UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: REGENERATION (2009), UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING (2012)

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



SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS



I haven't seen the three sequels that followed 1992's UNIVERSAL SOLDIER, but the fifth and sixth installments in the series don't reference any of the events in those films-- particularly since Wikipedia notes that the fourth in the series is now considered "out of continuity." In contrast to, say, the ALIENS series, it would be easy to see either REGENERATION or DAY OF RECKONING as direct sequels to the very first film.

This relative independence would seem to be the creative choice of John Hyams, who directed the 2009 film from a script by Victor Ostrovsky.  Following this, Hyams and two other writers supplied the screenplay for the 2012 SOLDIER.

While Hyams has yet to make a "big" film that has vaulted him to critical attention, I am impressed that he has developed some excellent mise-en-scene on a film-series whose original incarnation was, to be sure, popcorn entertainment at best.  In contrast to many "MTV generation" directors who rely on flashy visuals but show themselves to be incompetent in allowing the actors' talents to shine, Hyams manages to show both hero Van Damme and villain Lundgren to good effect as actors as well as martial masters of mayhem.  Yet at no time does REGENERATION fail to provide the kickass thrills that most fans of UNIVERSAL SOLDIER have come to expect.

The only downside of the lively script is that it begins with a setup that proves to be a mere excuse to set another batch of the undead, hyper-accelerated soldiers-- "Unisols" for short-- into action. A group of Russian terrorists takes control of the Chernobyl nuclear plant, threatening to set off a bomb, and thus a nuclear disaster, in order to have their fellows freed from prison.  When counter-terrorist forces-- including soldiers from the United States-- attack Chernobyl,  they learn that the terrorist leader has the new improved version of a Unisol working for him, revived by a rogue scientist.  After the ordinary soldiers are repelled, America sends four of its old-style Unisols as well, but the New-Coke Unisol slaughters them as well.

Naturally, the military next turns to its favorite resurrected grunt, Luc Devereaux (Van Damme).  Though Devereaux is still receiving psychiatric counseling for his anger issues, he's sent to the Ukraine to do his duty.  As it happens, rogue scientist Colin isn't entirely on board with the terrorists' aims: after they've gained their concessions, Colin reveals that he has a second Unisol working for him-- none other than the clone of Devereaux's old opponent Andrew Scott (Lundgren).  But Colin-- almost certainly named for Colin Clive, the first actor to play Doctor Frankenstein in a sound film-- learns the hard way that it's a perilous business messing around with things that should stay dead. 


Suffice to say that though Devereaux does have some battles with terrorists when he makes the scene, the film's main concern is to depict yet another epic battle between the Good Soldier and the Bad Soldier.  Oddly, even though it's a much longer battle than the one Roland Emmerich directed in 1992, and even though Hyams is a better director than Emmerich, Hyams doesn't quite manage to one-up the original in this regard.  Nevertheless, it's a better than average grudge-brawl, with the usual expected winner.  The introduction of clone technology in this film goes on to have repercussions for the following installment in the series.

DAY OF RECKONING is a very different animal from REGENERATION, to the extent that I could almost label it by the Fryean term "irony."  When I've used this term for other film-reviews, as with last summer's LONE RANGER film, I mean it to describe those narratives where the protagonists, even if they seem to triumph, do so in a world bereft of positive meaning.  RECKONING doesn't quite descend to that level, but it comes close.

One thing that separates RECKONING from the other "Unisol" films I've seen is that the action-spectacles, while no less kickass, don't have the rather removed feel common to most adventure-films of this type.  Director Hyams orchestrates the bloody violence in such way that pain really looks like it hurts, rather than being some minor inconvenience that a properly stoic hero can throw off. 

RECKONING also plunges into the deep end of the conceptual pool by debuting a new protagonist, never given any name but "John" (Scott Adkins).  The film opens with a horrific home-invasion scenario, wherein John's family is killed before his eyes by masked assassins, one of whom appears to be Luc Devereaux (again, Van Damme).  The audience does not initially see John, for Hyams shows him reacting to the violence as if his eyes were one with the lens of the camera.  Nine months later, John awakens from a coma in a hospital, and slowly regains use of his limbs and faculties.  He remains something of a blank slate during this time.  An official working for the government gives John some info about Devereaux's career-- and if it seems odd that an operative would divulge such info to a mere civilian, that's because it will be borne out that John isn't any more ordinary than Devereaux.

In short, this time the Unisols have revolted and escaped their handlers, starting their own church out in the boondocks and pledging to take over the country that exploited them.  The "Unisol Church of Eventualism" is headed by a reborn-again Andrew Scott (Lundgren again), a clone of the one defeated in REGENERATION.  For some reason Luc Devereaux-- or this version of him, since it may not be the original-- has made some common cause with his old enemy.

John tries to ferret the reasons for the murder of his wife and child, only to learn, in time, that he too is a Unisol, and worse, a clone of an original.  A previous clone of John was sent to extinguish Scott's organization, to get rid of the rebellious supermen "before they reproduce"-- though all the Unisols are men and none of them seem to be making plans to become baby daddies.  The previous clone failed, so the government decided to try a new wrinkle: a clone motivated not by a soldier's loyalty to country, but a father's loyalty to his family.

I don't believe I take much away from RECKONING by blowing this particular spoiler.  Hyams's script and direction constantly keeps the viewer on edge with grundgy visuals and inventive lighting-effects, so it should be clear from the get-go that John's initial situation isn't all that it appears to be.  In fact, though the operative later tells John that his family never existed, neither John nor the viewer truly knows whether or not this is true, or whether the current version of Devereaux had anything to do with any home invasion or not.

In due time, John the Second does obey the government's will, tracking down Scott and Devereaux to their lair.  Though martial-artist actor Adkins is not as well known an action-icon as Van Damme and Lundgren, Hyams' team goes the distance to make his fights with both figures compelling-- and, as I said before, very bloody and painful looking.  Perhaps adding insult to injury, Adkins also renders a better acting performance than either Van Damme or Lundgren, and not only in this particular film.
The one thing that keeps John's world from devolving into meaninglessness is that at the end he finds a unique way to one-up the manipulative agency.

Since RECKONING is an installment in an ongoing serial, I don't suppose it's likely to accrue respect for being so different in tone and content.  But it deserves to be seen less as a pure action-adventure or more as an "everything you know is wrong" thriller along the lines of John Schlesinger's MARATHON MAN.

LEPRECHAUN (1993), LEPRECHAUN 2 (1994), LEPRECHAUN 3 (1995), LEPRECHAUN 4: IN SPACE (1997)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: (1-3) *drama,* (4) *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological, metaphysical*

If there was ever a school for horror villains, the Leprechaun must have been copying answers from Freddy Krueger's paper.

That said, of the four LEPRECHAUN films I recently re-viewed on a 4-disc collection, all but one of them can be watched in a spirit of simplistic "dumb fun," if one happens to be in the mood for flicks about killer leprechauns.

Mark Jones' script for the first film sets the undemanding standard for all the films that follow.  The franchise's sole gimmick is an inversion of the genial image of pop-culture leprechauns.  In place of merry pranksters who match wits with humans over wishes or pots-of-gold, we have a leprechaun allegedly named "Lubdan"-- though I never heard him so called-- who obsesses over his gold pieces and will kill any trespassers with his reality-altering, "Nightmare on Clover Street" powers.  The only consistent plus of these four films is Warwick Davis' boisterous, if scene-chewing, performance as the Leprechaun. The plots are all stupid: human finds gold or some other treasure, leprechaun kills to recover said treasure.  Yet I find that Davis's malicious glee wears better than the emoting of a lot of pint-size predators, particularly "Chucky."

The 1993 original begins like a lot of demon/ghost films: someone transgresses on a supernatural thingie's boundaries, and then manages to seal the critter up in a house that innocents will later attempt to live in.  Once Lubdan gets free from his place of confinement, he makes life miserable for the people who have moved in, whom he assumes have custody of his missing pot-of-gold.

The script tosses in one motif that has the ring of archaic legend: every time someone tosses shoes at Lubdan, he can't resist picking them up and giving them a shine, because he's a shoemaker at heart.  But there's no depth to the motif: it's just there as a stopgap to the Irish evildoer's magical powers.  Jones also makes the Leprechaun vulnerable not just to traditional iron, but also to the touch of a four-leaf clover, which seems a little desperate to me.  LEPRECHAUN is also slightly noteworthy as the first theatrically released film to star Jennifer Aniston, who might like to forget her performance here.  She doesn't come anywhere close to the Hall of Fame for Scream Queens, though she does get one nice scene. As she tries to escape the lethal leprechaun by jumping into a cop car-- one complete with a lepre-killed police officer-- Aniston's character manages to grab a nightstick and poke Lubdan's Irish eye out.  But her hunk boyfriend gets the honor of blasting Lubdan back to Kilkarney County-- however temporarily.

LEPRECHAUN 2 comes the closest to creating a mythic mood. It opens in Ireland, a thousand years prior to the present day.  Lubdan has somehow managed to enslave a human to his will; a motif which sounds closer in spirit to Christian tales of devilish enthrallment than to Celtic faerie-stories.  Lubdan announces to his slave that he intends to marry.  He plans to take possession of a particular bonnie young beauty, and in a mood of largesse will even set his slave free.  For some reason the leprechaun can take possession of her if she sneezes three times and no one says "God bless her."  However, when the slave sees that it is his own daughter Lubdan has selected, he prevents her enslavement by speaking the blessing.  Before the leprechaun kills the rebellious slave, the irate imp announces that in a thousand years he will seek one of the slave's descendants.  This certainly seems to be the only time the leprechaun ever displays anything resembling patience, but from a mythic standpoint, it does recall stories of descendants tormented by the banes of their ancestors.

However, once the film moves into the present, it's just Freddy Krueger time again, as Lubdan seeks his modern-day bride over the objections of all and sundry.  There is one reality-changing death worthy of the NIGHTMARE series: Lubdan mesmerizes a male victim with the image of a nude woman, suckering the fellow into sticking his face into a grinding device.  The leprechaun's shoe-fetish is addressed more or less in passing, and there's also a minor meditation on the evils of greed, as the male protagonist's uncle tries to make a deal with the baleful bogtrotter.  He of course comes to a bad end.  Once again Lubdan is destroyed by film's end.  Unlike some serial monsters he never shows any interest in seeking out his former opponents-- possibly because most of the heroes are so forgettable.

LEPRECHAUN 1 and 2 are just simple dumb fun, but LEPRECHAUN 3-- the first direct-to-video installment-- is as dire as dire gets.  Through some folderol Lubdan, last seen exploding after the hero shoved a chunk of wrought-iron through his guts, appears in Las Vegas, but magically transformed into a stone statue.  This time when he's resurrected, the Leprechaun loses all pretense of being a creature who doesn't know modern ways, as he starts indulging in Freddy-like pop-culture quotes, as when he tells the young protagonist, "Come over to the green side of the Force." The young guy in question gets ahold of one of Lubdan's magic coins, which gives him or anyone else the power to make wishes. Lubdan goes around killing everyone who's come in contact with the coin, usually with very makeshift, unimaginative deaths.  The writer of this video-turd apparently couldn't be bothered to think along the lines of leprechaun-stories; any old fantasy was OK with him.  At one point Lubdan bites the young dork, and as a result the dork begins to change into a human-sized version of a leprechaun.  Leprechauns=werewolves? Who knew?  The dork does gain a few magical powers with which he fights the leprechaun, but their combat is not lengthy enough to elevate this film to the combative mode.

For all the comedy lines liberally strewn throughout the first three films, I still consider them essentially *dramas,* in that the viewer in theory should want the leads, no matter how dorky they are, to survive the viridian villain's victimizations.  LEPRECHAUN 4, however, plays more fast and loose with the viewer's sensibilities, so that I label it a comedy.  It's also a combative comedy, given that there are extensive scenes in which Lubdan matches his malevolent magicks against the high-tech weapons of a group of outer space mercenaries.

Since Part 4 shares the same director and most of the same producers as the execrable Part 3, I have to believe that Part 4 is more tolerable because the writing-team is better.  To be sure, even though IN SPACE is more bearable, it's still corny, derivative humor.  But at least there's a little life in it, as when the film opens with the space marines preparing to assault an "alien" base and reciting the slogan, "Semper fi! Do or die! Kill kill kill!" The film might be seen as anticipating Jason Voorhees' slightly later journey to outer space, but the real template followed here is the ALIEN franchise.

The backstory makes no sense whatsoever.  The viewer only knows that the mercenaries work for a weird cyborg doctor named "Doctor Mittenhand," which is patently a spoof on "Doctor Strangelove," since the actor playing Mittenhand essays a German accent as thick as strudel.  The "alien base" is some lair cooked up by Lubdan the Leprechaun, but one never knows what if anything either Mittenhand or the mercenaries know about him.  Lubdan-- having shifted back to sex again after making money his obsession in the third film-- has brought to his lair Zarina, princess of the empire of Dominia, in order to woo her.  Zarina is repulsed by Lubdan but intrigued by his promises of vast wealth, while for his part Lubdan wants to marry her so that he can kill her father and become the lord of the empire. 

The marines break in and manage to blow Lubdan into pieces.  However, in a nasty spoof of ALIEN's face-grabber scene, one of the marines pisses on Lubdan's remains-- and the evil elf sends his glittering essence into the man's dick.  Cute line from another marine: "I'd give you a round of applause, but I see you already got the clap!"  Later, back on the mercenaries' ship, the Leprechaun re- births himself from his "daddy's" member-- not coincidentally, while the marine is trying to have sex.  Nevertheless, IN SPACE wisely cuts away and does not try, on its budget, to emulate the ALIEN scene which supplied the seminal (hah) inspiration.

After that, Lubdan starts slaughtering marines, while mysterious Mittenhand-- who seems to have had some idea of Zarina's presence at Lubdan's base, though he has no idea what the Leprechaun is-- tries to use Zarina's DNA to clone himself a new body.  Lubdan interferes and turns the good doctor into a slimy spider-creature.

What most differentiates IN SPACE from the other three films is that now all of the characters, at one time or another, are mouthing the same cornball lines as Lubdan.  Most of the mercenaries have Earth-names-- as does the female lead, the Acerbic Female Doctor, name of "Tina"-- yet they appear to inhabit a far-future civilization.  However, the Black Guy Marine makes jokes about "superstitious black" stereotypes from the twentieth century.  No one has the slightest idea what a leprechaun is, though, and the mercenaries continually identify Lubdan as an "alien"-- and indeed, the villain "dies" the same way the original Alien died.  Yet, if one takes it as an intentional comedy, where nothing is at stake, the inconsistencies take on a certain comic logic.

JUNGLE QUEEN (1945), UNDERSEA KINGDOM (1936)

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


Some Hollywood films were caught flat-footed when World War II ended, at least in Europe, in June 1945. Busy turning out melodramas in which the Nazi menace was still extant, they had to "back-date" the films to keep them relevant.

That doesn't seem to be the case with JUNGLE QUEEN, which was released in January 1945 but set its narrative near the beginning of the war, in 1939.  Were the filmmakers unusually prescient regarding the disposition of the war?  Or could it be that, given that the story's action took place in Africa, they realized that the plot had little in common with the real war's history?  The fact that the script coined an ambiguous term for the area in which the story takes place-- calling it "Middle Africa"-- suggests that the producers were saying, "Well, things could have happened this way if the Nazis had wanted to gain control of Central Africa."

Of course it would have been cost-prohibitive for a serial to mount an invasion comparable to the Afrika Korps' movements into North Africa.  JUNGLE QUEEN follows a pattern seen in most American jungle-films-- particularly the Tarzan opus-- in that the villains seek to insinuate themselves into local African politics by suborning their tribal customs.  Thus a group of interrelated tribes called "the Tongghiili" become the focus of Nazi espionage, Leading the Nazi agents-- though only rarely seen interacting with the Africans-- are Dr. Bork (Tala Birell) and Lang (Douglass Dumbrille).  The viewpoint protagonists are American adventurer Bob Elliott (Edward Norris) and his comedy-relief buddy Chuck (Eddie Quillan). They make common cause with Pamela Courtney, a British national who's come to the jungle, like many jungle-film female leads before her, to look for her lost father.  The three of them become the Nazis' primary foes, though not without some highly unusual help.

Another well-trod trope of jungle-films was that of "the white goddess." This was usually a purely mortal white woman who was taken in by some Black African tribe, who worshiped her because they'd never seen white people or for some equally unlikely reason.  JUNGLE QUEEN, however, is the first jungle-film I've seen where the white goddess, name of Lothel (Ruth Roman), does seem to have some claim to supernatural powers.

The viewer is never told just how Lothel comes to be looked upon as a spiritual adviser to the tribes of the Tonghilli.  Lothel, a woman garbed in flowing white robes, is first seen manifesting before the tribes in a great stone temple, walking across a field of  flame to show off her claim to goddesshood. Because there's currently a power vacuum in local Tonghilli politics, Lothel seeks to keep the reins of power out of the hands of "bad Africans" and in the hands of "good Africans." Of course there would be no story if the bad Africans didn't take power for a while.  So Lothel wafts her way out of the temple and shows up to aid Bob, Chuck and Pamela whenever they're endangered by either Nazis or bad Africans.

QUEEN has a bad reputation among serial fans.  There's no question that it suffers from a slack script and boring villains.  Yet whereas a lot of serials have been visually humdrum, I rather liked the way directors Lewis Collins and Ray Taylor kept focusing on the heroes in interesting visual setups, to enhance identification-- though I must admit that the villains don't get the same treatment, as they're usually sitting around yakking about their next strategies.  I also thought the black-and-white photography seemed crisper than one normally sees in most serials, making the actors look good even when they're not acting all that well (Norris) or are not trying too hard (Dumbrille).

One positive sociological myth-aspect of JUNGLE QUEEN is that although the overall political approach to the tribal cultures is patronizing even on the heroes' side-- that is, suggesting that the Africans are "good" if they are pro-Allies-- the script's approach to the native customs isn't especially condescending.  There's no suggestion that the "bad Africans" are bad because they embrace old tribal ways, because the "good Africans" embrace the same customs.  And whereas some jungle films make Black African natives look foolish when they conflate either real or phony monsters with their ancestral spirits-- as one sees in PANTHER GIRL OF THE KONGO -- JUNGLE QUEEN is innocent of that sin, because their "goddess" really does seem to be something supernormal.


Whereas most "white goddess" films are careful to emphasize that the goddess is a fake, JUNGLE QUEEN offers no explanation whatever for Lothel's nature, and even the white heroes remain clueless on that score by picture's end.  In addition to prancing around through vaulting flames, Lothel usually shows up whenever the good guys need her, and she can disappear the moment anyone looks away from her.  This leads to the serial's only genuinely funny moment, for though Eddie Quillan is the comedy relief, straight-man Norris gets the best joke when Lothel does another vanishing act on him, and he shrugs to the audience as if to say, "Got me again."  The ability to walk through fire and to do ninja-like vanishing tricks could be examples of "fake magic," and thus would belong to the domain of the uncanny.  However, in the serial's last episode, one of the Nazis fires point-blank at Lothel, with no effect on the goddess.  Immediately after this. the two of them are both consumed by an explosion, but Lothel survives to re-assume her role as guidance counselor to the Tongghili.  I suppose it's inevitable that a "white goddess" of any kind carries uncomfortable colonial associations, but the mere fact that JUNGLE QUEEN's script avoids the "fake goddess fools the natives" pitfall defuses some of those associations-- though of course it was a given that the script couldn't go to the other extreme, and portray Lothel as a LITERAL goddess.

Oddly, though UNDERSEA KINGDOM-- Republic's attempt to duplicate Universal's success with FLASH GORDON-- is a much more expensive effort than JUNGLE QUEEN, I found that it lacked even the latter's minor charms, much less GORDON's mythic dimensions.

 I appreciate that KINGDOM comes up with a lot more gosh-wow tinkertoys than most space-opera serials.  Its chapters are replete with robots, ray-guns, a battering-ram tank (which at one point has the hero spread-eagled on front of it, easily the serial's best moment), and a giant tower that rises from the sea to menace the modern world.  This sequence reminded me of Robert E. Howard's 1935 novel HOUR OF THE DRAGON, which also concerned a recrudescent archaic world that strove to replace the modern continuum.

However, FLASH GORDON-- both in the comic strip and the original serial-- showed some interest in the exotic worlds Flash visited as the hero attempted to sway the various races of Mongo against the tyrant Ming.  UNDERSEA KINGDOM is a little more on the programmatic side.

Hero Crash Corrigan and his allies voyage to the Undersea Kingdom of Atlantis for roughly the same reasons that Flash and his friends seek out Mongo; investigating the genesis of mysterious phenomena in their world.  In GORDON, Ming is responsible for causing chaos on Earth, while in KINGDOM, a tyrant with the risible name "Unga Khan" has been creating earthquakes on the surface world as a prelude to his attempt at conquest.  In both serial-stories, the scientist-member of the hero's team is seized by the tyrant, who seeks to use his talents to promote his agenda.

But KINGDOM has no interest in the world of Atlantis as GORDON showed interest in the exotica of Mongo.  Atlantis could pretty much be any old Ruritanian kingdom, and the script may be poking fun at its own good/bad simplicity in naming the good faction "the White Robes" while the allies of Unga Khan are "the Black Robes."  To be sure, in one episode a  Black Robe is converted to the side of the angels when Corrigan spares his life.  But it doesn't do the fellow-- oddly given the name of an "evil" pagan deity, "Moloch"-- much good, because by the serial's end all the bloody Atlanteans, good and bad, bite the bullet.

Perhaps this, more than anything, accounts for my negative feelings toward the serial.  Flash Gordon's Mongo is a great though utterly inconsistent dream-world, where any sort of weirdness is possible.  The producers of UNDERSEA KINGDOM seem strangely in a hurry to dispose of their dream-world, as if its presence threatened the hegemony of their real world, not just the serial's version of reality.

Corrigan is a competent serial-hero, who almost never resorts to a ray-gun if he can use his fists or wrestling-moves to win a battle.  But he lacks the charisma that Buster Crabbe displayed in his first serial outing, and his companions are similarly routine.  Despite having two comics to supply the funny stuff-- with the hilarious names "Salty" and "Briny Deep"-- their routines probably could have been excised without anyone noticing the lack.  

TWO HANSELS, THREE GRETELS, NO ENTERTAINMENT

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

I decided to review the three "Hansel and Gretel" films that came out, but as two of the titles are overly cumbersome, I didn't feel like squeezing them into my header.

Last summer's HANSEL AND GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS remains the best known of the three. It wasn't the first out of the gate, but I find it likely that the one that came out first was influenced by pre-production news of WITCH HUNTERS. 

Unfortunately, HAGWH doesn't have much to offer beyond its basic "high concept:" that of showing the folkloric characters Hansel and Gretel grown up and kicking witch-ass.  The setting is vaguely Germanic, but all of the characters talk like modern-day Americans.  Early in the film I was particularly ticked off by one example of banal American-ese, when Gretel asserts that there is increased "witch activity" in the area. CSI: WITCH HUNTERS, anyone?  Even Terry Gilliam's 2005 misfire, THE BROTHERS GRIMM, seemed more in touch with the period.

There's a marginal mystery about the circumstances under which Hansel and Gretel were abandoned as children, after which they were waylaid by a cannibal hag with a candy house, their first "victim."  But the film doesn't exert itself to put any effort into the siblings' backstory: it's only there in order to provide the villain with a reason for going after Gretel, whom the witch wants to use as a sacrifice due to her lineage.

Even for a Big Dumb Action picture, Hansel and Gretel are woefully under-characterized; they're not even convicing bad-asses, though as Gretel Gemma Arterton throws some decent punches.  Particularly ludicrous given the loose period setting is that the two heroes have recourse to assorted rapid-fire weapons, such as a Gatling Gun.  Arterton and Jeremy Renner are competent but the witless script gives them nothing to work with.  Punch, hit, shoot; rinse and repeat. 

The "H&G" film that did make it out first, appearing on SYFY in February 2012, was almost certainly anticipating the original release date of WITCH HUNTERS in March of that year.  Like many SYFY fantasies it's shot on a very restricted set-- a real forest, to be sure, but only within very limited parameters. 

The most amusing thing about the film is the name.  Hansel, not Gretl, is the witchslayer of the story, and I can only assume that the producers didn't think "Witchslayer Hansel" was strong enough to let viewers twig that the flick was about "Hansel and Gretel."  As in the big studio production, Hansel and Gretel are as children accosted by a witch.  But the witches in this tale aren't interested in eating people, only in possessing them.  The witch Zora steals Gretl from Hansel's side, leaving little Hansel behind.  Since he thinks his sister dead, Hansel devotes his life to hunting witches.  During his campaign he picks up two "good witch" aides: mature beauty "Lara" and younger beauty "Ehren," who use their magic to battle Zora's coven.  Hansel later learns that his sister is alive, having been kept around into adulthood so that Zora could inhabit her body (played by the film's one big-name star, Shannen Doherty).

GRETL never looks like anything but another made-on-the-cheap knockoff.  Yet all the body-switching was at least a trifle more emotionally involving than the outrageous-but-derivative kinetics of WITCH HUNTERS.  It's a measured choice at best, but GRETL, despite the awkward title, comes off best of the three.

HANSEL AND GRETEL: WARRIORS OF WITCHCRAFT came a little closer to the actual release date of WITCH HUNTERS, showing up on DVD rental "shelves" in February 2013.  However, the heroic siblings are named "Jonah" and "Ella," and their only connection to the siblings of the folktale is that they are supposed to be modern-day descendants of Hansel and Gretel.  Jonah and Ella are expelled from a high school because Jonah gets in a lot of fights.  They're accepted into another academy in Salem, Massachusetts, whose headmaster is played by yet another "star-with-marginal-name-value," Eric Roberts.  Soon Ella learns that one of the local cliques is a witch coven, and it seduces Jonah to the dark side of the Force, or something. With the help of Principal Roberts Ella takes on the witch-cult with some of the most ennervating action-scenes ever.

The only plus here is that director David DeCouteau does allow for some hot women alongside his more trademark "hot guys."  But this movie is too cheap to even make "cheap thrills" a reality.  I only watched it in a mood of looking for new nominees for your basic "so bad it's good" parties.  WARRIORS is a masterpiece of tedium with no possible laughs, so it comes off as inferior even to this sort of junk.

SOLOMON KANE (2009)

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


I've seen a few reviews trash writer-director Michel J. Bassett's take on one of Robert E. Howard's fan-favorite characters, Solomon Kane, but I can't quite see why. 

True, even the best adaptations of Howard's work-- a small pack headed by 1982's CONAN THE BARBARIAN-- don't tap into the author's strain of dark pessimism and savage code of ethics.  But KANE comes closer to the source material than most attempts, notoriously 1984's CONAN THE DESTROYER, 1997's KULL THE CONQUEROR, and the 1992 cartoon CONAN THE ADVENTURER. 

In the original stories and poems, of which Howard wrote roughly a dozen, Kane is a dour 17th-century Puritan adventurer, devoted to traveling the world in quest of evils to destroy.  This isn't a lot of motivation for a movie to work with, so it's natural enough that Bassett sought to "psychologize" Kane somewhat. 

The film opens with a rather confusing scene of Kane serving alongside a gang of reivers, only to be confronted by a genuine hellfire-demon.  Said demon informs the future hero that his soul now belongs to Satan, even though Kane hasn't signed any pacts that he knows of.  Possibly the scene, awkward though it is, serves two purposes.  First, it establishes for the audience that Kane's world is inhabited by real magical beings.  Second, the revelation scares Kane straight, sending him to the bosom of a monastery, just long enough to instill in Kane a desire to do good.

Various flashbacks transpire to delve into Kane's history and psychology.  Bassett doesn't exactly reinvent the wheel as he resorts to that old favorite, "daddy issues."  However, there's at least some attention paid to the archaic milieu, as the story's first in that British-born Kane is the second son of his aristocratic father Josiah.  Whether or not the film accurately describes English customs of the period, the script implies that it's axiomatic that only the elder son Marcus will inherit the entire estate of the Kanes.  Kane objects, claiming that Marcus is nothing but a brute.  To add oppressive fatherhood to neglect, Josiah wants Kane to join the church.  Josiah gives no reason for this demand, but one may fairly assume that Josiah wants Kane to devote his life to God so as to give Josiah an "in" with Heaven while he has Marcus take care of the estate's temporal affairs.  However, we learn through Kane's frequent flashbacks that Kane defied his father, and that before he could leave the estate, he had a fight with his brother that ended in his brother's apparent death.

Kane tries to turn his back on violence, but violence comes looking for him, principally in the form of a band of slave-taking raiders commanded by a magican, one Malachi.  Kane also befriends a family of pilgrims, and when their young and pretty daughter is abducted, it doesn't Kane long to ride the revenge trail.  The trail does take him back to his ancestral home, so that Kane is forced to confront the familial past he left behind.

The FX and fight-scenes are solid, James Purefoy gives a strong perf as Kane, and Bassett is consistent in projecting a sense of how grimy and violent things were in the 17th century.  I speculate that the filmmakers may have wanted to avoid the original context of Howard's character: that he was usually riding around messing in the business of foreign nations, with at least two tales set in early colonial Africa.  Avoiding this political hotspot may have been prudent, though if there was ever a Kane sequel, I would hope that they'd find some way to address the Puritan's complex relationship with "darkest Africa," politically incorrect though it might be.

GHOST ROCK (2003)

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


Any time one looks up an IMDB listing for a given film and finds a martial artist/actor listed as one of the "writers," one should be pretty sure what one is getting.  And sure enough, despite the Old West setting, GHOST ROCK is your basic American chopsocky with minor supernatural content.

In large part GHOST ROCK is cribbed from Clint Eastwood's 1973  "American spaghetti western" HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER.  In that film a man murdered in a corrupt town apparently comes back from the dead to avenge his murder.  Wikipedia claims that the original intent of the script was a naturalistic one, and would have revealed that avenger Eastwood was the twin of the murdered man.  That sensible explanation was dropped, with the result that in the film released the audience never got any rationale for the avenger's appearance.

In contrast, GHOST ROCK provides both a naturalistic and a supernaturalistic avenger.  Twenty years prior to the main body of the story, a gang of outlaws raid a small ranch.  A little girl is killed and the boy who knows her survives to seek vengeance twenty years later in the town of Ghost Rock.  However, for no explicit reason the little girl, grown to womanhood, shows up in town, fully armed and also seeking revenge on the outlaws.  She's literally a ghost, but thanks to budgetary constraints, she never walks through walls, allows bullets to pass through her, or the like.

Naturally there's no telling why it takes both natural-hero John (Michael Worth) and supernatural-heroine Savannah (Jenya Lano) so damn long to find the murderers, particularly when their leader Pickett (Gary Busey) is hiding in plain sight, serving as the mayor of Ghost Rock.  In addition, to make the presence of martial arts in the Old West slightly palatable, Ghost Rock has a substantial Chinese population, who are maltreated by Mayor Pickett and from whom John learned his non-American fighting-skills.  In addition to a second male martial artist who works for Pickett and gives John his best fights, even a couple of local prostitutes show off a couple of kung fu moves.  While no one would ever call the teleseries KUNG FU historically accurate, compared to this rampant silliness it's a veritable model of probity.

Lively gunfights and kung-fu battles make this dumb-fun western watchable but never memorable.  It does try to throw in a little humor, but sometimes the film's jokes are more peculiar than funny, as when saloon-madame Mattie (Adrienne Barbeau, currently pushing seventy years in age) is challenged to knock out a man with one punch, as if this is a common occurence in Ghost Rock's version of the Old West.  A commentary on Barbeau's fame as a "tough girl," or just giving the actress some extraneous "action" to perform to justify purchasing her services to enhance the film's "marquee value?"  On a star-spotting side-note, Worth-- best known to mainstream audiences for the syndie teleseries ACAPULCO HEAT-- is joined here by Christa Sauls, another HEAT veteran.

THE OCTAGON (1980)

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


As with the various DURANGO KID westerns I've reviewed, THE OCTAGON is a film whose metaphenomenality inheres entirely in its use of unusual costumes-- but for the film's villains, not for the hero.  Although Chuck Norris' hero "Scott James" has been trained in the arts of the ninja, his only concession to ninja tradition is that briefly he appears clad in black attire.  Only the bad-guy ninjas appear in full costumes.

There's not a lot to say about the slack plotline of OCTAGON, in which an isolated fortress of ninjas somehow manages to maintain itself in some American forest while periodically sending out its black-clad killers to perform assassinations.  Hero James, who received his training by virtue of being adopted by a ninja master, left the fold in part because of conflicts with his envious brother Seikura (Tadashi Yamashita).  James attempts to keep out of ninja business, but finds himself drawn back in, partly thanks to the contrivance of his mercenary pal McCarn (Lee Van Cleef), who is in the business of hunting terrorists.

I don't expect great acting out of this type of American chopsocky, but in the entire cast Van Cleef is the only actor to bring some elan to his tawdry role.  Norris, Yamashita, Kim Lankford, Karen Carlson-- all turn in dog-worthy performances.  Their clumsy thesping would be easier to overlook if director Eric Karson and his team could bring any energy to the proceedings. One review called OCTAGON "sluggish," which sums up the flick's failings adequately. I will note that this was Karson's first time directing an entire movie, and that he did improve somewhat with his next two martial-arts adventures, 1986's OPPOSING FORCE and 1988's BLACK EAGLE.

A side-note: in the same way that I stated that the heroic "Durango Kid" was an uncanny presence with his bandana-masked getup-- but that ordinary bandits wearing bandanas would not be-- not all ninjas convey an uncanny vibe.  I'm not likely to ever review the 1997  naturalistic modern-day karate-film KICKBOXING ACADEMY.  But this film's very minor use of "ninjas"-- who are just a coterie of modern-day thugs in ninja costumes-- does not convey any uncanny status upon its narrative.