THE INVISIBLE RAY (1936)

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

I wasn't terribly fond of THE INVISIBLE RAY-- the next Karloff-Lugosi horror-film to follow the strong performance of THE BLACK CAT and the enjoyable but less stellar RAVEN-- the first time I saw it, and this time around I still see little more than a competent programmer.  Whereas the previous two collaborations found interesting ways to play the stars off one another, RAY's weak script simply focuses on Karloff's character and relegates Lugosi to a minor supporting role that any actor could have played as well.  I have to presume that director Lambert Hillyer could have acquitted himself better with a stronger story, since it was within the same year that he helmed the superior DRACULA'S DAUGHTER.

Further, even though the script focuses primarily on demented scientist Doctor Janos Rukh-- certainly one of the first, if not the first, radioactive menaces in American film-- he remains a very simple stereotype, that of the seeker after strange secrets who neglects his personal relationships.  Credited screenwriter John Colton had just finished contributing to a superior take on this theme, WEREWOLF OF LONDON. But though at times RAY's script gropes to depict the cosmological wonders of the "rays" permeating outer space, the writers fail to translate this wonder into human terms.  Like Glendon in WEREWOLF, Rukh is married to a younger woman.  At first Diane Rukh's motives for wedding the monomaniacal scientist-- with whom she is not genuinely in love-- sound promisingly Oedipal, in that  Diane's late father worked with Rukh as an assistant.  But later in the film it's revealed that Diane simply married Doctor Rukh because her father made her promise to do so.  This device not only sounds like a psychological evasion on the character's part; it also makes her sound like a will-less weakling.  Instead of growing away from her inattentive husband due to an encounter with an old flame, as happens with Glendon's wife in WEREWOLF, Diane simply meets a younger man, one Ronald Drake, and instantly falls for him.  She does resist temptation for a while, but the script avoids dealing with the morality of her situation, which seems surprising given that the Motion Picture Code was particularly powerful during this era.  In addition, Ronald seems to have no qualms at all about pursuing another man's wife, and what characterization he's given makes him sound like a pompous ass.

Doctor Rukh for his part scarcely seems to notice Diane when she's with him.  He's a maverick scientist with no academic affiliations, and he has been broadly criticized by the more well-established authorities.  Rukh reserves his principle passion for the investigation of radiation and radioactive materials, but he lacks any of the relatable human qualities of Glendon the Werewolf.  The only minor exception is his relationship to his mother, a blind woman billed as "Mother Rukh," more on whom later.  The film begins with Rukh inviting his scientific opponents to his observatory to behold a stellar event that will validate his wild theories.  One such opponent is Dr. Benet (Bela Lugosi), and another is the very lordly Sir Francis Stevens. To Rukh's misfortune, Stevens brings along his wife, and she brings along her nephew Ronald.  Thus ironically Rukh's attempt to bolster his reputation among other scientists allows a serpent to enter his domestic garden.

Based on the evidence gleaned from the stellar event, Rukh convinces the scientists to mount an expedition to Africa, to take possession of a fallen meteor containing a hitherto unknown substance, "Radium X."  Once in Africa, Rukh goes off on his obsessed meteor-quest and his wife becomes increasingly estranged from him, not least because Ronald has gone along and the two keep stealing forbidden glances at one another. Diane falls sick and the Europeans take her back to Paris for treatment.  Rukh stays in Africa and harvests the valuable meteor.  However, as if fate wishes to punish him for his unfeeling obsessions, he blunders and exposes himself to the meteor's radiation.  Benet, more cautious, uses the meteor's radiation to cure some of the afflicted natives; an early example of radiation functioning as a wonder-working influence with no side effects.  Rukh begins to glow in the dark and finds that his touch is deadly when he accidentally kills his dog.  Benet attempts to help Rukh treat his illness but warns that the treatment may cause mental instability.

Rukh does make one beneficial use of his discovery, restoring his mother's sight, which was destroyed by one of her husband's radiation experiments.  Yet the doctor grows increasingly paranoid, fearing that the men who once mocked him intend to steal his discoveries.  His mood is not improved by his wife requesting a divorce via mail.  Eventually Rukh's madness drives him to return to Europe, where he begins killing all the scientists who derided him.  This development has potential for tragedy, but none of the scientists, including Benet, rises above the level of a simple stereotypic figure.  Thus I as viewer got neither sadness nor satisfaction from their deaths.  Rukh seeks to culminate his murders with his wife, but his mother forestalls him, and Rukh leaps to his fiery death, thus clearing the way for Ronald and Diane.

Surprisingly, the most layered character here is Mother Rukh.  Though she lives with her son and his wife, and never exchanges a harsh word with Diane, Mother Rukh's opening speeches connote a woman who lives through her son, praising his genius and desiring him to carry on the experiments of his father, even though those experiments blinded her.  On the other hand, she gives with one hand and takes away with the other, direly warning him that he may commit some terrible act of hubris if he takes his scientific investigations into the realm of "secrets we are not meant to probe."  So she both pushes him toward hubris with her praise and then pulls the rug out from under him.  Rukh's ability to heal his mother while he neglects his adult relationship with his wife suggests a man locked in childhood issues, though the script isn't subtle enough to call forth these demons.

I give this film a "fair" rating in mythicity simply it has some symbolic potential, even if that potential doesn't coalesce.  One interesting side-point is the fact that the mad doctor's name, "Rukh," is an alternate spelling-- one known, I believe, even back in 1936-- for the famous gigantic bird of Arabic lore, the Roc.  And though the storied Roc doesn't relate to anything involving stellar radiation or burning powers, one of the colossal avian's mythic relatives, the Phoenix, perishes in the same way Karloff's mad doctor does.  For both of them-- perish in a burst of flame.

MAN OF STEEL (2013)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical*


Such is my disappointment in MEN OF STEEL that I don't want to spend much more time out of my life analyzing its faults and flaws.

Certainly it's not the worst film of its kind.  At the same time, there are many bad films that manage to be more entertaining than this Zach Synder flick. 

None of the niggling controversies about the flick-- about the demolition of huge cities invoking 9-11, about Superman breaking a "code" that does not exist in this iteration-- mattered to me.  Indeed, one of the few intense moments of this film revolves around the transgression of said code.  There are moments where Henry Cavill's intense performance overcomes the banal sentimentality and slapdash character motivation of the script. The action-scenes are well constructed in their way, though my inability to become invested in the characters hampered what pleasure I could take in the FX-scenes.

Perhaps the most annoying thing in my view is the dull, dingy color scheme of the film.  Most scenes are dominated by yellows and browns, blacks and greys, and as others had commented, even the famous super-suit has been darkened.  It's a strange thing to behold, when even superhero films that invoke a *noir* mentality, such as the Nolan Batflicks and Snyder's own WATCHMEN, are more colorful than a Superman film. 

Clearly Snyder was hoping to rebrand Superman with his own aesthetic, the better to promote his own celebrity.  Nothing wrong with that, but I find it to be an impoverished aesthetic.  It reminds me somewhat of the attempt the 1984 film GREYSTOKE made to do a Tarzan film without any of the Burroughs mythology.  That's not quite apt, of course, since Snyder does work in the usual Superman cast, as well as replaying the General Zod saga from SUPERMAN II with state-of-the-art FX.  And there's one moment that almost taps the mythos of the comic-book Superman, where it's revealed that Superman himself has become a literal "ark of Krypton," carrying in his own body the genetic history of Krypton's lost people.

As I write this, it's been said that the box office take for MAN OF STEEL has undergone a severe drop after its first two weeks.  The film will still probably make money overall, but if the rebranding proper fails, hopefully Snyder will go off and wreck some less classic superhero.

RENEGADE (2004)

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

Though this "acid western" includes two major scenes in which characters experience wild psychedelic "trips," and the villain lusts after some unspecified magical power, there's never a strong declaration that magic has a real effect in this world.  Therefore I class this as an "uncanny" film, and the psychic journeys, masterfully illustrated by "fractal computer graphics," conform to the trope "delirious dreams and fallacious figments."

The credits for RENEGADE note that the film is only "loosely adapted" from the famous Franco-Belgian comic book feature, "Lt. Blueberry," by Charlier/Moebius.  I've read a fair number of these western comics but have only seen Blueberry having naturalistic adventures.  Director/co-writer Jan Kounen reframes the hero Mike Donovan-- never called "Blueberry" in the English version as in the comic-- as a character implicated in the religious beliefs of Native Americans, specifically the Chiricahua Apaches.

As a young man Donovan visits an equally young prostitute.  They build a certain affection beyond the purely monetary interest, but some drunken yahoos, led by Wallace Blount, break into the hooker's bedroom, wanting to be serviced.  Donovan and Blount get into a fight.  The young prostitute is fatally shot, Blount is burned when a fire breaks out, and Donovan, after being shot as well, is left for dead in the desert.  Donovan's life is preserved when Runi, an Apache shaman, decides to use Apache sorcery to save his life.  Donovan is saved after having undergone a "ritual death" at least in a figurative sense, and later returns to his own people.  In his mature years Donovan (Vincent Cassel) becomes a marshal of an unnamed western town, though he maintains a sympathetic relationship with the local natives.

Trouble begins when gold-hungry white men set their sights on a sacred mountain worshipped by the Apaches.  The schemers make a minor attempt to set up a conflict between the townspeople and the Apaches, but this never gets off the ground, due to Donovan's investigations. Runi warns Donovan that a "white sorcerer" plans to seek out the holy mountain in search of some great secret.  Shortly afterward, a much older Wallace Blount (Michael Madsen) arrives in town and shoots a fellow who's threatening one of his gang-members, earning himself a stay in jail.  It takes Donovan a few minutes, but in a rush of repressed memories, he finally recognizes Blount from their previous encounter.  He goes after Blount to kill him, but Blount's gang breaks him out and they go off to find the gold-- aside from Blount, who has other fish to fry.  Eventually it's revealed that as the result of his burn-injuries Blount too went through a "ritual death."  The villain isn't presented as overtly psychic-- though he does seem to exert a hypnotic influence over one Apache female-- but somehow he's formed the conviction that there's a great secret he wants from the mountain.

Donovan strikes off in pursuit, and the film concludes with a very psychedelic "combat" in which both Donovan and Blount join in a shared trance, apparently (according to Wikipedia) using the psychotropic plant *ayahuasca.*  It's not much of a combat, though.  The trippy action is hard to follow, but the gist seems to be that Blount isn't sufficiently prepared for the ordeal, so that he simply "blows up."  Donovan, possibly because he's been semi-initiated into Apache rites, survives the experience.

In addition to Cassel and Madsen the film includes several other well-known actors, including Juliette Lewis and her father Geoffrey, Djimon Hounsou, and Ernest Borgnine, but none of the performances are particularly stellar.  The script is far too concerned with setting up the admittedly excellent psychedelic effects, and as a result proves slack in dealing with the motivations of its hero, its villain, and almost everyone else, except maybe those of Blount's money-hungry partner Prosit, who insists that he deserves respect for his Prussian background.

THE THREE WORLDS OF GULLIVER (1960)

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

It's been such a long time since I originally saw THREE WORLDS OF GULLIVER that I didn't remember that its script took a WIZARD OF OZ route at the end, invoking the hoary "it was just a dream" motif.  The conclusion does allow for the possibility that Gulliver's encounters with giants and pygmies may have really happened, as was the case in the original Jonathan Swift novel.  But the script is so weighted toward an allegorical interpretation that the dream seems the better explanation of events-- hence, GULLIVER best fits the "delirious dreams and fallacious figments" trope.

GULLIVER was the first collaboration between producer Charles H. Schneer and FX-wizard Ray Harryhausen to follow on the heels of their successful 1958 SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD.  GULLIVER was also the first of four collaborations that adapted classic literary works, followed by Jules Verne's MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, the ARGONAUTICA of Apollonius, and H.G. Wells' FIRST MEN IN THE MOON.  In this review I suggested that JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS might have been conceived as an attempt to make a "prestige" production.  GULLIVER shows some similar inclinations, though the film substantially rewrites the satirical intent of Jonathan Swift in order to render a more crowd-pleasing story about a young couple-- Gulliver and his fiancee Elizabeth-- and their attempt to master their contrary views on their life together.

Beginning in the English city of Wapping in 1699, the story begins with Elizabeth reacting badly as she hears rumors that her fiancee, Doctor Lemuel Gulliver, may venture out on a ship in order to gain greater riches. The two come together at Gulliver's impoverished medical office, where he's forced to accept poultry in payment from Wapping's rural residents. Gulliver makes his argument, that only by making more money can they hope to have a real life together.  Elizabeth counters that she doesn't want him going away from her, that above all else she wants them to live together in Wapping, no matter how poor they are.  Eventually Gulliver makes the decision to ship out no matter what Elizabeth wishes.

However, in a very significant departure from the novel, Elizabeth stows away on the ship, determined that she won't be parted from Gulliver.  Moments later, a storm comes up, and Gulliver is hurled into the sea. By the logic of the dream-explanation, Elizabeth is also tossed into the sea, though at no time does the viewer see this occur.  Gulliver floats to Lilliput and encounters the miniscule Lilliputians, the first of the title's "three worlds."  In a very softened version of the Swift satire, the giant Gulliver finds that the small-mindedness of the Lilliputians proves more formidable than any of their weapons. One satiric barb-- wherein the king claims, "I hate justice but love law"-- is the wittiest non-Swiftian line in the film, though it, like the script's other attempts at satire, is a little on the glib side.  The least interesting aspect of the script is its attempt to inject a Lilliputian romance between two young lovers who directly recapitulate the Gulliver-Elizabeth quarrel.  The most interesting moment is a rewrite of a Swift scene in which the giant publicly micturates on a fire to put it out and is condemned for it.  In a more G-rated vein, the film's Gulliver puts out a fire by spitting water on it-- though significantly, he also spits on the Lilliputian queen moments after she has mooned over his titanic stature, causing her to turn against him and join the king in condemning Gulliver. A doctrinaire Freudian would probably read this "spewing" as a deferred sex-act, and this carries some weight simply because the sex-act is alluded to more overtly than one usually sees in fantasy-films of the period.  At any rate, Gulliver escapes Lilliput's wrath in a boat.  As he does, he claims that his experience with being a "powerful man" has soured him on the position he argued in England. Now he wants to live a life as a "nothing," whom no one will notice.

Providentially, this change in attitude brings him to the second world, that of Brobdingnag, where people like Gulliver are as tiny dolls before the gigantic inhabitants.  Now that he's agreed with Elizabeth, he immediately comes back into contact with her, learning that she too was hurled off the ship, and has arrived in Brobdingnag before him, where she's already been made a pet of the king.  Gulliver and Elizabeth are then taken care of by their new masters, which would seem to be Elizabeth's bucolic dream come true, just as Gulliver's gigantism signifed his desire for greater importance.  But although the giants are less overtly nasty than the Lilliputians, they have their own demons of pettiness, and soon Gulliver begins to worry that their charity will come to an end.  An evil alchemist accuses Gulliver and Elizabeth of being witches, and though Gulliver initially outwits him, he finally finds himself in a gladiatorial arena, fighting a "colossal" lizard through the FX-expertise of Harryhausen.

This time, Gulliver and Elizabeth both escape to the sea, but when they next awake, they find themselves washed ashore near Wapping once more-- the "third world" of the title.  They're uncertain as to whether they mutually dreamed the giants and the pygmies, and Gulliver suggests that both of these figures are demons within their own hearts.  The only thing of which they are certain is that their love together, the compromise of their respective viewpoints, will enable them to bring forth new life that will transcend the pettiness of kings and princes.

I've omitted one element in this summary: whereas Gulliver becomes a giant in Lilliput, symbolizing his need for prestige, in Brobdingnag both he and his fiancee are turned into dolls by a giant little girl, the native girl Glumdalclitch.  She's a "mothering giant" who has not yet reached puberty, and who professes not to understand the sexual impulses of her "dolls," the intensity of which leads the couple to get married-- very quickly!-- by a Brobdingnagian priest. Yet, where Gulliver's only mirror-image in the Lilliputian segment is another young man who desires importance, in the Brobdingnag segment Glumdalclitch is given a peculiar "dark clone," the alchemist's same-aged daughter Shryke, who incarnates an "anti-mothering" sadism and yearns to see the little people burned at the stake.

When all is said and done, though, the few glimmers of imagination in the screenplay-- the deferred sexuality, the doubling motifs-- are overpowered by the ponderous allegory.  GULLIVER's reading of Swift is heavy-handed in its attempts at satire, particularly when Gulliver's peerless, almost Christ-like generosity is rejected by the uncomprehending Lilliputians. In comparison to most of the Schneer-Harryhausen collaborations, GULLIVER is the least fun, and feels the most like a secondary-school student trying to rationalize the thematic appeal of the Swift story.  Worse, the synthesis that GULLIVER proposes to solve the rift between male and female-- that love will find a way-- feels like a cop-out. 

 

GODZILLA VS. SPACE GODZILLA (1994), GODZILLA: TOKYO S.O.S. (2003)

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


I recall a review that raked GODZILLA VS. SPACE GODZILLA over the coals as one of the worst, if not the worst, of the "Big G" films.  It's not that bad, but it's not much more than one big setup for the clash between Godzilla, his evil "space clone" (complete with weird crystals growing out of his back), and a human-piloted mecha called "Moguera."

The very basic plot, picking up where 1993's GODZILLA VS. MECHAGODZILLA II left off, begins with those helpful Mothra-fairies providing a modern-day oracle, though Mothra herself has nothing to do with the story.  The fairies seek out the protagonists-- mostly a group of Godzilla-fighting soliders and lady psychic Miki Saegusa, a character who appeared in all of the Godzilla films from 1989 to 1995.  The fairies warn that a new monster is descending to Earth from space. Soon the authorities dope out that this new threat is "Space Godzilla," a clone of Godzilla's cells. In no less than two previous films, Godzilla's bodily cells had been thrust into space by his clashes with big monsters, and some of those cells mutated and grew in space.  Now, thanks to a "white hole," Space Godzilla is on the way back to Earth. 

While waiting for the new threat to arrive, Miki and her soldier-allies attempt to rein in the old one.  One soldier, Yuki, has a grudge against the Big G and attempts to kill him with a special "blood coagulate" buller, but he fails.  Miki succeeds to some extent by using a psychic implant to attempt taking control of Godzilla mentally, but this plotline sputters out as well.  Thus when the two Godzillas come to blows-- inevitably trashing Tokyo for good measure-- humanity's only participant in the battle is the military-operated Moguera.  Moguera is visually based a giant robot that appeared in the 1957 Toho production THE MYSTERIANS, but the English script makes no direct connection between that film and this one.

It's just as well that the plotlines involving Yuki the vengeful solider and Miki the "Godzilla-hugger" peter out, for the humans are pretty much lost in the clash of the great powers.  The battles are good but only rarely above average.  Purely on the basis of nostalgia, Moguera is one of the film's better elements-- though he's also used for the best humor-line, when a soldier forced to dig a pit wonders if Moguera-- who has a drill-nose and was named for the word "mole" in Japanese-- might lend some aid.

GODZILLA TOKYO S.O.S, appearing about ten years later and part of a new continuity, displays a much stronger script, one strongly indebted to the theme of the original MOTHRA of 1961.  For one thing, a character from the '61 film, Dr. Shinichi, is once more reprised by the original actor.  Shinichi and his family are honored by a visit from the Mothra-fairies, or rather from their descendants.  The fairies warn that dire things will happen because human beings have tampered with "the bones of the dead." This references the previous film in the series, where the Japanese government, as always seeking new ways to defend against the current Godzilla's rampages, constructs a robot using the bones of the very first Godzilla, killed in the classic 1954 film.  This robot is the new "Mechagodzilla," called "Kiryu" in the Japanese verison; I'll use that name here to distinguish this skeleton-based construct from other Mechagodzillas.

Just as MOTHRA critiqued the greed of capitalistic culture, TOKYO S.O.S. concerns itself with humanity overreaching its proper bounds by trifling with the remains of even a monster.  One might call this flick "ANTIGONE with giant monsters." One character even says portentously, "we crossed the line between mortals and gods."

The fairies add that Mothra will protect Japan from Godzilla if the humans will destroy Kiryu and return the bones of Original Godzilla to the sea.  But Shinichi's nephew Chujo is less than happy to hear the predictions, for he's a mechanic working on making Kiryu battle-ready.  Clearly Chujo has invested much of his own ego into the big robot.  He does have a meager interest in female soldier Azusa, one of the pilots of Kiryu.  However, a hotshot male pilot named Akiba is also interested in Azsusa, and the two men butt heads slightly.  However, the main focus of Chujo's narrative is that he wants to get the chance to see Kiryu in action-- and of course he succeeds.  There's even a sequence in he overcomes the limitations of his lower sociological status-- that of being a mere mechanic rather than a pilot-- to repair Kiryu at a crucial moment.

Mothra does intervent to fight for Japan even though the humans don't even come close to junking Kiryu until the very end of the story.  Mothra is killed, but just as in the '61 film and its 1964 sequel MOTHRA VS. GODZILLA, the sacred moth's new incarnations are waiting in an egg back on its native island; an egg which then breaks and spawns not one two larva-form "Mothrae."  Then it's a big four-way battle between Godzilla, his imitator Kiryu, and the two larvae.  It ends a bit more poetically than usual when Chujo drives Kiryu into the sea, thus belatedly honoring the fairies' wish.  In approved samurai fashion he's ready to die for his duty, but Azusa and Akiba rescue him.  TOKYO S.O.S., despite the generic sound of its title, is one of the few modern *kaiju* that successfully emulates the themes of the best giant-monster films of Japan's classic era.

KING KONG ESCAPES (1967), LAND THAT TIME FORGOT (2009), TRIASSIC ATTACK (2010)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: (1) *fair,* (2,3) *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological, cosmological*

Before getting to reviews proper, I'll mention in advance that only KING KONG ESCAPES is a "combative drama," given that only that film features two megadynamic forces fighting it out. 

I enjoyed KING KONG ESCAPES in its initial release back in the day.  I don't think that even at that young age I was blind to the film's greatest deficiency: not that it didn't endeavor to follow the 1933 KING KONG's spectacular stop-animation FX, but that its choice of the "suitmation" for its version of Kong is ratty and overly comic-looking.

But though the film also lacks the deeper symbolic resonances of the Willis O'Brien epic, its script does make a game try-- more than one saw in 1962's KING KONG VS. GODZILLA-- to reproduce some of the most famous tropes of the 1933 film.  First of these is the trope in which Kong proves his "alpha male" status by continually besting other giant monsters-- here, a T-Rex, a giant serpent, and the formidable "Mechani-Kong."  The other is Kong conceiving a major crush on a pint-sized blonde beauty.  Director Ishiro Honda even throws in a redux version of the original's climb to the top of the Empire State Building, with the Tokyo Tower taking the place of the New York City icon.  Here it's Mechani-Kong, not the Great Good Ape, who takes the dramatic fall in the end.

There's no question that ESCAPES is more in a juvenile mode than the original film; the former is even loosely based on a 1966 Saturday-morning KING KONG cartoon by Rankin & Bass.  But Honda does a great job of respecting the juvenile audience of his day.  Even some of Honda's other *kaiju* films could bog down in earnest discssions of the Menace At Hand.  But the script keeps the pulpy conflict boiling on all levels.  Conflict between Doctor Hu, the supergenius villain who creates Mechani-Kong, and his maybe-Communist Asian backers, represented by the sultry "Miss X."  Conflict between Kong and the crew of a United Nations submarine, when Kong spies the cute blonde nurse Susan. Conflict between Hu and Kong, when the scientist realizes that his robot ape can't mine the precious element he needs, forcing him to enslave the real simian into his service.  Conflict between the sub's commander and Hu, "who" have met before in other adventures.  This sounds like a simple feat, but given the staggering number of dull juvenile features, Honda and his scripters deserve kudos for keeping things lively.

But the most impressive element of ESCAPES is the soaring, majestic score of Akira Ikufube.  When that music comes up, the rattiness of the Kong costume falls away, and the superior Robot-Kong costume looks like it cost a million bucks.

I've already reviewed the 1975 LAND THAT TIME FORGOT, which is an enjoyable adaptation of the 1918 Edgar Rice Burroughs novel.  That film kept to the idea that the dinosaur-haunted "land" was an isolated part of Earth, but today that idea won't fly: the globe has been too well charted.  Thus the 2009 LAND sends its hapless protagonists-- a group of vacationers cruising the Caribbean-- through a time vortex, so that they land on Caprona, where various other travelers have preceded them.  Since it's a cheapjack movie, there's only one dinosaur and a handful of human victims.  The only strong similarity to the Burroughs novel is that some of those travelers are WWII Germans who still have a working U-boat.  The vacationers must ally themselves to the Germans in order to search the isle for petroleum.  Bad luck; they can only get the oil they need if they get rid of the T-Rex.

There's enough incident to keep this item rolling along, but the dialogue is horribly banal and the actors are just paying the rent.

However, as poor as the 2009 LAND is, it's a masterpiece next to 2010's TRIASSIC ATTACK.  Given that the "raison d'etre" of most SYFY films is to write a sketchy story around some giant, equally sketchy CGI critter, I wonder if TRIASSIC came about when some animator said: "If SYFY will pay for dinosaurs with all their flesh animated, why wouldn't they pay for dinos with no flesh?"

For that's the goofy idea TRIASSIC puts out there.  An Indian sorcerer becomes irate with the white-eyes ravaging the environment-- like many SYFY flicks, this one resorts to "eco-terrorists" to make the story sound a little bit relevant.  He uses his magic to animate three dinosaur SKELETONS from a nearby museum, and they go on a rampage until one of the dull-stick protagonists figures out how to make them go away with the technological wizardry of an elecrtical attack.

The only amusing image to arise from this folderol is that one of the dinos happens to be a pterosaur.  How exactly does the SKELETON of a pterosaur manage to FLY?  Oh, yes, magic, quite right.  Forget I even asked.

MARK OF THE GORILLA (1950), CAPTIVE GIRL (1950)

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

The third and fourth JUNGLE JIM films, both directed by William Berke, register pretty low even on the "dumb fun" scale.

The only metaphenomenal aspect of GORILLA is that some of the ex-Nazi villains of the piece dress up like gorillas in order to keep intruders away from a game preserve, where some wartime gold has been buried.  The evildoers are led by Onslow Stevens, usually a dependable "B" face but rather dull this time out.  The recrudescence of Nazi evil, which was a routine trope in postwar flicks, is also not exploited for any patriotic vibes.  The continuity, such as it is, is often broken up by gobs of stock footage, and though Jungle Jim gets to wrestle with three different beasts, none of the fights are interesting.  The only pleasant aspect is that, as with the first two films, the story includes two hot girls, and once again there's a "cute American" type as well as a "exotic foreigner" type.  Neither female character does very much beyond (as the pic above shows) getting tied up.  This might be a plus for a certain type of viewer.

CAPTIVE GIRL breaks with that "tradition," for it only has one female in it, though as she's dressed in a leopardskin one-piece, she may make a more positive impression.  Played by swimming champion Anita Lhoest, who never made another film, she's not a "Sheena"-style fighter but she does have a pet tiger that comes to her aid.  In addition, since she was orphaned by one of the film's villains and has the usual jungle-upbringing, she seems to have a slight rapport with the animals, though the tiger is the only one who obeys her.  The title makes no sense because she spends most of her film-time running around free.

In place of two babes, CAPTIVE gives the viewer two villains of note.  One is Buster Crabbe, who played Tarzan in a 1933 serial, just one year after "Jungle Jim" star Johnny Weismuller made his fame by playing the ape man in the MGM film-series.  The two "ape men," who were both swimming stars in their youth, naturally have a climactic battle underwater, but it's a pretty desultory battle.  I got more entertainment out of seeing long-time B-film badguy John Dehner as "Hakim," the guy responsible for orphaning the jungle girl.  He's dressed up in witch-doctor garb and colored in "brownface"-- supposedly because he's some sort of Arab-- but the actor projects a nice aura of menace despite it all.  The villains are both after a sunken treasure connected to the old sacrificial rites of Hakim's tribe, and as usual Jungle Jim represents the role of the progressive colonist, trying to turn the heathens away from the old ways.  It isn't much, but it gives the story a little more heft than the threadbare GORILLA.

ADDENDUM: I should note an interesting conundrum about the phenomenality of MARK OF THE GORILLA. Since it is the intent of the Nazi crooks to convince outsiders to beware of real gorillas, for this film the "phantasmal figurations" trope is naturalistic, just as it was for 1943's LEOPARD MAN. However, unlike LEOPARD MAN, GORILLA actually treats the viewer to the sight of men dressed up as gorillas for what I deem an "outre" purpose-- as opposed, for instance, to wearing such attire to a costume party.