FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1963)

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

I said in my review of DOCTOR NO that the source novel, the only Fleming Bond book with marvelous content, anticipated the greater proliferation of that phenomenality in the movie adaptations.  The 1957 novel FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, which preceded Fleming's DOCTOR NO, proved even more prescient, for compared to the other books it makes ample use of gadgets, all of which place both novel and film firmly within the "uncanny" phenomenality. 

Most of the time, Eon's adaptations gave the hero far more specialized gadgets than the relatively down-to-earth Bond would normally carry.  But for some reason, five years before a movie was under way, Fleming gives Bond a suitcase containing a collapsible gun, a tear gas cannister, and a concealed knife.  To be sure, the movie ups this ante, so that Bond's gun is powerful enough to take out a helicopter, and his adversary Red Grant gets his own special gadget: a wristwatch with a wire-garrotte inside.  And though the movie keeps the poisoned knife in Rosa Klebb's shoe, it forbore, for whatever reasons, to include two over-the-top weapons from the novel-- a gun concealed in a telephone and poisoned knitting-needles.  These particular gadgets might seem to fit the world of Maxwell Smart better than that of James Bond.  But then, Fleming's novels are not about a realistic depiction of spycraft. Verisimilitude always serves the ends of fantasy in Fleming.

I also mentioned that though the cinematic DOCTOR NO sticks to the general schema of the source novel, the film isn't as strong as the novel because the cinema versions of Bond's main ally and antagonist are much flatter characters.  Strangely, FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE is a stronger film, even though it departs from the source novel's plot far more than the DOCTOR NO film did.  Perhaps it worked to the film's advantage that the primary characters of RUSSIA are less thoroughly developed than those of DOCTOR NO.  Fleming provides assorted details on the backstories of femme fatale Tatiana, master schemer Rosa Klebb, executioner Red Grant, and Bond's rough father-figure Kerim Bey.  But on balance their characters remain stereotypical functions of the story.  Tatiana is nowhere near as vividly drawn as Honeychile Ryder, and Red Grant's mysterious, lunar-influenced murder-impulses cannot compare with Doctor No's father-hatred and barely concealed sadism.

It must be said that the filmmakers, who desired to avoid the Red-baiting of the early Fleming novels and substitute SPECTRE as the villain of choice, could never have adapted the plot of Fleming's RUSSIA.  The novel was Bond's first-- and last-- opportunity to grapple with the Soviet Union, who had functioned as paymasters to such earlier villains as Le Chiffre, Mister Big, and Hugo Drax.  Rosa Klebb, described as a "toad of a woman," is the head of Bond's sometime enemy SMERSH, and her plan to both kill Bond and ruin his reputation is derived from the real-world embarassment the Soviets endured from the well-publicized Khokhlov affair, mentioned several times in the book.  Klebb, whose plan is formulated by passionless chessmaster Kronsteen, arranges for Tatiana Romanova, a minor Soviet functionary, to defect to the West, luring James Bond to her with the promise of "the Spektor," a Russian decoding device.  Tatiana is told only to seduce Bond, but not that both she and Bond are to be killed by Red Grant, a psychotic Irishman working for SMERSH. 

In order to banish the Red-baiting but keep the ties to Russia, the filmic RUSSIA begins by establishing that this Klebb was formerly of SMERSH but deserted her country to serve SPECTRE.  Kronsteen and Grant are both agents of SPECTRE as well, and all three report to a man whose face is not seen-- patently Blofeld of the 1961 novel THUNDERBALL-- but who carries his signature icon: a fluffly white cat.  Tatiana is still a Soviet employee, but Klebb, who knows that her defection has not been made public, arranges to hoax Tatiana into serving the interests of SPECTRE.  But since SPECTRE, a crime-organization, could not be as concerned with damaging the reputation of an English spy as SMERSH had been, Klebb's main goal is to get Bond and Tatiana to steal the Russian decoding device for SPECTRE.  (Understandably, the name of the device is changed to "Lektor.")  The desire to kill and humiliate Bond for his interference with SPECTRE-agent Doctor No is secondary, though only toward the end of the film do viewers learn the specifics of the "humiliation" angle.

Though this Klebb is no longer a Russian agent, Lotte Lenya gives viewers an admirable film-translation of the novel's nasty piece of work.  Tatiana, who is largely a simple stereotype in the novel, is about the same as rendered by Daniela Bianchi, though I appreciate the scriptwriter keeping true to her tendency to use the Russian word "kulturny." This Red Grant is simply an effective killing machine, played with deliberate lack of passion by Robert Shaw; there's nearly no trace of his identity as an Irishman or a psychopath-- which, according to critic Jacqueline Friedman, were one and the same thing in Ian Fleming's mind.  Only once does Shaw disclose a dislike for Bond based in the long quarrels of the English and the Irish.  Kerim Bey remains the closest to his prose-source.  Both novel and film spend a great deal of time parked in Istanbul, the result of a subordinate plot that has little to do with Bond and Tatiana.  But the Istanbal idyll serves, in both works, to communicate a ritual of masculine bonding between between Bond and Kerim Bey, arguably the father that Bond wishes his commander M could be.  In contradistinction with the Bond novels, where M remains formal and unreachable to Bond, the RUSSIA film, for the sake of a quick joke, cites an incident where Bond and M once went out drinking and catting around together-- an event impossible in the novels.  Kerim's death in both media makes the menace of Grant more palpable.

There are some minor changes to the train-sequence that follows the Istanbul section, but the emotinal essence of the sequence is preserved: the shakiness of the romantic relationship between the professional spy and the amateur seductress, imperilled by the remorseless Grant.  The film very greatly improves on the final combat between Bond and Grant, which is suspenseful but not well choreographed in the book.  Following Grant's defeat, the film further ups the action-ante by having Bond and Tatiana pursued by assorted SPECTRE agents, including those in the aforementioned helicopter.

I quite prefer the film's ending to that of the book.  In the book, Bond takes from Grant's body a note that leads him to Grant's intended next destination: a hotel room in Paris, where he was to meet Rosa Klebb.  It makes no real sense to imagine the head of SMERSH making a rendezvous with anyone in Paris, even her top assassin, except to give James Bond the chance to capture her.  In the novel Bond finds Klebb in her room, using a false identity, which is natural enough for a spy.  What seems less comprehensible is that Klebb's room includes a telephone with a gun in it, while she herself is armed with poisoned knitting-needles.  Was she planning to use one of these to execute Grant?  Fleming gives the reader no clue.

In contrast, the film is more sensible: Klebb, informed of Bond's triumph, is instructed to pursue Bond and Tatiana to Venice in order to kill the agent and take the decoder.  Naturally, she can't be allowed to wound Bond with her poisoned shoe-knife as she does in the novel, so the filmmakers' solution-- to have Klebb shot by Tatiana-- not only provides a deserved death for a vile villain but gives Tatiana a chance to choose love over politics.  Of course by the time Bond and Tatiana reach Venice, Bond should have informed his lover that she was almost killed by Klebb's plan, and that Klebb isn't even serving the Soviet side any more.  But the act of choosing still makes good cinema.

SINBAD AND THE MINOTAUR (2011)

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


The most I can say of the Australian-made fantasy SINBAD AND THE MINOTAUR is that (a) it's an acceptable time-waster, and (b) it's not one of SYFY's endless CGI-idiocies, even though there is a big stupid CGI monster in it.

The basic idea here is, "what if Sinbad the Sailor operated like Indiana Jones?" This Sinbad, played by one Manu Bennett, is primarily a treasure-hunting thief.  He somehow finds out that a magician named al-Jibar possesses a scroll leading to the solid gold head from the long-vanished statue, the Colossus of Rhodes, and he steals it.  Bennett's Sinbad is supposed to be a lovable rogue, whose thievery is excusable because he's stealing from an evil, soul-sucking sorcerer.  While liberating the treasure map he also liberates a princess from al-Jibar's harem, and so the chase is on.  Just as Indiana Jones claimed that he was "making it up as I go along," Sinbad's favorite refrain, whenever one of his crewmen reproaches him for his carelessness, is to say, "Details, details."

There is potential interest in that MINOTAUR, unlike a lot of Sinbad films, makes a token effort at recapitulating real-world archaic history, however badly.  The film opens with a prologue relating the fall of Crete and the rule of King Minos at the hands of the Greeks of the isle of Rhodes, worshippers of the sun-god Helios.  Before he dies Minos bemoans the way the gods have cursed him with a false son, the Minotaur, though the film skirts around the grotesque facts relating to the Minotaur's conception.  It's intimated that there's some sort of ritual cult built around the Minotaur, but Crete is destroyed and the cult apparently faded from the scene.

A thousand years pass, taking us to the time of Sinbad-- though in truth it would be closer to three thousand years to get from the era imputed to King Minos to that of Sinbad's period during the Abbasid Caliphate.  Sinbad tells his skeptical crewmates that Minos' men avenged themselves on the Greeks of Rhodes by destroying the Colossus and stealing its golden head.  The map will supposedly show them how to find this treasure in the labyrinth of Crete, which the sorcerer wants as well.

There are assorted little pleasures, however familiar, in MINOTAUR.  Sinbad and the princess get into the usual "meet-and-fight-cute" mode.  Al-Jibar is nicely played by Steven Grives, familiar to American audiences from his recurring role as an equally vile villain on the teleseries BEASTMASTER. The sorcerer has a servant who acts like a vampire but whom he calls an "al-ghoul," and Sinbad has a pretty lively fight with this undying creature.

On the minus side, Sinbad seems like a dunce, while the crewmen and the princess are nonentities.  There's not only a big scary minotaur, but also a minotaur-cult whose acolytes have horns and other monstrous features.  Are they the result of the sun-god's curse upon Crete, or are they the spawn of the Minotaur after the manner of the creature's own birth?  Who knows?  In a well-written narrative the Minotaur-cult might have been the climax of the movie.  Here it's just more grist to keep the mill turning.

Far from the best, but not the worst.  May be easier to watch if one intones the words, "At least it's not SHARKNADO."

THE SON OF KONG (1933)

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

Debuting just nine months after the April release of KING KONG, THE SON OF KONG illustrates why it's so rare for one to find films-- or works in any other medium-- that take on the status of myths.

As I said in my review, the original KONG provides a virtual Rorschach's test to its viewers because everything in it is super-charged with significance, and yet nothing is explicitly related to conscious themes.  SON is just the opposite; the film is to its original as Little Kong is to his father, when Denham observes that the ape is "not a patch off your old man."  Everything in SON seems mechanically thought-out.  That's not to say it doesn't have its pleasures, but it's not mythic.

The film depicts Carl Denham in New York, dodging the many creditors hounding him with bills and/or lawsuits resulting from the late King Kong's rampage.  In conversation Denham claims to be sorry for all the lost lives and property damage, but during most of the picture he seems more sorry for himself; that his big plans to become an entertainment mogul went south.  Later in the film he'll evince some sympathy for Kong's death as well, though one could see this as a narcissistic impulse, since some critics argue that Kong is a "id-double" for Denham; the part of himself he keeps hidden.

Thanks to a chance meeting with Englehorn, the captain of the ill-fated Skull Island voyage, Denham escapes his drab New York reality and returns to the "scene of his crime," the South Seas-- but not for purposes of adventuring.  He and Englehorn scrape by carrying cargo, until Denham repeats another incident from his earlier history: he takes an interest in a young girl.  In contrast to Ann Darrow, whom Denham lures into show business, Hilda is already a performer-- albeit a bad one-- in a show owned by her father. The show also includes trained monkeys, which suggests Denham's next exploit.

Enter an evil-id figure far less prepossessing than Kong: the aptly named "Helstrom," who sold Denham the map to Skull Island but did not take part in the voyage.  Helstrom and Hilda's father are both social drunks, but when they quarrel, Helstrom knocks down the older man and leaves him to die when a fire breaks out.  Hilda is devastated but intends to accuse Helstrom to the local law.  At the same time, with her father dead and the circus destroyed by fire she has no means of support.  When Denham shows her a friendly interest, she gravitates toward him-- a "meet-cute" that might not have taken place but for Helstrom's murderous machinations.

Helstrom needs fast transport to a new port to avoid the local constables, so when he runs into Denham and Englehorn, he tells them a phony story about a great treasure on Skull Island.  Reluctantly the two men resolve to return to the island of prehistoric perils.  Unbeknownst to Denham, Hilda stows away on the ship because she senses Denham's empathy for her, but she doesn't know Helstrom has come aboard the same ship.

The sailors' fears of the dangers of Skull Island are exacerbated by Helstrom, who hopes to become the new captain.  This incident shows the film's propensity for "conscious themes," for though the overall story has nothing to do with the Communist Revolution, the script makes one of the sailors a thoroughgoing Marxist who tosses around words like "bourgeoise."  Strangely, as the mutineers divest themselves of everyone who might be "over" them-- Denham, the captain, Hilda, and Helstrom, the would-be new captain-- they boast that they'll exist in a world "without captains."  In this sequence one may see a small conflict between the world of the entreprenenur, who depends on being able to exploit capitalistic opportunities, and the world of the Marxist, who wants to close down all such avenues.  Given the fate of Daddy Kong, one can't entirely dismiss the Marxist's desire for reform, even though the script pretty much does.

With nowhere else to go, the four refugees pilot their boat to Skull Island, though their first landing is denied them by the natives Denham and Englehorn met on their first voyage.  The natives, just like the denizens of New York, blame the adventurers for the depredations of Kong.  Eventually the boat lands elsewhere on the island, and the foursome began to make their way through the primeval environment.

Denham and Hilda, though not exactly poised to become a romantic couple, are together when they come across-- and save the live of-- the 12-foot-tall albino ape, Little Kong.  There's no real evidence that the young ape is King Kong's heir, nor is their any evidence of how he was conceived.  But by saving Little Kong's life, Denham somewhat feels as if he's evened the score for his acts against the King of Skull Island.  Little Kong becomes bonded to the humans who saved him, which has mixed results.  On one hand, he saves them from at least two monsters; on the other hand, he also imperils them when he curiously destroys Denham's rifle.

The foursome's sojourn on the island only last long enough for Denham to find out that Helstrom's lie was actually the truth: a fabulous treasure does exist in a local temple.  Typically enough, no one in the film even inquires as to whether these treasures might belong to anyone on the island, though in Denham's defense, the idol in the temple doesn't look like anything in the village of the dark-skinned locals.  Once Denham has the treasure-- or part of it-- Skull Island is then conveniently rocked by a mammoth, island-destroying earthquake.  Helstrom dies in the jaws of a diplodocus, while the whole island and its native inhabitants are devoured by the ocean. Hilda and Englehorn manage to get the boat clear of the catastrophe, and Denham is only saved because Little Kong holds him out of the water long enough for his friends in the boat to rescue him.  It's as if the island exists only to render up its treasure to allay Denham's economic woes.  Once that goal is accomplished, the whole island is sucked down into nothingness.  And although Little Kong's death is sad, the extinction of the whole island is sadder.  It's one thing for Denham to sin against King Kong, in trying to exploit him for gain. But it seems a greater crime that the filmic universe of SON OF KONG should expunge King Kong's whole realm, just so that Denham can pay his bills and have his own romance-- if one can even call such a chaste relationship a "romance."

While KING KONG is a combative drama, SON OF KONG is not.  Little Kong does have a couple of enjoyable fights with local beasts in protecting his new friends.  But the narrative does not build to a climactic battle, but to an act of self-sacrifice-- one that, in keeping with the film's beginning, seems all about validating the ego of the main character.

PERILS OF NYOKA (1942)

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

PERILS OF NYOKA is one of those rare serials in which the scenarios are so fluid that, even though they're just showing gun-battles or mounted pursuits that one has seen a million times before, they seem remarkably fresh.  With many serials, one has to approach their action-setups with bemused tolerance.  But director William Witney-- admittedly working with the highest budget Republic ever gave to a serial-- consistently keeps the action pumping at a high pace.  Characters never walk when they can run, never run when they can leap, and so on.

The film is a technical follow-up to the successful 1941 JUNGLE GIRL, a tolerable but not outstanding serial about Nyoka Meredith (Frances Gifford), the daughter of a jungle-doctor.  This Nyoka becomes embroiled in stopping treasure-hunters after the villains kill her father, and then conceal the crime by having her father's twin brother-- and Nyoka's uncle-- masquerade as the doctor.  Only toward the end of the serial does this Nyoka learn of her uncle's perfidy.

The new Nyoka is given the surname "Gordon," and her father is not a doctor, but an archaeologist working in North Africa.  It's never entirely clear what project Nyoka and her father are working on exactly, although at the opening of the film several Arabs are working under Nyoka and calling her "sahib."  Nyoka's father has actually gone missing prior to the film's beginning, but Nyoka interrupts her search for him to help a group of beneficent white men trying to locate the Lost Tablets of Hippocrates, which may contain a cure for cancer.

However, evil treasure hunters-- commanded by the exotic "Vultura," a rare female tribe-leader-- learn that the Tablets are the key to a great treasure, and they try not only to hijack the map to the tablets but Nyoka as well.  This is patently a "McGuffin" story, where two opposed groups seesaw back and forth trying to get hold of some precious object, or, in related manner, someone who can help them use the valuable item.

In addition to the febrile action-sequences-- which include Nyoka fighting it out both with male bandits and with the curvaceous Vultura-- the serial's writers create a wide variety of cliffhanger threats with which to imperil Nyoka and her allies, mostly standard leading-man Larry (Clayton Moore) and young, not-overly-comical "comic relief" Red (Billy Benedict).  As is often the case, the depiction of the perils are far more stimulating than the hackneyed ways that the heroes escape from them.  That said, the most original of the perils-- a natural "wind tunnel" capable of snatching up human beings and hurling them to their deaths-- is resolved in a better-than-average manner.

Characterization is minimal, but it isn't missed given the full-bore action here, including a plotline in which Nyoka finds her father, who has lost his memory and somehow become the leader of a tribe of Tuareg warriors-- and who tries to have Nyoka executed. This provides a little psychological interest.  Ben Singer's essay on silent serials, "Child of Commerce! Bastard of Art!," observes that in female-centered serials most plots involves a woman either seeking a lost father or his legacy.  Singer also cited a rare instance in which the father carried out actions inimical to his daughter without knowing her identity.  PERILS OF NYOKA managed to duplicate both paternal positions, beginning with Nyoka trying to find her father, almost being killed by his actions, and then being reconciled to him once he regains his normal memory.

DOCTOR NO (1962)

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


It's interesting that Eon Productions chose to adapt DOCTOR NO as their first James Bond film.  In doing his fifth and six novels in the Bond series, author Ian Fleming repeated the same pattern he'd followed in his first and second entries.  CASINO ROYALE, a fairly realistic novel, ends with Bond debilitated by injury and torture, while in LIVE AND LET DIE he decides to compensate by going after a virtual "supervillain."  The fifth novel FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, also realistic in tone if not content, ends with Bond almost perishing from poison. In DOCTOR NO he takes a "rest cure" and promptly encounters yet another supervillain.

The supervillain angle may have informed Eon's decision to adapt the sixth novel.  While most of the Fleming Bond-oeuvre falls into the domain of "the uncanny," DOCTOR NO is the only novel that barely edges into the category of "the marvelous," by virtue of the mastermind's use of a radio-disruption device with which he confounds American missile systems.  The film, keeping true to the source novel, keeps this sole marvelous element, but as I've noted in other reviews, the Bond films would make increasing use of marvelous devices by both the titular agent and his adversaries. 

In contrast to Eon's jumbled adaptation of LIVE AND LET DIE, the film is remarkably true to the source novel, sticking close to most of Fleming's scenario.  Obviously some things had to change: Quarrel, Bond's Cayman Island ally, was introduced in LIVE AND LET DIE, but for ease of storytelling he becomes a first-time acquaintance in NO.  This Quarrel is also in the employ of American CIA agent Felix Leiter, a familiar Bond-ally also originally introduced in LIVE AND LET DIE, but who did not appear in the novel and whose only role in the film is to inject an American presence for that audience.  But the two most significant characters in the novel, as in the film, are Bond's love-interest Honeychile Ryder and his nemesis, the half-Chinese, half-German Doctor No.

Not surprisingly, while both novel-characters are given far more elaboration than one might expect of an escapist espionage novel, the film reduces them down to basic plot-elements.  In the novel Honeychile is an admirable portrait of a "wild child," a young woman who chooses to live apart from human society, but who naturally falls for Bond's mature charms.  Ursula Andress' physical portrayal of Honeychile remains a visual hallmark of the series, in that the producers have her rise from the sea like Aphrodite-- a necessary change from the novel, where Bond first sees Honeychile lying mostly nude in the sand.  The film's Honey, while not a shrinking violet, is not as intelligent or resourceful as the novel version, who actually frees herself from one of Doctor No's traps and runs into Bond while both are escaping the villain's thugs.  The film's Honey seems more like a transparent sex-fantasy than like a character in her own right.  This matches with Bond's other sexual peccadillos in the movie, one of which involves the agent sleeping with a woman before betraying her to the local officials. 

The cinematic Doctor No also has a certain cachet, thanks to the smooth performance of Joseph Wiseman.  Ironically, the film makes No over into a genuine mad scientist a la Fleming's main influence Fu Manchu. Wiseman's doctor is responsible for maintaining an atomic reactor to power his radio-disruptor, and atomic contamination, not gangland vengeance, is responsible for his artificial hands.  The novel's version is, ironically enough, "no doctor;" he merely takes that title to influence others with his authority.  By the time filming of DOCTOR NO began in January 1962, Fleming had published THUNDERBALL in 1961, which introduced the politically neutral criminal organization SPECTRE.  Allegedly Fleming wished to distance himself from having so many villains tied to Communism. The filmmakers plainly wished to do the same, since this Doctor No identifies as an agent of SPECTRE and claims that his talents were turned down by both the East and the West.  Like the novel version he makes substantial use of a "swamp tank" dressed up like a dragon in order to drive off trespassers, but the film version of the villain lacks the original's sadism.  The novel's doctor seems to have no passion for males or females-- a sexual trait Fleming had already excoriated in his FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE villains-- but Fleming's No displays a subdued fetish for torture.  In its original release the novel received considerable criticism for its depiction of sadism and torture, but the film foregoes this: Eon's Doctor No is all business.  Most of the racial elements of the Fleming novel are nullified as well.

Lacking the novel's detailed characterization, the film's greatest asset is, unsurprisingly, Sean Connery's Bond, who manages to remain charming and empathetic despite his brutal manner.  In an early scene Bond shoots an enemy agent who has made a futile effort to kill Bond with an empty gun, and I've already alluded to 007's sexual betrayal of a female adversary.  This is not to say that the novel's Bond is incapable of such acts, but on the whole he tends to kill only when necessary, and he at least has some reservations about bedding young Honey-- though of course, he does.

One lamentable omission, which could never have been filmed given the movie's budget, is the detailed and logical manner by which Bond escapes No's prison and turns the tables. In the novel this is a grueling endurance-contest in which Bond just barely manages to survive the doctor's torture-gauntlet; in the film he escapes imprisonment with ridiculous ease, making the doctor look rather less than formidable.

The novel is also replete with rich descriptions of its Jamaican locale, which the film only invokes to minor effect.  I've noted in this essay how the villain of LIVE AND LET DIE, Mister Big, is equated with "the beasts of the sea," and the same is true of the novel's Doctor No.  It's certainly not a coincidence that early in the novel Quarrel introduces Bond to a black acquaintance nicknamed "Pus-Feller" because the man was known for having wrestled an octopus.  Late in the novel, part of Bond's long escape-ordeal forces him to duplicate that feat by killing an octopus set to devour the remains of No's victims.  Naturally Eon's Bond fights no octopi.  But strangely enough, the minor character "Pus-Feller" does appear in the first half of the film-- where his name is "explained" by the fact that he once wrestled alligators!

MY LIVING DOLL (1964-65)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

The above publicity photo is interesting in that it's composed so that one of the stars-- who receive co-equal status in the show's initial credits-- looms over the other one.  In one of the DVD commentaries, it's suggested that Bob Cummings-- an aging star renowed for several movies and one successful TV series-- was uncomfortable in playing a "straight man" to the real star of the show, Rhoda the Robot (Julie Newmar).  For one reason or another, Cummings did not even finish out MY LIVING DOLL's only season of 26 episodes, and for the last six one of the other actors had to assume his character's duties as keeper to a literal-minded, troublemaking robot.

On some occasions actor conflict may enhance a teleseries, as each actor vies for greater exposure.  However, producer Jack Chertok's show-- put together following the ratings success of his MY FAVORITE MARTIAN-- was so poorly conceived that it didn't allow the actors any potential for growth.

I'm not a great fan of MY FAVORITE MARTIAN, as I've usually found its scripts more repetitive than those of my more favored fantasy-sitcoms of the period, BEWITCHED and I DREAM OF JEANNIE.  Still, MARTIAN was well-conceived in one sense.  The show gave actors Bill Bixby and Ray Walston a strong relationship: Walston was the avuncular "Uncle Martin," a super-powered Martian constantly drawn into meddling in the life of the young man who had given him shelter on Earth.  Bixby's character Tim in turn might have been continually flummoxed by his strange visitor from another planet, but the scripts made clear that he enjoyed being the only guy on his block with a bonafide Martian for a roommate.  Over time the scenario evolved enough to communicate a genuine affection between this very odd couple.

One commentary claims prior to Cummings' signing the producers attempted to get Efrem Zimbalist to play psychologist McDonald.  Someone like Zimbalist, whose image suggested stuffiness and reserve, would probably have been a better choice than Cummings, who had become familiar to TV audiences as a womanizer in the 1955-59 series LOVE THAT BOB.  Cummings' McDonald, upon having the custody of the recently constructed Rhoda thrust upon him, never seems even slightly intrigued with the thought processes of a humanoid robot, even though his character is supposed to be a psychologist. 

In early episodes-- at least those of the eleven extant episodes on this DVD collection-- McDonald leers and half-drools at the statuesque assets of Rhoda-- so much so that he apparently doesn't trust himself alone with her, and asks his sister to stay with them as a chaperone.  In extant episodes, she never actually does so, though.  The show's lascivious attitude soon gives way to diffidence, and  McDonald becomes a babysitter saddled with an unpredictable-- and powerful-- infant.  Of the two attitudes, the latter could have been played to better effect than the former, since there wasn't much chance that a 1964 teleseries would have delved into man-robot love after the fashion of BEWITCHED's mortal-witch romance.  But to make the latter approach work, Cummings' McDonald would have to seem like he had some concern as to whether Rhoda learned or did not learn whatever lessons he tried to teach her.  Most of the time, McDonald treats Rhoda like an inconvenient piece of furniture.  Supporting characters, who of course are not in on the big secret, are given a pat story about Rhoda being a niece of McDonald's friend, but neither McDonald's sister nor the guy across the hall who falls for Rhoda generate any strong humor from their interactions with Rhoda.

While it was necessary that Rhoda should at least begin the series as a traditional emotionless robot, the writers weren't necessarily compelled to keep her at a complete status quo.  Yet they did so: Rhoda maintains a deadpan disinterest in the vagaries of human behavior.  Perhaps the writers thought they had to keep the robot inhuman so that "she" would continue to misinterpret situations on a regular basis.  But the decision to give Rhoda no curiosity cut the show off from a wealth of potential comic situations.  To be sure, Newmar does a nice job exploiting her dancer's body by devising comic (and often sensuous) bits of physical behavior for Rhoda.  However, these aren't enough to make up for the lack of good character interaction.

A few of the extant episodes show potential.  Though McDonald isn't as much a womanizer as the character of LOVE THAT BOB, a similar attitude appears when he claims, in the first episode, that Rhoda might be an example of a great new innovation: "a woman who keeps her mouth shut and does what she's told."  But subsequent episodes don't follow up on this "battle of the sexes" potential.  The episode "The Love Machine" is one of the few episodes to pursue this theme, but Rhoda is reduced to a minor part while the main action deals with McDonald badly advising a young man to be masterful with his date.  Naturally the young guy's date walks out on him, uttering the oddball line of dialogue, "I hear they freed the serfs 100 years ago!"  I can well imagine that the writer was actually thinking of the Emanicipation Proclamation-- which really was about 100 years prior to 1964-- but that he changed "slaves" to "serfs" because the matter of American slavery wasn't precisely the subject matter a light fantasy-comedy could assimilate.  Yet even here, one wonders: why even bring in slaves or serfs, when it would have been easier to speak of women getting the right to vote?

Probably the extant episode that makes the best use of Rhoda's talents is "My Robot, the Warden."  This puts McDonald in a subservient position for once, since he foolishly tells Rhoda to keep him confined to their apartment so that he'll finish writing an important article.  Naturally, then, McDonald needs to leave and Rhoda won't let him.  This episode was mildly funny, but alas, most of the stories show the same one-note repetitive quality I find in MY FAVORITE MARTIAN.  I have my doubts that any of the unseen episodes are much better than this selection.

The most I can say for the show is that it's a pleasant curio of  its time. And anything with Julie Newmar is worth at least one look.

WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN (2009)

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

This one-season Nicktoons series, whose 26 episodes have been collected on a single DVD set, shows some intriguing differences from AVENGERS: EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES, another superhero series also executed by Marvel's animation arm. 

The AVENGERS series. although it did maintain some loose continuing plotlines, generally followed the model set by the Silver Age comic series.  Said series tended to follow what I term "closed arcs," which is to say, multi-issue storylines that generally terminated with some sense of closure.  This isn't to say that there were never any loose plot-threads left dangling, for such did appear both in the comics and in the 2010 cartoon series. 

In contrast, WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN quite naturally follows the example set by the X-MEN comic throughout its many incarnations: the example of the "open arcs."  X-MEN arcs, at least in comparison with those of Silver Age comics, tended to copy the example of television soap-operas to a far greater extent. Closure was rare, for no sooner did the heroes vanquish one menace than another cropped up in its place.  In following this example, WOLVERINE was true to its origins.

A problem with this approach is soon evidenced: since the animated series doesn't have the same quantity of stories to work with, WOLVERINE soon shows the strain of too many plots spoiling the broth.  The writer's borrow from a wide variety of periods in the X-MEN annals: the plot of the Hellfire Club (rather demurely renamed as "the Inner Circle"), the story of Magneto's Genosha  (pre-catastrophe), and even a swipe from the post-catastrophe period in which Grant Morrison worked.  The overall effect is that the multiple plotlines begin to fight one another instead of enhancing the overall progress of the heroes' journeys.

The idea of making legendary loner-hero Wolverine the leader of the team-- an idea apparently generated more by marketing than creative inspiration-- dominates the first ten or so episodes and then fizzles out, being usurped by other concerns.  It's clear from the writer commentaries that the scripters have a nerdish love of all things Marvel, which makes for a number of "cameo" appearances of obscure characters.  And on occasion it's fun to see them mix things up, like devising a romance between hero Nightcrawler and villain Magneto's daughter the Scarlet Witch, which resembles nothing in the original stories.  But although the dialogue is sharp and the action is above-average, the convoluted plotting makes it difficult to relate to the supposed theme: the needlessness of the conflict between human beings and their mutant relations.  The writers also create false expectations by jamming in too many characters, as when they show Rogue in the first episode, after which she disappears for most of the series.  X-MEN EVOLUTION, which used fewer plots from the comics, nevertheless displayed stronger writing by virtue of keeping to a fixed selection of protagonists.