MYSTERIOUS DOCTOR SATAN (1940), SAMURAI (1979)

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

Though MYSTERIOUS DOCTOR SATAN doesn't quite reach the top of the hill alongside the best serials of William Witney and John English, like DRUMS OF FU MANCHU, it's a solid "B" entry in terms of the quality of the stuntwork and its main villain. Like DRUMS, this is a serial whose villain is the real star of the show. 

This is somewhat ironic in that the original script was prepared by Republic Studios for a SUPERMAN serial, had it that studio been able to come to terms with DC Comics. One wonders how much of the familiar Superman mythology would have made it into the rough-and-ready action-template favored by Republic.  As it is, SATAN's substitute hero. "the Copperhead," seems closer to the model of Zorro, who was often succeeded by modern-day incarnations of the character.  In the first installment of the serial, protagonist Bob Wayne learns from his father-substitute Governor Bryson that Bob's true father had been a vigilante called the Copperhead. Bob is intially ashamed to learn that the father he never knew was an outlaw-- thus proving that Bob's a real straight-arrow-- but Bryson sets Bob right, informing the young man that vigilantism is OK when there's real evil to be opposed-- evil like the insidious world conqueror, Doctor Satan.

After this introductory chapter, the Copperhead becomes a pretty standard athletic Republic hero, capable of many fantastic stunts but with no great mythology of his own. In contrast, the evil Doctor Satan, as played by genre-veteran Eduardo Cianelli, outshines the rather routine gimmicks he's given to work with-- remote-control electrical devices that slay any rebellious henchmen, and a giant robot whom the Firesign Theater once dubbed "an enraged water heater."  Cianelli gives the evil doctor a brooding, forceful intelligence even though one never knows who Satan is or how he came to be a sinister mastermind.

But as noted before, Republic's specialty was fast action, and SATAN has it to spare, even though as is often the case the best cliffhanger-scenes occur in the earliest chapters.  In addition to the heroic strivings of star Robert Wilcox (or his stunt double), a few chapters also feature some horse-riding action by stunt-rider Dorothy Herbert, who gets some decent fighting-action.  This was Herbert's only cinematic appearance.

There's not much to say about the rejected TV-series pilot SAMURAI.  Lee Cantrell, son of an American businessman and a Japanese heir to the samurai tradition, decides to dress up in black togs-- but no mask whatever-- and fight crime on the mean streets of San Francisco.  He comes up against a corrupt industrialist who, for no clear reason, wants to unleash an earthquake with a special machine, whose presence pushes this potentially-uncanny martial-arts flick into the realm of the marvelous.

Stunts and dialogue-- particularly the lines dealing with Cantell's supposed "culture clash"-- are bland and unmemorable.  Joe Penny, a talented enough actor, is given nothing to work with and is unable to raise this mediocrity even to the level of a "so bad it's good" outing.

RODAN (1956), MOTHRA (1961)

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




I've watched the original RODAN several times, but without exception the film always seems a terrible follow-up to the greatness of the original *kaiju eiga,* GODZILLA.  Whereas Godzilla goes beyond the limits of simple allegory-- the nuclear-powered sleep of reason produces monsters-- Rodan seems no more than a quick knockoff of the themes underlying the first Godzilla film.  I've derived some modest enjoyment from the big pteranodon's presence in Toho's "monster mash" films, but the original film strikes me as dull.


Though Rodan can be somewhat impressive in flight, when he soars over rooftops and blasts them asunder with his hurricane winds, the monster's design never looks organic in the least, even making concessions for the limits of "suitmation."  I even prefer the avian terror of 1957's THE GIANT CLAW, since the only really ludicrous thing about the giant bird of that film is its goony-looking head.  With Rodan I dislike not only the head design, but also the spiked chest and the awkward, topheavy look of the creature when it stands upright.


The human interest of the RODAN film shows none of the wit or clarity of the preceding Godzilla film; the viewpoint characters exist purely to showcase the monster-- or rather, monsters, since the film starts with the appearance of giant caterpillars in a Japanese mine, and then introduces the two much bigger prehistoric creatures that feed on the caterpillars: a male and a female "Rodan," as they're named by the awestruck humans.


The plot doesn't stand much examination: the newly awakened Rodans wreak havoc wherever they fly, the armed forces respond by trying to shoot them down.  Only at the conclusion does the script shoot for any deeper resonance in the beasts. When the army learns that the Rodans have concealed themselves in a dormant volcano, they shell the mountain, hoping to trigger an eruption.  The resulting lava-tide traps one of the ancient birds, and its mate perishes in attempting a rescue.  The film's last words by one of the viewpoint characters exhibit what some might call the Japanese fascination with the spectacle of heroic death.

MOTHRA boasts a superior kaiju script in all respects.  Even if the titular monster had been poorly conceived or designed, I'd still find the viewpoint characters charming in their wonder at the monster's strangeness and their moral defense of nonhuman forms in life in the face of economic exploitation.  Even the character who's there to provide comic relief is much more palatable than most such characters.


But Mothra, the true star of the show, is in her original form one of the best creatures from the Golden Age of monster cinema.  Whereas most monsters of this period were "fish out of water," usually prehistoric animals violently translated to the modern era, Mothra is a creature that has been perennially reborn from archaic times to the present-- reborn within its isolated environment, the so-called "Infant Island."  One does not know in this film how the first Mothra came into being, only that the creature begins as a gigantic larva, capable of spinning yards of silk, both in self-defense and for the purpose of creating a cocoon.  After gestating in its cocoon, the larva emerges as a gargantuan moth, who borrows Rodan's routine of whipping up cyclonic winds with its wings (and frankly, doing it much better). The giant moth then lays an egg in which one or more Mothrae will be born once the parent has passed on.

The film also succeeds by taking the kaiju genre in a new direction, rather than simply reiterating the antinuclear critique of GODZILLA.  The film begins with a scientific expedition to Infant Island, underwritten by the corrupt financiers of "Rosilica" (a stand-in for the United States).  The well-meaning Japanese scientists along for the ride are horrified to see the Rosilicans slaughter the islanders in order to kidnap the two priestesses of the Mothra-cult; doll-sized "fairies" whom the Rosilicans wish to place on display to the curious public.  This plot may have been derived in part from the model of KING KONG, where the economic exploiters shanghai not a dangerous beast worshipped by natives. Rather, the kidnappers take the priestesses who are part of that worship-- which nonetheless results in a dangerous beast coming after the transgressors.

MOTHRA is also a film with a great sense of color: though the larva-form of Mothra is a dull brown, the moth-form is a dazzling creation, in vivid contrast to most giant beasties, who tend to be monochromatic.  The creature seems almost too delicate to withstand the cannons of Japan's self-defense forces, or the atomic heat-ray of the "Rosilicians"-- which is a rather "back-door" way of injecting some critique of nuclear power into the film.

True, in the monster-mash films it was sometimes harder to make Mothra's power convincing in the presence of hulking brutes like Godzilla and Rodan.  But the original film maintains its own integrity in this matter, managing to strike a balance between the fairy-tale quality of Mothra's island-existence and the modern technologies which humankind employs against the great creature.  In addition, this is a rare monster-film that emphasizes the hegemony of feminine nature, represented not only by the egg-laying moth but also by the twin priestesses, whose doubled nature makes them more uncanny than a single priestess would have been.  Thus MOTHRA's critique of modern civilization is one of the few monster-films not to display a masculine gender-bias.

THE FACE BEHIND THE MASK (1941), SOUL OF A MONSTER (1944)

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

THE FACE BEHIND THE MASK might not be director Robert Florey's best film, but it boasts Florey's most sympathetic protagonist, and one of Peter Lorre's most multidimensional portraits.  Lorre plays Middle European Janos Szabo, who emigrates to America full of new hopes for the future.  He plans to send for his fiancee once he has steady employment, either in his usual trade as a watchmaker or with comparable technical work.  He makes a minor friend in a cop named O'Hara, who, like the audience, is impressed by Szabo's earnest desire to embrace American life.  O'Hara guides him to a cheap flophouse where Szabo can reside while looking for work.  Unfortunately fire breaks out at the hotel.  Szabo is horribly disfigured-- the camera never lets us see his damaged features-- and as a result no one will hire a man with such disfigurement.  Szabo's disillusionment about America is such that he pathetically writes his overseas fiancee a "dear John" letter, claiming to have met someone else, when in fact he's close to starving. 

Like the film noirs that would soon dominate the period, MASK comes very close to indicting the American culture's claims to beneficience. For dramatic effect the script gives Szabo no contact with any sources of charity, such as churches, so that his only possible avenue of escape is crime.  He falls in with a friendly if petty crook, one Dinky, who leads him to contact with a gang of thieves.  Szabo does not want to be a criminal, but since legitimate employers turn their faces from him, the world of crime is more than happy to enlist his talents for safecracking and planning crimes.  As a criminal Szabo becomes cold and domineering, wearing a mask to conceal his ruined features and continuing to steal in the hope of buying plastic surgery.  Meanwhile the gang's former leader nurses a desire to kill the man who took over.

Some innocence returns to Szabo's life when he meets beautiful, blind Helen (Evelyn Keyes).  He realizes the emptiness of his criminal life and makes plans to marry Helen and leave it all behind.  But his old gang doesn't accept his resignation, leading to a tragic outcome for all concerned.

MASK's script moves from one catastrophe to the next with ruthless logic, and even though Szabo pays the ultimate price for his criminal dealings, the audience remains sympathetic with him to the last, when he avenges Helen's death in a sort of pyrrhic victory over his fellow crooks.  And though he pays for his crime, it seems hard to see what else this disfigured victim of circumstances could have done differently.

SOUL OF A MONSTER is just the opposite: a preachy set-piece that warns anyone in the audience of the folly of seeking one's own best interests against those of God.  When saintly Doctor Winson lies on his deathbed, his wife Ann succumbs to hubris, claiming that she would sell her soul if the Devil would do what God won't: bring her beloved husband back to life.  Speak of the Devil and up he-- or rather, a servant thereof-- pops.  This servant is Lilyan (read: Lilith), a frosty brunette who comes to supervise Winson's resurrection. 

Ann's happiness at her successful devil's bargain doesn't last long.  The resurrected Winson is heartless and soulless, and the script implies that the devil's emissary is there to make sure he spreads more misery upon the earth, as when she incites Winson to commit murder.  This leads to the film's only mythopoeic moment.  Late at night Winson approaches his intended victim, armed with a knife.  The intended, not aware that Winson means him harm, nervously prates about how he wishes there "were no more nights."  While this bit of "light vs. darkness" symbolism is never pursued, it does strike deeper chords than the film's dutiful and very obvious moralizing.  The lucky placement of a crucifix preserves the unwitting fellow's life.

At the eleventh hour, though, the script backs out of the theological dilemna, for it's all been a dream, Winson's deathbed hallucination.  Given that during the hallucination he imagines his tormented wife falling for another man, one has to wonder if all was entirely "Christian" in the Winson household.  Overall SOUL is a bore, aside from the striking visual presentation of Rose Hobart as the devil's sinister emissary.

THE LEECH WOMAN (1960), CULT OF THE COBRA (1955)

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

In my review of MONSTER ON THE CAMPUS, I remarked that I didn't think " the script would have been improved had [the character of ] Blake been more three-dimensional."  By that I meant that there's a special enjoyment one gets from seeing fantasy-concepts expressed through simple formulas, as opposed to the high literary treatment they might get in avowed classics like the original versions of FRANKENSTEIN and DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE.

That said, some films are just too damn formulaic to offer even basic fun.  Such is the case with THE LEECH WOMAN, whose script-credits included a contribution from David Duncan, the scripter of MONSTER ON THE CAMPUS.  In contrast to CAMPUS, LEECH is a more direct meditation on the Jekyll-Hyde theme, for the 1960 film does include a character who chooses to become a monster.  Most adaptations of the Stevenson story don't dwell on the author's observation that Hyde is positively younger than Jekyll, but this is a prime consideration in LEECH WOMAN.

The film begins with two positively unlikeable characters: endocrinologist Paul Talbot and his badly-aging, alcoholic wife June.  After a scene in Paul's lab to establish their state of mutual marital detestation, Paul receives a visitor: an ancient African woman, Malla.  Malla promises that she can show Paul the secret of age-retardation, hidden in a rare African plant, if he gives her enough money to return to her tribe, the Nandos.  To further intrigue Paul, Malla tells him that the Nandos control a process by which age can be positively reversed.  Paul doesn't know whether or not to believe her on this score, but the age-retardant works.  Thanks to the money Paul gives her, Malla hops a flight to Darkest Africa. Paul decides to follow in order to learn more about the Nando rituals.  But he needs June's money to make the trip, so he sweet-talks her into joining the expedition.  Later she finds out that he's deceived her, and she's less than pleased.

Suffice to say: Paul's group is captured by the Nandos.  The whites learn that the de-aging ritual is real, though the Nandos only allow it to be used for the very old as a gesture, allowing the de-aged one last taste of youth before they end their lives.  Presumably this ritual explains why the small tribe isn't made up of de-aged nonagenerians.  However, to make the de-aging drug work, the medicine man must drain a living subject of his pituitary gland-secretion.  A prisoner dies so that Malla may enjoy a brief recovery of her youth.  Meanwhile, June-- who knows the Nandos are going to kill all of the intruders-- persuades Malla to allow her to de-age, using Paul for the sacrifice.  Then, her youth temporarily restored, June and her guide escape.  But on the way back to civilization, June needs a refresher-youthification, and she ends up killing her guide for it.

From then on LEECH WOMAN follows a fairly set pattern.  Back in the U.S., Young June masquerades as her own niece, and successfully vamps her husband's lawyer, who couldn't even see Old June as a woman.  But June must keep killing all over and over, including her husband's nosy secretary, who happens to be in love with the young lawyer.  Eventually June's secret comes out and she dies a predictable death.

It seems unlikely that this film is a swipe from Roger Corman's slightly earlier WASP WOMAN, given that the production-times of each film are so close to one another.  The Corman film follows the same basic "Hyde-on-the-loose" structure, applied to a woman's need to find the Fountain of Youth.  But the characters, though just as simple, are much more engaging.  One never feels much sympathy or dislike for the Leech Woman, for Duncan's script merely follows the Jekyll-Hyde formula in the most perfunctory fashion. 

CULT OF THE COBRA isn't a Jekyll-Hyde story, but provides the rationale for its serial murders through another trope: that of the offended deity striking down the profane.  COBRA has some of the same pacing and characterization problems as LEECH WOMAN. and the "Cobra Woman" of the story doesn't come anywhere near entering the pantheon of great Universal monsters.  Still even though the director and the three credited writers were neophytes in the practice of fantasy-films,
COBRA edges a little closer to the realm of the mythopoeic sources of great horror.

The film starts in 1945, with six American GIs stationed in a part of "Asia," presumably India or some nation where the natives wear Indian attire.  All six are scheduled to end their tours of duty at the same time and to return to the U.S.  Though one of the soldiers, Paul by name, is sincerely interested in Asian customs, the others are all raucous and irreverent, particularly group-Lothario Carl, who calls out an offer of marriage to a random sari-clad girl on the street.  This minor action suggests a textual reason to set the film so close to World War II, for one of the cultural results of the Second World War was that of the "war bride."  There had been war brides in many eras other than that of WWII, but perhaps because American soldiers traveled to so many different climes, the topic engendered far more films on the topic after WWII than after the First World War.  In any case, though the sari-clad woman doesn't take Carl up on his facetious-- and disrespectful-- offer, the GIs provoke feminine vengeance in another form.

Searching for some big tourist-experience before they return home, the six soldiers encounter a snake-charmer who is willing to take their money and let them witness the rare and sacred ritual of "the Lamians," a small tribe of Asians who claim the ability to change into serpents.  The snake-charmer successfully smuggles the six disguised Americans into the secret ritual, but warns them not to draw attention to themselves.  There follows a ritual in which a lithe female performer mimes the act of killing an enemy by coiling around him and biting him to death.  But the dumbest of the GIs decides that he wants photographic evidence to show off in his slide-shows.  He gives them away, and the soldiers must flee for their lives.  Unbeknownst to five of the six, the mysterious female performer pursues Nick and gives him a poisonous bite.  Nick's friends find him and take him to a hospital, but this proves no more than a stopgap.  The Cobra Woman, this time assuming cobra-form, insinuates herself into the hospital and bites Nick to death.

The other GIs return to the U.S., only slightly chastened by Nick's death, and return to their regular lives.  However, a romantic complication opens the group up to new infiltration, for once they're all back on American soil, Paul reveals to his buddy Tom that he Paul has proposed marriage to Tom's actress-girlfriend Julia, and that she's accepted.  It's not clear when this big romantic reversal developed; usually this sort of "Dear John" outcome takes place because the girlfriend gets seduced by a stateside Romeo.  Tom takes the rejection badly but tries to deal with it.  Then a lissome new neighbor moves into Tom's building.  It's none other than the Cobra Woman herself, calling herself by the very un-Asian name "Lisa Moya."  She inveigles Tom into a romance while continuing to stalk his buddies in her serpentine form.

Though COBRA's setup is good, the latter half succumbs to tedium.  Aside from Paul, the rest of the GIs are flat stereotypes, so that their deaths arouse little identification, and the Paul-Tom-Julia conflict peters out quickly.  The cobra-transformations, when they are even on-screen, are handled as simple dissolves and give no real frissons, any more than does her snake-form.  Director Francis D. Lyon sometimes evoke a Lewton-esque quality to Lisa's stalkings, but the aura of menace is not steadily maintained.

The weakest element is the one that should have been the strongest: the monster.  Lisa Moya has the potential to be an avenger of her insulted culture-- and its women-- but the potential is unrealized because the script fails to grapple with the failings of the all-American protagonists.  Her incredibly easy assimilation into American culture-- giving no hint of her origins-- could have been used to suggest the ability of the alien intruder to masquerade as "one of us."  Instead, Lisa's lack of cultural indications-- her clothes, her accent, her awareness of America's customs-- merely seems to be laziness on the part of the scripters.  Worst of all, the audience never knows exactly what Lisa is.  Her shapeshifting ability confirms that at least some Lamians can change into snakes, but why does she alone pursue the infidels?  Is she the only one who can do so? If so, why doesn't she at least have some fellow cult-members along for backup?  Yet even these inconsistencies could be ignored, if Lisa had been given a consistent emotional core.  But the script gives actress Faith Domergue nothing to work off emotionally, so she simply plays the mysterious exotic most of the time, aside from a moment or two suggesting that she might weaken toward her target Tom.

In conclusion, COBRA doesn't (to mix metaphors) get all of its ducks in a row.  But at least, unlike LEECH WOMAN, it has some ducks to start with.

IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA (1955)

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


IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA (henceforth IT for short) follows the general American model for giant city-crushing monsters supplied by 1953's THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS.  Though BEAST's Rhedosaurus had more visual personality than the "sixtopus" of IT, the latter film benefits from a better script, credited in part to George Worthing Yates, who racked up about a dozen SF-film credits in that decade.  In both films Ray Harryhausen shines-- as always-- in his animation of the respective monsters, and if anything "It" seems the more formidable opponent, being able to resort to the concealing waters of the ocean more ably than the big dino.  The scene in which soldiers repel It's gargantuan tentacles with flamethrowers is to my mind much more enjoyable than the often excerpted scene in which the great cephalopod hauls himself up on the Golden Gate Bridge.

Perhaps because the octopus spends so much time under the water, the script is obliged to beef up the dialogue of the creature's human opponents.  The foremost of these is naval submarine commander Pete Matthews, whose vessel encounters the giant beast during maneuvers.  The initial voiceover even frames the encounter as a showdown of sorts, in that the nuclear sub represents one of the finest achievements of modern mankind, and the hostile sea-monster exists to challenge its supremacy.  "The mind of man had thought of everything - except that which was beyond his comprehension!"

Matthews and his sub-mates manage to escape the creature's grip, though Matthews is rather mournful that the ship held no torpedos.  Like the gunfighter deprived of the chance for a fair fight, Matthews will get a chance to redeem himself later.  In a rather peremptory fashion Matthews uses the authority of the Navy to draft two civilians to examine the sub for evidence of the oceanic opponent.  One of the scientists is an older man, coincidentally sharing the name of Edgar Rice Burroughs' monster-fighting hero, "John Carter."  The other scientist, a colleague to Carter, is Lesley "two-girls'-names-in-one" Joyce, a highly trained female professional whose presence provokes Matthews to assert his dominance.  BEAST tossed in a romantic relationship between two scientists, played by the male and female leads, while the female had a vaguely paternal colleague off to the side.  Yates' script shakes up this pattern a little by mixing the military man with the "new breed of woman."  In addition, there's a slight suggestion that Joyce may have some interest in the older Carter, though Carter is blissfully unaware of any such attention, or of Matthews' initial looks of jealousy.

The "dueling romance" schtick in IT was far from new in 1955, but Yates has some fun with it, and keeps it from becoming entirely predictable.  Initially Matthews seems so overbearing that Joyce's eventual affection for him seems to come out of left field, though Yates may've meant to suggest that her response to his masculine assertiveness was inevitable for even a "new breed of woman."  But Joyce does get some of her own back at times, and after It has been defeated, the film ends with Joyce showing a certain assertiveness about "taking possession" of Matthews.

Some 1950s films present Oedipal oppositions between younger and older men for a young female, as seen in 1953's CAT WOMEN OF THE MOON and 1956's FORBIDDEN PLANET. Usually these contests don't end too well for the older male.  In IT, not only is Carter not aware of any possible conflict, he risks his life to save Matthews from the monster, attacking the six-armed terror in its Cyclopean eye-- with the result that all three protagonists live to enjoy their coffee after the monster dies.

In contrast to BEAST's Japanese imitator Godzilla, It never has any personality, and the scientists' discussions of its nature treat the octopus pretty much like a predictable "thing."  Like the ants of THEM!, the sixtopus is not a prehistoric critter, but has been suffused with atomic-bomb radiation, forcing it to leave the ocean depths to look for new food-sources.  But the creature's problems are never addressed with any conservationist compassion, and no one suggests for a moment that it might be corraled somehow.  Sadly, just like Jaws, "no one cry when It die."

I should also note that IT is almost a corrective to the species of cautionary, anti-atomic SF-films.  IT's message is almost more celebratory in tone: "Well, if our atomic tests happen to bring forth rampaging monsters, bring 'em on and we'll cut 'em down!"

ED GEIN (2000)

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*

The best way to regard the 2000 "fictionalized-reality" film ED GEIN would be to deem it the "anti-PSYCHO" of Ed Gein movies.

Robert Bloch said that his 1959 novel PSYCHO, on which Alfred Hitchcock based his classic work, was written with only a cursory knowledge of the then-recent Gein case.  Both book and movie are frequently the subject of online debates, as to whether or not they are "real horror."  This debate stems in part out of a tendency to associate horror with the supernatural-- a department of my category "the marvelous"-- or at least with the appearance of the supernatural.  But since the movie's version of Norman Bates does not invoke the supernatural, the argument goes, Hitchcock's PSYCHO does not qualify as "horror."  It's too real, given that Norman's exploits-- psychotic gore-murders and grave-robbing-- are just as possible in our world as in his, though the real-life Gein went a good deal farther than Norman did.

I've long argued on this blog that the determining factor for metaphenomenal films-- including both the uncanny and the marvelous-- is not what divided them but what unites them: the sense of "strangeness."  If this were not the case, then we would have to judge Bloch's book to be horror because in the novel Norman tries to use occult books to resurrect his mother, while Hitchcock's film is not horror, because the script dispensed with this detail.  The uniting factor in both, whether the supernatural is invoked or not, is the "strangeness" communicated by the figure of Norman Bates, my favorite example for the trope of the "perilous psycho."

Oddly, one detail in ED GEIN's meticulous examination of the rural Wisconsin murderer's history sounds more like Bloch than Hitchcock: for one scene, Gein does read from some book, attempting, like Bloch's Norman, to raise his mother from the dead.  Yet, that minor invocation of supernaturalism does not imbue ED GEIN with "strangeness." Nor does the quality of strangeness descend from any of the other factors that make up Gein's legend-- the gory murders, his fetish for shrunken heads (see the still above), his rearrangements of corpse-parts-- including a 'woman-suit"--or Gein's hallucinations of his dead mother talking to him.   These are all *potentially* elements for evoking the feeling of strangeness.  But ED GEIN pursues the approach I called "fictionalized-reality" above, meaning that Gein is rendered with a pathetic, no-larger-than-life treatment by lead actor (and executive producer) Steve Railsback.  Thus I judge that this version of Gein, unlike Norman Bates and other fictional icons spawned by Gein, to be purely "naturalistic."

With those categorization issues out of the way, ED GEIN is an extremely artful "fictionalized-reality" endeavor, many leagues above the clumsy, over-earnest biofilms that sell so many commercials for the Lifetime Channel.  The Oedipal influences on Gein-- a weak, drunkard father who dies in Gein's youth, a domineering mother who tries to use religion to bind him to her-- are handled with a direct simplicity.  Thus, when the audience views the processes through which his personality became irrevocably warped, the audience is not allowed to sit in judgment, or to hold the fatuous belief that It All Could've Been Prevented With Better Social Workers (as in the standard Lifetime flick).  I'm not an expert on Gein's history, so I can't say whether or not it's true that, contrary to most fictional characters based on the murderer, Gein never pursued nubile young women a la Janet Leigh, but only wanted mature females who reminded him of his mother.  But here too, the issue is handled with restraint and a strong sense of the realities of small-town life.

Cast, direction and script possess this same simple, understated quality, but ED GEIN is all Railsback's show. It stands or falls on his performance-- which is to say, it stands quite well.  Though the film is uncompromising in its matter-of-fact presentation of Gein's ghastly acts, I judge it to be a "drama" rather than an "irony" like both film-versions of PSYCHO and Hitchcock's FRENZY.  Even though Gein is unquestionably a dark soul, the script does not use him as a lens through which to view the general ineffectuality of mankind.  Since even the Wisconsin psycho's victims retain a certain degree of human dignity, the story registers as belonging to the mythos of the drama.

BLADE RUNNER: THE FINAL CUT (1982/ 2007)

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

"Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave."

I'll pass over a summation of BLADE RUNNER's plot here for the same reason I did in my reviews of 1960's PSYCHO and 1933's KING KONG: most viewers of metaphenomenal cinema see such cornerstone films early in their viewing-careers, often repeatedly.  In addition, the story remains far more symbolically complex than the vast majority of science fiction films, meaning that such complexity would require more than a blog-review to do it justice.  But I will cover a few aspects of the film in lieu of a more involved undertaking.

The above quote is spoken by Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), the principal foe of replicant-hunter Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), but a truncated version of the line is also uttered by another replicant, Leon (Brion James) in a scene where he's about to kill Deckard.  The fact that the line-- which does not appear in the original Philip Dick novel-- was repeated even once demonstrates that it was important to director Ridley Scott and writers Hampton Fancher and David Webb Peoples.  It's possible, in fact, that in the replicants' simple-sounded observation lies a key to the labyrinth of BLADE RUNNER's meanings.

The film, which elevates some of Philip Dick's concerns but subverts or ignores others, weaves together a wealth of motifs, as this entry from Wikipedia mentions:

It is a literate science fiction film, thematically enfolding the philosophy of religion and moral implications of human mastery of genetic engineering in the context of classical Greek drama and hubris.^[52] It also draws on Biblical images, such as Noah's flood,^[53] and literary sources, such as Frankenstein.^[54]

Other religious images include the suggestion of Christ-motifs during the final combat between Batty and Deckard, as seen in (a) a scene in which Batty drives a nail through his own hand, invoking a visual parallel to the image of the Crucifixion, and (b) Batty's death, after which Deckard utters the word "finished," in a clear emulation of the New Testament's phrase "tetelestai."  The superhuman replicants, of course, differ from the sacrificial model of Christianity in that all of them do want the "cup of sacrificial death" to pass from them, although at the very end Batty accepts death's inevitability.  So, given that sacrifice does not have the same redemptive power in the fictional work BLADE RUNNER as it does in a religious context, one may also expect that the film's construction of slavery will also differ strongly from that of the New Testament, particularly as seen in Paul's Epistle to Titus: "Tell slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect; they are not to talk back, not to pilfer, but to show complete and perfect fidelity, so that in everything they may be an ornament to the doctrine of God our Savior."

If anything Roy Batty's acknowledgment of the fear with which real slaves must live resembles philosopher George Hegel's meditations on fear and slavery from his PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT:

...although the fear of the lord is indeed the beginning of wisdom, consciousness is not therein aware that it is a being-for-self.  Through work, however, the bondsman [Hegel's word for "slave"] becomes conscious of what he truly is.

And later in the same section:

Through this rediscovery of himself by himself, the bondsman realizes that it is precisely in his work wherein he seemed to have only an alienated existence that he acquires a mind of his own... Without the discipline of service and obedience, fear remains at the formal stage, and does not extend to the known real world of existence.

I won't explore the convolutions of Hegel's theories regarding the philosophical meaning of the slave's fear, but whether or not Scott and his collaborators were familiar with Hegel, they parallel Hegel's concepts by showing Roy Batty as entering an exalted state as a result of knowing the truth of death-- and not just in the form of a lord's retaliation for disobedience.  All the replicants of Batty's clan, the "Nexus-6" model, are doomed to live no more than four years whether they obey faithfully or not.  The replicants' human creators, aware of their having endowed their creations with superior physical and mental powers, chose to limit the Nexus-Sixes in this manner, much as Plato's Zeus felt threatened by the powers of early humans and imposed another type of limitation upon them.  Yet even with those limits, the replicants escape the colonies-- where they have served as warriors, assassins, or sex-toys-- and seek freedom by returning the overcrowded "satanic mills" of Earth.

But it's a fool's errand, for Earth offers no escape even for its natives. The movie spends less time than Dick's novel with the future-humans' form of "conspicuous consumption;" purchasing expensive artificial animals. Nevertheless, this pursuit still shows the emptiness at the heart of Earth's humans, their pursuit of chimerical imitations of reality once they've brought about the extermination of most if not all real animals.  Scott's film is more evocative than Dick's novel with regard to the stultifying effect of the police, who exist to rein in the city's crowded citizens. Even blade runner Deckard is forced out of his retired status by the local police to serve their designs. 

The darkness of Scott's film comes close to the level I expect from the literary form called "the irony."  Yet I choose to term it a "drama" because it does evince dim hopes for humanity, whether or not one deems Deckard himself to be a human being-- a subject on which various film-creators were themselves divided.  Even though Roy Batty and his replicant friends are unjustly terminated, Batty's transcendent example helps to redeem Deckard, so that he flees the corruption of the city along with the replicant female Rachael.  Deckard has no way to fight the monolithic capitalism that creates genetic wonders to serve as slave-labor; this is no METROPOLIS, where the failures of a system can be mended by a metaphorical union of head, heart, and hands.  But, perhaps in contrast to Paul's Epistle to Philemon, Deckard can and will help a slave to escape the conditions of her servitude.

Scott's use of action-adventure motifs is certainly ironic. Deckard's supervisor calls Deckard a "one-man slaughterhouse," but in all four of the blade runner's encounters with the replicants, they all beat him down and are capable of easily killing him, and Deckard is saved only by contingent circumstances, not by his own skills or powers.  If Deckard himself is some sort of replicant, as Scott argues in his "Final Cut" commentary, he's clearly a model inferior to the Nexus-Sixes-- though even being able to survive the superhumans' attacks may be a clue to the character's own inhumanity.  I for one side with the camp that would prefer Deckard to be a normal human being who parts ways with the injustice his people have imposed on their creations/children: if he is another replicant, then his decision to leave a people who are not really his own resonates less.