  In true "each man kills the thing he loves" tradition, Laurie reveals to Ramsey that Mungo is her father.  Under the name "Doctor Monroe"-- a man Ramsey knew slightly before Monroe was mutated into "Mungo"-- the physician came to Cadman for help with a malady.  Cadman did to Monroe what he did to many others; experimented on him in a way that left Monroe a near-mindless creature.  Further, Ramsey also makes other discoveries: that Cadman's house conceals a dungeon full of other failed experiments-- and that Cadman is actually indirectly responsible for the murder for which Ramsey was sentenced.  The film comes to a feverish conclusion as the freaks-- including genre stalwarts John Carradine and Tor Johnson-- break out of their dungeon and bring about the death of Doctor Cadman. Moments later the British police appear to clean up the mess and clear Ramsey's name so that he and Laurie have a future together. Conveniently, mad Mungo is also killed by the freaks, so that Ramsey doesn't have to worry about a father-in-law prone to strangling either him or his wife.

Though Rudley has the unenviable task of playing the noble "straight man" as against all the featured horror-actors, he gives a performance just as strong as Rathbone's, a rare occurence in films pitting earnest young men against obsessed mad doctors.  Though BLACK SLEEP isn't usually deemed one of the best films in Rathbone's repertoire, I consider SLEEP one of the actor's best performances.  When Ramsey reviles Cadman for his heartless experiments, Cadman shows a flash of conscience, and even shows Ramsey the comatose body of Angelina to prove that he Cadman did it all for love. The script even gives Cadman a minor humanizing trait in that he tells ferociously bad jokes. 

The cosmological theme is pursued more here than in KONGA, as the script communicates some of the mysteries of the human body, which can be revealed-- or perverted-- by science.  But more appealing is the odd doubling of psychological roles.  Both Cadman and Mungo are paternal imagos, while both Daphne and the comatose Angelina are maternal ones.  Though Mungo's wife is long dead, Daphne is able to control the monster (Ramsey theorizes) because Daphne suggests to Mungo the "image" of his wife.  But then, why does the demented Mungo seek to kill his daughter?  Here too we venture into the waters of "Freudian ambivalence," but it must be admitted that the film doesn't ever seek to answer the question, so the venture can only be in the shallow end of the pool.

Though 1948's ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN is correctl viewed as the proper sendoff of the "monster rally" films of the 1940s, BLACK SLEEP makes at least an interesting footnote to the trend, even if one wishes that Lugosi, Carradine, and even Johnson had received more substantial roles.

 

FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED (1969)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *irony*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological, sociological, psychological*


The Hammer Frankenstein films never attempted to maintain a strong continuity, and this one, the fifth in the series, is no exception.  But thematically DESTROYED does keep better continuity with the original film, 1957's CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, than it does with the fourth in the series, 1967's FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN.

In my review of CURSE, I pointed out that the main plotline concerns a Faust-like theme, in that Frankenstein is a beguiling Mephisto who lures his slightly older tutor Paul into evil.  This time, Frankenstein is an older man who blackmails two younger people into serving his ends.

DESTROYED opens in an action-packed manner. Frankenstein-- wearing a face-mask that is perhaps designed to conceal his identity, though it doesn't look like a person's real face-- fights with a thief who intrudes on his secret laboratory.  The thief escapes the mad scientist and tells the police what he's seen.  Frankenstein gets away from the cops but needs a new place to conduct his experiments.  His main reason for being in this vaguely Germanic locale (the country's never named but most characters have names like "Richter," "Frisch," and "Spengler") is to seek out another scientist, a Doctor Brandt. Brandt, who corresponded with Frankenstein, discovered a special brain-transplant technique that Frankenstein wants for his own purposes.  However, since corresponding with Frankenstein Brandt has gone insane and has been confined to an asylum.

Under an assumed name the mad scientist takes a room at a boarding-house.  It's not clear whether he does so knowing that the house's owner Anna Spengler has a boyfriend, Karl, who works at the asylum.  But even if Frankenstein has such foreknowledge, he lucks out hugely when he overhears a conversation between Karl and Anna which incriminates them in selling drugs.  They're doing so for a sympathetic reason-- to make enough money to care for Anna's ailing-and-never-seen mother.  Frankenstein cares nothing for the couple's motives; he insists that they obey his commands, which include smuggling the insane Brandt out of the asylum at night.  Frankenstein wants that vital information, and apparently the only way he can get it-- though the logic eluded me at this point-- is to transfer Brandt's brain into another body.  Again with Karl's help, Frankenstein harvests the body of a Dr. Richter, scoops out Richter's brain and transplants that of Brandt.  It works insofar as eventually the hybrid creation does take on the full intelligence of Brandt, though understandably he resents being in a new body. 

Frankenstein's little empire is doomed, however, as the cops continue to follow his trail. Brandt's wife happens to spot Frankenstein on the street and follows him to his domicile.  From there one calamity after another transpires.  Brandt escapes the lab even though Anna, stricken with fear from his chop-topped skull, stabs him nonfatally.  Anna makes the mistake of telling Frankenstein what she did, and the enraged scientist kills her.  This eventually precipitates a battle between Karl and the scientist, but Karl loses out.  However, Brandt-- having realized what a freak he's become after he tries to approach his wife-- confronts Frankenstein in the boarding-house and sets the house on fire, daring him to brave the fire to gain the papers containing the vital info Victor wants.  Frankenstein almost manages to escape with his prize, but Brandt overtakes him and drags him into the flames.  One could imagine that this version of Frankenstein does die, since the next entry in the series is a remake of CURSE.

Though the director was Terence Fisher, who had also helmed CURSE, the two credited writers had far less experience with scripting than with duties like producing or directing.  Still, just as Frankenstein again appears in a Mephisto-like role, he also appears with much the same motives as in CURSE.  He claims that what he's interested in is scientific progress, for in one scene he disparages a group of English clubmen who know nothing about science.  However, it's clear that his dream of using brain-transplants to preserve the collected knowledge of "men of genius" has nothing to do with improving human life.  It's merely his own ego in action, his attempt to forge a method by which he, being a man of genius, will enjoy immortality.

The film also contains a controversial scene in which Frankenstein rapes Anna at night, an incident which Anna conceals from Karl.  This extraneous scene was allegedly inserted on the insistence of producer James Carreras, who wanted "more sex" in the picture.  However, though the scene is unpleasant to watch, it does fit with the nature of Frankenstein's character established in CURSE.  In that film, Frankenstein was just as ruthless with a sexual partner like Justine as with his other victims.  Thus it's not unlikely that Frankenstein would have the temerity to simply slake his sexual thirsts on any helpless victim he could-- which also puts the lie to his sophistry about scientific "progress."

THE FACE OF FU MANCHU (1965)

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

The only literary virtue of racist fictions is that they give the writers a motivation to create the most delirious forms of evil they can imagine, and then project them onto the representatives of what has been termed (rather simplistically) “the Other.”  Some critics would argue either that the virtue is either non-existent or that it matters little in the face of its moral consequences: that of encouraging bigotry against cultural outsiders on the grounds of race, religion, or ethnicity.  I’ll note the partial validity of the latter position, and will admit that I probably would not enjoy the “Yellow Peril” stories of Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu as much as I do were I an Asian.  Nevertheless, Rohmer’s famous character is a little more than just a racist fiction, for Rohmer also made him a superlative genius and a more complex personality than any of his other, rather stereotypical characters.

FACE OF FU MANCHU, directed by Don Sharp, was the first time a film-producer sought to bring out a series of Fu Manchu films since the early 1930s.  In my review of THE MYSTERIOUS DR. FU MANCHU I noted that the first of that early series lacked Rohmer’s pulpish extravagance.  FACE, the first film in a series by European producer Harry Alan Towers, lacks that extravagance as well, but at least that’s not because the Towers film tries to be more melodrama-based.

FACE's script is credited to Towers-- who used a pseudonym for all of his credits-- and it does maintain the structure of a Rohmer novel, which is generally much like a film-serial.  The vllain wants something, the heroes try to prevent his getting it, mix and repeat.  In this case the villainous Fu Manchu seeks a way to cultivate an unstoppable death-drug from the flowers of the Tibetan Black Lotus.  But he cannot obtain the secret from the Tibetans, who apparently refuse to give it to him: instead, he must seek out Western intellectuals who have gleaned the secret.  This was a common Rohmer ploy, as it forced the insidious Chinese “devil-doctor” and his largely Asian servants to infiltrate the worlds of Caucasian culture.

Some enthusiasts of the Towers series find this initial outing to be the best offering.  FACE does move smartly along from plot-point to plot-point, and unlike some later entries in the series, it generally makes sense as far as establishing Fu Manchu’s next goal (he gets the professor who can distill the death-drug from the Lotus, but then he needs certain research papers, etc.).  Fu Manchu is, however, a rather flat character here, despite being granted a formidable presence by actor Christopher Lee.  Towers makes him the period equivalent of a terrorist, willing to annihilate huge quantities of innocents in order to achieve his goal of world domination.  Rohmer’s Fu Manchu was subtler in his bids for power.  No doubt Towers chose this direction because he was trying for something comparable to the contemporaneous James Bond series, in which the superspy was often pitted against super-villain-like threats.

Set more or less in the early half of the 20^th century, FACE has the advantage of not having to contend with modern views-- though when hero Nayland Smith raises the possibility that Fu Manchu may have returned, his friend Petrie replies scathingly, “Oh, not the Yellow Peril again,” as if to distance the film from reality by evoking the stereotype.  In the more extravagant novels Fu Manchu is often associated with all manner of virulent diseases and vile crawling things, but here the Black Lotus is the only natural peril the devil-doctor employs, meaning that the “technology” of this film only achieves an “uncanny” status.  The same status applies to Fu Manchu’s power of hypnotism.  He’s seen here as having the Dracula-like ability to mesmerize complete strangers instantly.  The audience sees him do this once, and it’s implied that he does so at the film’s beginning to force a pawn to take his place beneath an executioner’s axe—surely the film’s most arresting sequence.

Though Towers’ script doesn’t conjure the level of delirium seen in 1932’s MASK OF FU MANCHU, there are some intriguing moments.  Fu Manchu makes his London hideout beneath the River Thames, and the script constantly ties his activities to the river.  Towers’ purpose is certainly to provide clues that lead Nayland Smith to his quarry, but the repeated emphasis also gives Fu the quality of a chthonic death-god, dwelling beneath the streets (and consciousness) of mundane Britishers.  Most of Fu’s servants are Asian thugs with no personality, though as in the novels the villain does use Europeans, with his most prominent non-Asian servant going by the strangely Hindu name of “Hanuman.”

The film also may have borrowed a scene of sadistic content from MASK OF FU MANCHU.  In that film Fu Manchu’s daughter has a man tortured with whips in order to bend him to her erotic will.  In FACE, the devil-doctor’s daughter—given the name “Lin Tang”—specifically asks her father for permission to whip a disobedient female servant, because Lin Tang “likes” her.  Towers allows the audience to lead up to the sadistic act, and then cuts it off when Fu Manchu conveniently decides to drown the female servant instead.  But clearly Towers wants to remind the audience of the Yellow Peril’s penchant for unthinkable tortures.

Aside from Towers’ tendency to “dumb down” the persona of Fu Manchu into a standard super-villain, the first movie has one other sizeable difference from the Rohmer books. Usually, whenever Fu Manchu’s devious plans are undone by Nayland Smith, the villain and his aides simply melt into the English fog, as if they are spirits able to whisk their way back to the mysterious Orient.  Once foiled, this Fu does the same, but in a lengthy coda, Nayland Smith actually follows the Insidious One back to the Orient—specifically, to Tibet, where Fu attempts to get the last Black Lotus seeds from a Tibetan monastery.  It’s far from clear as to whether the Tibetan occupants of the monastery are aware of Fu’s evil plans. At any rate Nayland Smith, anticipating later military ventures against terrorist-havens, blows up the whole monastery to rid the world of the menace of the Lotus seeds.  Today we would call any innocents caught in the blast “collateral damage.”  The main narrative purpose of the explosion is not so much to vilify “the Other”, though, but simply to provide a measure of closure.  Even by 1965 it was axiomatic that Fu Manchu himself would always escape death, and would return for another battle—which is the suggestion with which all of Tower’s FU MANCHU films conclude.  

                        

THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1957)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *irony*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological, sociological, psychological*

“… we [scientists] quickly tire of our discoveries.  We hand them over to people who are not ready for them—while we go off again into the darkness of ignorance—searching for other discoveries, which will be mishandled in just the same way.”—Doctor Bernstein, courtesy of CURSE scribe Jimmy Sangster.

While Hammer Studio's CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN happily stays away from updating its mad doctor’s technology with any products of the Atomic Age, it’s hard not to hear in these words a cautionary rebuke to the powers of science, especially at a time when nuclear disaster seemed poised like a Sword of Damocles over all civilization.  It’s probably also no coincidence that “Bernstein” has a nodding resemblance to the name of a man whom many consider the 20^th-century’s most famous scientist.

A DVD hype-snippet claims that CURSE is more true to the Mary Shelley novel than the 1931 Universal version.  In reality neither film is particularly close to the novel in terms of its structure or its author’s concerns.  Both the original sound FRANKENSTEIN and CURSE have their enthusiasts. I fall into the camp that finds that the Universal film translated more of the “essence” of the Shelley novel, while the Hammer version is more concerned with using the novel’s base concept as a template for a radically different endeavor.

First and foremost, CURSE is about emphasizing the creation of a new version of Victor Frankenstein, who, as many before me have observed, is the star of the show-- this being in contradistinction to the Universal “Frankenstein” series, where the Monster is usually the narrative focus.  CURSE is built around the formidable acting-abilities of star Peter Cushing, who had some degree of celebrity with British audiences of the time, though it was the Hammer horror-films that made him an international figure.  Co-star Christopher Lee, who essayed the role of the Monster, was elevated to similar status not much later, thanks to his memorable performance as the titular character of DRACULA.  Still, in CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN Lee’s Monster is always of secondary concern, given that the plot is primarily concerned with the madness and hypocrisy of Baron Frankenstein.

One of the greatest dissimilarities of CURSE to the Shelley novel is one shared by most film-adaptations: that Frankenstein is not the only person privy to the circumstances of his attempt to play God.  In the novel, the scientist suffers paroxyms of guilt at knowing that his creation is killing people right and left, though he’s never guilty enough to admit his transgression publicly.  But the cinematic medium practically begs for other characters to be let in on the monumental transgression, and CURSE is no exception, though this Frankenstein has but one witness to his perfidy: Paul Krempe, an older man who becomes Frankenstein’s tutor when the budding genius is in his teen years.

Sangster’s script shows little interest in the psychology of Baron Frankenstein: we never know just why he wants to create life.  The opening scenes suggest that he’s simply the precocious child of privilege, whose father has been dead ten years at the time young Victor meets Paul.  In addition, Frankenstein’s mother has just perished when Paul first comes to assume his tutorial duties, further suggesting that now young Victor is a child of privilege with no oversight—which, in a Hammer film, is practically a guarantee of disaster.

The relationship of Frankenstein and his tutor begins as something of a Mephistopheles-Faust interaction: Frankenstein convinces the older man to assist him in his experiments, which Paul thinks will be turned to the greater good of man.  He does not see that Baron Frankenstein cares nothing about mankind, not even the humanity of the maid he’s seeing on the side despite having accepted an engagement to his first cousin Elizabeth (Hazel Court).  When Paul finds out that Elizabeth has accepted this engagement, this proves the first wedge between him and Frankenstein, for Paul fancies Elizabeth himself.  He rebukes her for her acceptance of an arranged marriage, but he fails to dissuade her; implicitly, she regards the engagement as a honorable agreement between aristocrats—though there are no indications that she feels anything for Frankenstein but admiration.

Even when Frankenstein announces to Paul his plan to bring life to a composite man made of diverse parts, Paul doesn’t immediately break with the obsessed baron, even when he receives indications that Frankenstein has dealt with bodysnatchers to get the parts he wants.  The break comes when Paul rightly suspects that Frankenstein has killed the revered Doctor Bernstein in order to harvest his brain.  This quarrel effectively rewrites a key scene from the 1931 film, in which the Monster is given an inferior “criminal brain” by an inept servant.  In place of this now risible plotline, Paul and Frankenstein quarrel, and Paul’s violence damages the harvested brain of Bernstein. Frankenstein, unwilling to put off his triumph even for a time, uses the brain on his composite creation anyway.  The result is a ruthless killing machine, but Frankenstein blames Paul for creating the flaw in their collaborative creation—which is presumably the reason that Paul remains silent about its existence. 

When the creature first rises from its table—left unattended, as was the Monster in the Shelley novel—it immediately attacks its creator.  Paul managed to bash it unconscious with a chair, but it escapes again, and kills an old blind man—an unsympathetic rewrite of more sentimental scenes in both the novel and the 1935 BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN.  Paul and Frankenstein overtake the Monster, and Paul shoots it.  However, Frankenstein resuscitates it without Paul’s knowledge.

In my reading of the novel I harbored the suspicion that many of the people the Monster kills are people that, on some primitive level, Victor Frankenstein resented for one reason or another, so that in a sense the Monster is like an evil doppelganger, doing the things that Victor would not dare attempt.  However, the Frankenstein of CURSE is entirely conscious of using his feral creation to kill people he wants dead.  The maid Justine tells the Baron that she’s going to have his child, and threatens to expose his affair and his experiments to the greater public if he doesn’t marry her.  Frankenstein, who is a ruthless killing machine in his own right, lures her into the laboratory where he keeps the creature confined. After the Monster kills Justine—in a broad sense, replaying the novel-Monster’s transgression upon Frankenstein’s new bride—the Baron covers up Justine’s disappearance.  He continues to plan his marriage to Elizabeth, though he shows no more romantic interest in her than she in him, declining to romance her on the eve of their wedding because he’s busy experimenting with his solo creation—apparently a thing that means far more to him than any mere mortal offspring could.

However, before the wedding takes place, Paul returns to the manor, lured by his passion for Elizabeth.  Frankenstein, like a child still seeking the approval of an elder, can’t resist showing him that the Monster still lives, which results in yet another quarrel.  During this contretemps Elizabeth wanders up to Victor’s forbidden lab, where the Monster breaks its bonds and threatens her.  Frankenstein runs to see what’s going on, while Paul finally decides to expose the situation by running to the village for aid.  In self-defense Frankenstein is forced to shoot his creation, which takes a high fall and plunges into an acid bath that destroys the Monster’s body completely.

Though the conclusion is nothing like anything in the novel, it does get across the novel’s sense of febrile paranoia.  While the latter half of the novel is dominated by Frankenstein’s inability to admit the creature’s existence, the film’s conclusion inverts this.  Having been convicted for murder in the film’s framing-sequence, he tells his entire tale to a priest, and then tries to get the visiting Paul to confirm his story.  But Paul refuses to admit that the creature ever existed, save in Frankenstein’s demented imagination, so that the film ends with Frankenstein about to executed for murder.

The conceit is so well done—especially since Frankenstein really is the proximate cause of Justine’s murder—that one doesn’t stop to worry about how the law found Justine’s body in order to mount a prosecution of the Baron—or even why the Baron would have left a body around for someone to find, since he did have a handy acid bath with which to dispose of a stray corpse.  Surprisingly, Frankenstein does not plead to see Elizabeth, who also knows of the Monster’s existence: in the final scenes we see her with Paul, so she’s obviously decided to remain silent after Paul’s fashion, so that justice will be done and she can now marry the man who really loves her (though there aren’t very many indications that she really loved him).

When I originally saw CURSE, I didn’t care for its less sentimental treatment of the novel’s material, and on balance I still think that the 1931 film is the best adaptation.  However, I now have a greater appreciation of Sangster’s more mordant take on the subject matter.  Though other Frankenstein sequels followed—thus necessitating the Baron’s rescue from the guilloutine—this first film qualifies for the label of an “irony” rarher than a “drama”—since an irony describes a world where there can be no good outcome, except to the extent that the viewer can sit back and appreciate being in on the dark joke of life.

NOTE: I've seen some critics argue that Elizabeth remains ignorant of the monster's existence because she never quite catches sight of the creature before it falls into the acid bath. But this presupposes that somehow Paul is able to gull her with some sort of cock-and-bull story that glosses over Frankenstein's actual crimes-- and I find it really hard to believe that Sangster intended this to be the case.

HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS (1970), NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS (1971)

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

The teleseries DARK SHADOWS, which began in 1966 as a gothic soap-opera, became over the years sort of a dramatized encyclopedia of horror-motifs, managing to recapitulate the majority of the most famous tropes of popular terror-tales.  Though the character of Barnabas Collins was not the first monstrous presence to impinge upon the mansion of Collinwood, he quickly became a figure of cultish popularity.  Thus it’s logical that producer Dan Curtis, seeking to profit by spinning the series off into a theatrical film, should choose to focus upon the saga of Barnabas.

Like most soap operas DARK SHADOWS maintained a sizeable cast of characters, many of whom are packed into the movie like sardines.  HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS often felt to me like one of those Hong Kong movies that adapts a sprawling Chinese novel, introducing new characters in rapid-fire fashion.

With some alterations HOUSE keeps the essential family memberst of Collinwood: matriarch Elizabeth, her brother Roger, Roger’s grade-school age son David and Elizabeth’s grown daughter Carolyn.  Other major characters include Carolyn’s fiancée Todd, Maggie (governess to David), handyman-cum-vampiric-pawn Willie, Maggie’s boyfriend Jeff and two “friends of the family,” Professor Stokes and Dr. Julia Hoffman.  The latter two prove to be savants in the ways of vampires,  albeit with very different affiliations.

Into their midst comes Barnabas Collins.  Willie, looking for buried jewels, accidentally releases the undead Barnabas from a family mausoleum, so that Willie becomes this vampire’s “Renfield.” Barnabas is described in a theatrical trailer as “the head of this family of blood relations.”  For once the trailer-hype is psychologically apt.  Though Barnabas gains entrance to Collinwood by posing as a distant British relation, he’s actually the same Barnabas who lived 200 years ago, whose relation to his descendants is less a cousin and more of a “super-father.”  With remarkable celerity Barnabas talks himself into occupancy of the “old house” on the Collins estate, a deserted structure which was formerly Barnabas’s ancestral home.  As in the series, the “old house” provides a virtual shadow-counterpart of the main house.

Because the script for HOUSE telescopes many long-running plotlines from the teleseries, the functions of many characters become abridged.  Elizabeth and Roger have nearly nothing to do, and of the two boyfriends, only Jeff gets to participate in Barnabas’s downfall. Carolyn, who started out in the series evincing a strange attraction to her uncle, flirts with her “cousin” Barnabas and so becomes the first victim he turns into an undead revenant.  David, who started as a malevolent imp on the series and morphed over time into a more traditional juvenile, starts out as a mischievous figure, has one big scene when he sees his dead cousin Carolyn return to life, and then the boy disappears from the story.

The telescoping does increase HOUSE’s similarity to the basic plot of Bram Stoker’s DRACULA.  In that novel the vampire count principally pursues two women, Lucy and Mina.  Lucy is depicted as being somewhat less straight-laced than Mina, with the result that Dracula attacks the “easy” girl first, changing her into a monster who must be staked to death by her horrified fiancée—a fate which the heroes must then seek to prevent for Mina. 

As soon as Carolyn flirts, however minimally, with cousin Barnabas, her Lucy-like fate is sealed, and she becomes the first Colins to perish.  Buried on the estate, she comes back to life.  In one of the film’s most effective scenes, David—who doesn’t look too broken up by Carolyn's death—is playing a ball-game with himself, chanting strangely, “If I miss this one, Carolyn won’t be dead.”  He misses, and moments later cousin Carolyn reveals herself in her filmy cerements.  The family refuses to believe David, leaving her free to strike when her fiancée Todd checks out her mauseoleum.  In a minor gender role-reversal, Todd, the male victim, must then be prevented from seeking out his demoness lover.  Later Carolyn is found and executed by Stokes and the local constables.  Stokes, the resident Van Helsing, provides the staking himself, though unlike Van Helsing he’s fated to perish later in the story.

Barnabas has his own preoccupations: having met Maggie the governess, he sees that she has a striking resemblance to his lost love of 200 years past, Josette.  He wants to wed Maggie, but fears dragging her into the life of a vampire.

Dr. Hoffman comes to his rescue, after a fashion.  As the first of the two local savants to figure out Barnabas is a vampire, she approaches him and tells him that she’s devised a way to reverse his curse of vampirism.  She secretly does so because she’s fallen for the urbane bloodsucker, and doesn’t know of his passion for Maggie.  Willie—who has the same protective attitude toward Maggie that Stoker’s Renfield had for Mina—purposefully jinxes his master by revealing Barnabas’s plans to Hoffman.  Though her serum temporarily cured Barnabas of his affliction, she deliberately bollixes up the next injection.  Barnabas not only reverts to vampire status but finally shows some fraction of his age, taking on the look of a man in his 70s.  Barnabas kills Hoffman and bites Maggie for good measure before being forced to flee the mansion.

The remainder of the story is a good if slightly pedestrian reworking of the usual vampire-killing scenario.  While the police arm themselves with silver bullers that they never use, Jeff chases down Barnabas—who manages to kidnap Maggie—with a crossbow in hand.  Drawing somewhat more on the conclusion of the 1931 DRACULA film than on the novel, the vampire is betrayed by his pawn, as Willie’s intervention makes it possible for Jeff to kill Barbabas.

HOUSE’s best moments, like those of the series, are the more understated psychological moments, rather than the showier set-pieces involving vampire-slaying.  As noted, most of the continuity stems from scripts for the teleseries, though the reworking of Carolyn’s fate gives the flick a certain distinct identity of its own.

 

 

 

In the couse of the teleseries, the writers introduced the character Angelique as a witch responsible for cursing Barnabas with vampirism, while another leading-man-monster, Quentin Collins, came along to provide his own horrific plotline.  The film NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS discards any of the serial’s plotlines regarding these characters, aside from minor resemblances: the new Angelique is still a witch, and the new Quentin is still a late addition to the Collins family.

Some time after the events of HOUSE, the surviving members of the family apparently disperse, though it’s specified that the matriarch Elizabeth has passed on, leaving Collinwood to distant relative Quentin inherits the mansion.  He and he and his wife Tracy arrive to take possession.  They find it occupied by a housekeeper, Carlotta Drake and her helper Gerard.  Significantly, even before meeting Carlotta, Tracy speculates that she may be like the “Mrs. Danvers” character of the novel REBECCA.

As they tour the house, Quentin beholds the portrait of one of his ancestors: the beauteous Angelique Collins.  Quentin is initially most pleased to receive the house, as he needs a place where he can work on his abstract paintings.  He comments that his ancestors probably wouldn’t care for his painting, one of the film’s few notations of the gulf between the living present and the dead past.

The past is lying in wait for Quentin, who happens to be the reincarnation of his ancestor Charles Collins.  Though Charles had a wife named Laura, he conducted an affair with Angelique, wife of his brother Gabriel.  Gabriel and Laura arrange with the local fire-breathng reverend to have Angelique executed as a witch—which, as it happens, she is.  She’s helpless to stave off her own execution, but she swears to return in another age, and adjoins her young pupil Sarah to pave the way for her advent.

Two hundred years later, Sarah is reincarnated as Carlotta Drake, who is not only fully conscious of her past life but conspires to facillitate the return of Angelique.  This includes not only playing on Quentin’s mind, so that he begins to identify himself with his ancestor, but also getting rid of wife Tracy and the Collins’ friends the Jenkins, who try to free Quentin from the witch’s thrall.

The teleseries version of Angelique is one of the great soap-opera villains, but the version we see in NIGHT is merely a stereotypical seductive sorceress with no depth of character.  Indeed, she only speaks in the scenes from the past, and the most villainous presence in the film is that of the housekeeper Carlotta.  The film is a competent enough ghost story, but it’s slowly paced and fails to deliver the resonance of a REBECCA, which is still the go-to work for conflicts between the “new living wife” and the “old dead wife.”

The one mythic moment here is the film’s twist on the relationship between the dead wife and her fanatical acolyte.  Back in the witch-burning era, we see that Sarah is a child who idolizes Angelique like a mother/teacher and protests her execution.  In modern times, Carlotta—who in some convenient fashion “just knows” herself to be Sarah’s reincarnation—effectively becomes the “mother-figure” and makes it possible for Angelique to be reborn.  But the film doesn’t exploit this psychogical myth-potential any more than it does the fraternal conflict, and comes across as distinctly the lesser of the two SHADOWS films.

MAN-THING (2005)

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


Perhaps the most interesting thing about the direct-to-video movie MAN-THING is that it shows how little the Marvel Comics street-cred is worth in some adjuncts of the American movie-and-TV business.  At least HOWARD THE DUCK, while probably a worse movie overall, attempted to sell itself on the idea that the original comic was something outstanding, something worth seeking out for the uninitiated.  In contrast, MAN-THING is just a routine swamp-creature film with no ties to the Marvel monster save the name-- oh, and three names of the feature's raconteurs, worked in as names of characters (Steve Gerber, Val Mayerick, and Michael Ploog). Often when a filmmaker drops names in this fashion, it's to suggest respect for what the authors created. Here, the strategy strikes me as a feeble attempt to cull favor with comics-fans. 

For those not in the know, the comics' series-concept was as follows: scientist Ted Sallis, at work on a "super-soldier" serum (a variant of the serum that created Captain America), is assaulted by enemy agents at his laboratory in a Florida swamp.  In the altercation Sallis plunges into the swamp's murky waters with his serum.  Together the serum and the mysterious magic of the swamp transform Sallis into the Man-Thing, a near-mindless muck-monster. The monster can't think, but it can feel, and when it encounters human beings who feel fear in its presence, the Man-Thing's touch burns them.

The script credited to one Hans Rodionoff keeps a few minor aspects of the Gerber-scripted MAN-THING comics, but on the whole the writer seems to have paid more attention to DC's competing sludge-fiend, SWAMP THING.  Like the Alan Moore version of Swamp Thing, this Man-Thing inhabits a swamp in Louisiana rather than one in Florida-- a domain which the monster can protect thanks to his ability to manipulate the local plant-life.  Like the DC muck-beast, this Man-Thing can even alter the size of his own plant-derived body, becoming a colossus as shown in the photo above.  Swamp Thing is also known (as the comics Man-Thing is not) for insinuating plant-growths into the bodies of his opponents, another feature of this DTV flick.

I wouldn't automatically downgrade MAN-THING simply for not being a copy of the comic book feature, though I do think the makers' disinterest in the original speaks to their priorities.  For what it's worth, the routine plot-- in which a new sheriff in a Louisiana community must investigate an assortment of mysterious deaths attributed to a swamp-monster-- is adequately executed.  Brett Leonard's direction is that of a competent journeyman, but at least it's not as dull as 90% of the movies that make their television debuts on the SYFY channel (as MAN-THING also did).

The main plot concerns how a drilling company has encroached on swampland sacred to local Indian tribes, and how the company's manager Franklin Schist (whose original comics-name was "F.A. Schist") killed off a Native American by the name of Ted Sallis.  Sallis is later resuscitated by the weird magic of the swamp and becomes its murderous guardian, eventually leading to a lopsided battle between Man-Thing and Schist. 

There's also a paint-by-the-numbers romance between the sheriff-hero and a lady conservationist, and lots of empty lip-service paid to the woes of marginalized Native Americans.  The script would have done better to take a shot at understanding the mystique of the swamp's ecology rather than playing around with bland ecologist characters.  The script at least shows some potential for cosmological symbolism, unlike an earlier and far inferior marsh-creature flick, reviewed here.  But sometimes wasted potential is worse than no potential.