JOURNEY TO THE WEST (2013)

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

*** SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS****


I had to give a lot of thought as to how to classify Stephen Chow's looney, often anachronistic take on the classic 16th-century Chinese novel JOURNEY TO THE WEST.  In the original novel, a devout Buddhist priest journeys from Tang-era China to India in order to secure a collection of precious sutras and to bring them back to China. According to Wikipedia most of the adventures of the priest-- in the film given the name Xuan Zang-- and his magical bodyguards take place on the way to India. Chow's JOURNEY focuses only on the early life of Xuan Zang, when he is a young Buddhist demon-hunter, but one with a naive belief that he can reform demons by reading nursery rhymes to them. This is probably nothing like the original priest's early history, and certainly the available summaries emphasize not demon-hunting but Xuan Jang's quest on behalf of Buddhism.

The priest isn't only naive about demons; he also understands nothing about women, and out of foolish pride he rejects a more experienced female demon-hunter, Duan (Shu Qi) when she falls in love with him. The association of Xuan Zang and Duan leads them into many exploits of demon-hunting, particularly against cannibalistic pig-demons, whose leader is given the comic name "K.L. Hog" (Killer Hog?)  The climax involves the rash young priest releasing Sun, the mercurial and deadly Monkey King, from the prison to which the original Buddha condemned him for the past 500 years. In the novel, Monkey is released so that he will be tamed and enlisted to help Xuan Zang collect the sutras, but in Stephen Chow's script, the mission of the sutras doesn't come about until after Monkey is released.

My various comparisons with the novel are not meant to suggest that Chow misleads anyone in his audience into thinking he'll deliver a sober-faced rendition of the original work. By the time Chow has finished the opening sequence, which deals with Xuan Zang's attempt to "demon-bust" a murderous fish-demon, it's clear that the director is delivering an all-stops-pulled-out Hollywood-esque exercise in kinetic showmanship. It's in this sequence that Xuan Zang first tries to pacify a demon through the use of Chinese nursery rhymes, which naturally does not end well for the young man. Duan arrives on the scene and promptly beats the demon to death with her fists. She becomes piqued by Xuan Zang's resistance to her charms, and when they cross paths again, both hunting down the leader of the cannibal pig-men, she determines to pursue him.

This theme by itself-- a woman's aggressive pursuit of an unwilling man-- should signal that the film will be an all-out comedy. And certainly the middle section of the film is replete with many farcical sequences. Duan and her fellow martial demon-hunters (one of whom is called "Fist of the North Star," after a famous manga hero) have a wagon that can be propelled sans horses, because inside is a ludicrous air-filled balloon that makes the wagon shoot forward every time the balloon is whacked with big hammers. Duan uses her friends to attempt fooling the priest into sleeping with her. Duan, deciding that she needs to act in a more feminine manner to snare Xuan Zang, gets a female friend to use magic so that she Duan will "mimic" the friend's actions-- and of course, the wrong actions get mimicked.

Yet the third part of the film begins the downfall of the traditional boy-girl plot. On the advice of his mentor, Xuan Zang journeys to the prison of the Monkey King in order to employ the latter's powers against the pig-demons. This sequence starts out comically, for when the priest first meets the simian demon, he looks like a wizened old man. Monkey even gets Duan to dance with him, much to Xuan Zang's displeasure.

But once Xuan Zang releases Monkey, the funny little man becomes a malicious, egotistical demon, and he smashes down all of Duan's demon-hunters. Even some of these fight-scenes contain farce-elements, particularly since one of Monkey's challengers is a monk whose power is to make one of his feet grow to titanic size. But the comedy vanishes when Monkey kills Duan. This, ironically, causes the grieving Xuan Zang to realize his own Buddha-hood, and he attains a level of power that allows to chastise Monkey in a show-stopping fashion.  Following this, Xuan Zang goes on to accept the sutra-mission, taking with him his three most iconic helpers: a pig-demon, a river-demon, and the now tamed Monkey.

I've discoursed on the storyline in detail to indicate why I think that JOURNEY is more of a drama than a comedy. It's not simply that it has a sobering ending, but rather, because all the jubilative scenes are subordinate to the main point of the plot. This main point is not jubilative but purgative in nature. Xuan Zang, since he is destined to be a priest, must be purged of his desire for Duan, and this, in the formulations of Northrop Frye as I have read him, aligns JOURNEY with the mythos of drama.

This isn't to say that a drama must end tragically: even Aristotle stated the contrary. SLEEPING BEAUTY is a notable film that I categorize as a drama, not because it ends sadly, but it does so by emphasizing the purgation of evil, in the form of Maleficent, more than it does the heroic triumph of Prince Philip. SLEEPING BEAUTY, like JOURNEY, contains many farcical scenes, but the presence of these is also subordinate to the dramatic resolution of the romance-plot. In similar fashion GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY is also replete with numerous comedic material, but at its core it does emphasize an invigorating heroic triumph, and so it qualifies for the mythos of adventure. Finally, THE TENTH VICTIM is another film with a number of funny sequences, but the main point of its plot centers upon the mortificative mood of the irony, even though, as in SLEEPING BEAUTY, the romance does succeed despite the rest of the world going to hell.

THE THING WITH TWO HEADS (1972)

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

In my review of THE INCREDIBLE 2-HEADED TRANSPLANT I wrote:

About a year [after TRANSPLANT], director Lee Frost collaborated with one of TRANSPLANT's three writers on THE THING WITH TWO HEADS. It was not any subtler than its predecessor, but it showed a much better grasp of how to get some fun out of a silly idea.

I probably based this opinion on my having re-screened bits and pieces of THING WITH TWO HEADS occasionally over the years, while I hadn't seen any part of TRANSPLANT for years. But I guess I hadn't sat through THING all the way through. Now that I have, I retract the above opinion: THING isn't really much more fun than TRANSPLANT, and if anything the earlier film at least has a little more potential with its frustrated Frankenstein/Doctor Jekyll theme.

Lee Frost's film could have been fun, of course. The loony idea that, through a sequence of improbable events, a bigoted white doctor gets his head transplanted onto the body of a black man is just begging for all sorts of acidic racial humor. What image better encapsulates the idea of "the Man" as a specter that haunts Afro-American dreams and achievements?  But THING plays it too safe.

Though the opening scenes are clunky, Frost efficiently communicates the racism of dying Doctor Kirshner (Ray Milland) when he meets a new hire for the first time, Doctor Williams (Don Marshall), and finds out that he's black.  Milland does a good job portraying his character's entitled contempt-- he barely even tries to give a plausible reason for rejecting Williams. And while Marshall maintains his dignity by holding the racist doc to his contract, the actor musters an undertone of disappointment, of having his hopes of working with a prominent physican dashed by the physician's ugly animus.

However, that's the last strong dramatic moment in the movie.  Kirshner suffers an attack, and the only way his subordinates can get a new body for him is to accept that of a man on Death Row: an innocent man named Jack Moss (Rosey Grier).  Moss is holding out for evidence that will prove him innocent, only to wake up and find that his body has been hijacked by the Arch-Ofay himself.

However, unlike the two-headed monster of the previous flick, Moss and Kirshner don't go on any murderous rampage. Moss controls the body enough to break free of the doctors and run for his life.  There follows a lot of tedious chase-scenes involving cars and motorcycles, all of which dissipated whatever good will I had for the movie.

Of course, there is the film's one good line: when Moss' girlfriend sees the two-headed critter, she asks him if he has two of anything else.  It's a good line, but she says it in a distinctly unsexy setting, with Doctor Williams standing around listening.

Moss and Kirshner seesaw back and forth over control of the body a little, but the inevitable "feel good" finish comes to pass, and Moss wins free from both the long arm of the law and that unwanted second head (or third, depending on what anatomical parts one counts).

So TRANSPLANT comes off a little better than this. But my advice is, don't watch either of these; check out 1959's THE MANSTER instead.

I'll note in passing that the next completed project for both Frost and his co-scripter Wes Bishop was 1974's POLICEWOMEN, which is above-average seventies sleaze. So the two of them could successfully put their two heads together, as long as they weren't stuck in the same body.

THE DUNWICH HORROR (1970)

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

**SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS*****


In its era THE DUNWICH HORROR was the most faithful adaptation of a Lovecraft "Cthulhu mythos" work, and it still outstrips most of those now in existence. Aside from one problematic acting-performance, seen above, DUNWICH captures much of the appeal of the great author's themes.

To be sure, there are some major changes. H.P. Lovecraft almost never allowed any form of romance to appear in his stories, while sexuality generally manifested in displaced forms.  The prose original, though, does indirectly involve sexual congress, since it eventually comes out that the otherworldly being Yog-Sothoth has spawned not one but two entities from a human mother. So in this case it's not surprising that the script for the cinematic DUNWICH plays up the 1970's version of ilicit license, in the form of hallucinatory pagan dream-orgies.

Romance is not present in the original story, wherein a foul-seeming young man, Wilbur Whateley, seeks to get a copy of an occult tome, the Necronomicon, and is killed before he can perform any rituals, though his alien "brother" escapes to create havoc. Since a commercial film needs more audience-involvement than was necessary for Lovecraft's type of story, DUNWICH creates a young female college-student, Nancy (Sandra Dee), and has her become interested in the young, rather stone-faced Wilbur Whateley (Dean Stockwell) when he comes to her college's library on his evil-book hunt. It's a little hard to buy Nancy's fascination with Wilbur, since he displays no ingratiating charms and projects the febrile intensity of a serial killer. Perhaps director Daniel Haller and/or actor Stockwell decides that this was the best way to communicate Wilbur's disengagement from the emotions of ordinary humanity, but the approach sabotages the credibility of Nancy's behavior. It's been suggested that Nancy is under Wilbur's hypnotic control as she makes herself increasingly available to the obsessed bibliophile, but I was never convinced that she was entranced, perhaps because Sandra Dee plays the part as if she's genuinely intrigued.

Fortunately for humanity, one of Nancy's teachers is Dr. Armitage (Ed Begley).  Armitage not only prevents Wilbur from getting access to the book, he and a student named Elizabeth follow Nancy to the Whateley farm in rural Massachusetts, here they encounter Wilbur's grandfather (Sam Jaffe).  When they are unable to draw Nancy away, Armitage begins investigating the reputation of the Whateleys, and learns that Wilbur's father was lynched for attempting a demonic ritual. They also meet Wilbur's mother Lavinia, now confined to an asylum.

While Armitage is busy with research, Elizabeth trespasses on the Whateley house looking for Nancy, and finds the "brother" instead. The creature, represented as a sort of dazzling light-show that human sight cannot resolve, kills her and gets loose. In a rather strange side-plot, the grandfather is killed afterward in a fall, and Wilbur takes time out from his occult plot to attempt burying his relation in the local graveyard, inciting more antipathy from the locals.  The conflict comes to a head as Whateley almost completes a forbidden ritual in what looks like the Massachusetts version of Stonehenge, but Armitage interferes and uses his own occult knowledge to counter the ritual, dooming Wilbur and sealing Yog-Sothoth back in his own dimension. In the final coda, however, it's revealed that at some point Wilbur got the chance to impregnate Nancy, and that the Whateley line will go on.

Plot and characterization are only fair here: the real attraction are the visuals of director Haller, who made his fame providing art direction for most of Roger Corman's Poe pictures.  Unfortunately DUNWICH did not lead to greater prominence for Haller, who, like Sandra Dee, spent the rest of the 1970s in television projects. Ed Begley died shortly after DUNWICH, and of the stars only Dean Stockwell seemed to prosper in later years, though he just about ruins the film at the climax, braying "Yog-Sothoth!" at the top of his voice, when a subtler, more modulated approach might have communicated more of a creepy otherworldy resonance.

DONOVAN'S BRAIN (1953)

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


Coincidentally, I just recently remarked on the indebtedness of THE INCREDIBLE 2-HEADED TRANSPLANT  to both the brain-transplant films of early horror and Stevenson's DR. JEKYLL AND MISTER HYDE. Now by coincidence a local channel re-showed DONOVAN'S BRAIN, one of those early brain-films-- albeit not one dealing with a transplant-- and that film's script even briefly references Jekyll and Hyde!

I've never read the original Curt Siodmak novel. Allegedly Siodmak liked none of the movie-adaptations of his work, but based on Wikipedia descriptions, this one sounds pretty close to the original. The 1953 film's direction and screenplay were both courtesy of Felix E. Feist, who does an efficient but unremarkable job with the story.  A plane crashes in the vicinity of the home of Doctor Patrick Cory and his wife Janice, and they manage to pull from the wreckage the dying body of wealthy financier W.H. Donovan. Cory, aided by his colleague Dr. Schratt, removes the brain from Donovan's body in order to study it, even though Schratt protests that this bit of "brain robbery" could land them both in jail.

Soon Cory's hubris catches up with him: the brain not only survives being removed from its body, it develops telepathic powers and begins using Cory as its catspaw. Cory begins mimicking the habits and attitude of the corrupt financier, and becomes Donovan's mouthpiece in continuing shady deals with the rich and powerful.  But the brain's control lapses occasionally, and in one of Cory's periods of clarity, he conspires with Schratt and his wife to destroy the cerebral horror.

One interesting aspect of BRAIN is that while it doesn't include a sustained discussion of the topics of God and science, it doesn't entirely take the standard mad-scientist POV that the scientist shouldn't trespass on the dictates of heaven. When Schratt initially protests that removing the brain goes against God, Cory replies that the scientist's skills are the creation of God like everything else. The big finish, in which the brain is destroyed by lightning, is surely meant to conjure with the notion of God striking down evildoers (as well as being one major difference from the novel, whose described conclusion includes no lightning). Yet the only reason "God" can take this action is because Cory reroutes his home's lightning rod so that it will electrocute the brain if all else fails.

The most interesting thing about the film is that though its story is probably distantly derived from the Stevenson classic, Cory does not suffer annihilation for his hubris, unlike both Doctor Jekyll and the majority of 1950s SF-scientists.  Cory and his wife go through a lot, but they survive unscathed, and even Schratt, after being forced to shoot himself by the brain's mental commands, lives through the ordeal.  Only a nasty blackmailing reporter is killed during the reign of Donovan's brain, and certainly the audience isn't likely to weep for him.

The film lacks the more inspired dialogue of the best 1950s SF-films, but it does have one risible line at the climax, when the brain-possessed Cory grabs hold of Janice and tells her, "Look at my brain, my dear-- your last look--!"

THE INCREDIBLE TWO-HEADED TRANSPLANT (1971)

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


I had not watched TWO-HEADED TRANSPLANT in twenty (maybe more) years. My only memory of that experience was that TRANSPLANT was nothing but forgettable trash.

I won't exactly say that the many years of slogging through bad movies made TRANSPLANT any better than it was. It's still pretty lackluster work. Its writers and its director, one Anthony Lanza, didn't really go the extra distance to engage with their ludicrous premise. But if one is in the "bad movie" spirit, TRANSPLANT may at least hold your interest, even without a payoff on the level of PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, or even 1970's BIGFOOT, on which Lanza worked as an assistant director.

The justification of Doctor Girard (Bruce Dern) for wanting to create two-headed creatures-- beginning with various animals, and graduating to a human being-- is no better or worse than the rationales provided by the brain-swapping flicks of the 1940s, not least the recently reviewed MONSTER AND THE GIRL.  As Girard tells his older assistant Max, the idea is to be able to graft a healthy noggin onto a body whose regular head has contracted brain cancer. Girard, surprisingly, has no special Frankenstein-like quirks, no desire to seek revenge on anyone for not realizing his genius-- though the viewer gets a little of that from Max, who was forced to quite the practice of medicine due to deterioration of his motor skills.

Others reside at Girard's rustic country house/laboratory-- his pretty blonde wife Linda (Pat Priest), the caretaker for the property, and the caretaker's adult son Danny (John Bloom), a huge hulk who became mentally damaged in a mine accident.  In keeping with the archetype of the "gentle giant," Danny has a childlike affection for Linda. Linda also receives a visit from former beau Ken (Casey Kasem). He serves little purpose beyond being available as Linda's "consolation prize" when her over-ambitious husband comes to grief, also a common motif in such 1940s flicks as THE MAD GHOUL.

At the same time Girard and Max are creating two-headed snakes, dogs, and so on, a sex-obsessed madman named Cass escapes a police dragnet.  Cass happens onto Girard's house, shoots the caretaker, ties up Girard, and abducts Linda with the intent of finding a good hideaway in order to enjoy himself.  Max comes to Linda's rescue, shooting Cass dead with a rifle.

It's also Max who puts into Girard's head the idea of taking the next experimental step.  Max argues that Danny, reduced to confused mourning by his father's death, is as good as dead, so why not try transplanting the head of the murderer to Danny's hulking form?

As easily as falling off a log, the two mostly-mad scientists create their unholy merger. In a bit of psychological parallelism that the film doesn't explore adequately, Cass's consciousness survives and dominates Danny's mind, not unlike the manner in which Max wields a subtle influence over Girard.  And soon the Two-Headed Transplant is on the loose, killing whatever victims come to hand.  The highlight of the creature's murder spree is an encounter in which Old Double-Dome has a fight with a biker, despite the latter's advantage of being mounted on his cycle and wielding a bike-chain.  This little scene makes all the sense in the world when one knows that Lanza and two of TRANSPLANT's writers collaborated on 1967's biker-flick THE GLORY STOMPERS.

I can't say that TRANSPLANT is ever anything but predictable, but since Lanza had ample experience as a film editor, the film's visuals are at least efficient.  John Bloom tries hard as Danny, but though the role isn't that demanding he just doesn't have the mojo to convey much pathos as the "weak brother" in the enhanced body. Albert Cole as Cass is just a bad over-actor, failing to convey the necessary menace that would have improved even a "so bad it's good" film. Dern, Priest and Kasem are no more than adequate, bringing nothing special to their parts.  The conclusion does include one "full-circle" moment in that the Transplant seeks to hide in the same mine where Danny was injured, but even here the pathos of Danny's fear is conjured more by the situation than Bloom's talent.  And though the "two heads" might be considered a variation on the theme of the "Jekyll and Hyde" split-personality, the two minds of the monster remain so separated that there's not much psychological interest here.

About a year later, director Lee Frost collaborated with one of TRANSPLANT's three writers on THE THING WITH TWO HEADS. It was not any subtler than its predecessor, but it showed a much better grasp of how to get some fun out of a silly idea.

PROJECT SHADOWCHASER I-III (1992, 1994, 1995)

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


I had seen PROJECT SHADOWCHASER III years ago on cable, and for many years had no idea what the other installments were like. YouTube gave me the chance to find out.

The opening film from 1992 is essentially "Die Hard with a Killer Android."  In a near-future setting some terrorists break into a government installation. There they find and liberate an intelligent android being kept on ice. The android, name of Romulus (Frank Zagarino), takes over the gang, and they invade a high-rise hospital in order to kidnap the daughter of the president.  More or less by accident, the authorities also unleash a convict from cryo-sleep, name of DaSilva (Martin Kove). To keep his freedom DaSilva braves the high-rise and begins knocking off terrorists in the approved John McClane manner, with a little help from the aforesaid daughter (Meg Foster). It's a tolerably executed cheesy action-flick with decent direction from Jon Eyres, also the director on the other two in the official series.

Next up is 1994's SHADOWCHASER II, aka NIGHT SIEGE. Although Romulus appears to be destroyed at the end of the 1992 film, again an android-- this time without a name, but identical in appearance and again played by Zagarino-- recruits a bunch of terrorists. With this gang he proceeds to take over a nuclear plant, apparently in the hope of triggering armageddon. This time the tough McClane-clone is Frank (Bryan Genesse), a janitor at the nuclear facility, who for no clear reason is a master of the martial arts.  Of the three films, this one puts forth the best hard-hitting fight-scenes, particularly a face-off between Unnamed Android and Forgettable Janitor-Hero at the conclusion.  Female lead Beth Toussaint is both a physicist at the plant and a working mom, so of course her young boy arrives during the chaos in order to up the tension a bit.

PROJECT SHADOWCHASER III, however, has even less to do with the earlier two Eyres films than they do with each other. Number Three jumps forward to an era in which mankind is now exploring space on a regular basis. Our viewpoint characters are a motley crew aboard a communications station orbiting Mars, all of whom are just minding their own business, shooting the shit and complaining about work. Then an ore-mining spacecraft suddenly careens into their vicinity. The crew manages to steer clear of the onrushing spaceship-- until it turns around and deliberately runs into them.  The protagonists soon learn that the ship's original crew has been killed by a berserk, again nameless android (Zagarino), who then begins stalking the comm-station crew as well. For absolutely no reason, the android can assume the appearance of anyone he sees-- which means that, in essence, Eyres and his scripter decided to borrow not from one movie, but two: the original ALIEN and 1982's THE THING.

Ironically, though Eyres' handling of the larger ensemble of actors and the low-budget ALIEN-derived setting is quite skillful, Number Three is the least enjoyable of the series.  The actors are skilled but their characters are all cookie-cutter types, and whatever charisma Zagarino displayed in the earlier films is mitigated by all the shapechanging.

Given that dozens of DIE HARD imitations appeared during the nineties without birthing sequels, I speculate that Zagarino's lean muscular bod is the main reason the first film managed to spawn two more entries.  It's interesting that while Zagarino doesn't look anything like Alexander Godunov, who played the long-haired blonde crook in DIE HARD...

...it might be that Zagarino's essaying of yet another "blonde muscleman" sparked in video-viewers some enthusiasm for this particular DIE HARD knockoff. But as I say, it's pure speculation on my part.

Since the android in the third movie doesn't have any decent opposition, that and its copying of ALIEN relegate it to subcombative status.

ANNIE (1982), LITTLE RITA OF THE WEST (1967)

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


I haven't reviewed many musicals on this blog, but the form presents a number of challenges to the NUM theory.  In contrast to more mimetically oriented narratives, musicals take a pleasure in "breaking the fourth wall." Most of these are "fallacious figments" in the naturalistic sense, meaning that audiences know that they're meant to disregard most, if not all, departures from causality. The most prominent figment is the manifestation of orchestral music to accompany the performers' songs, but there are also moments in which the protagonists briefly contravene causality, as when Fred Astaire dances on the ceiling in 1951's ROYAL WEDDING.  Yet there are also instances in which musicals include metaphenomena that are not meant to be disregarded. The cinematic dance-team of Astaire and Lucille Bremer did one of each type of metaphenomena. In ZIEGFELD FOLLIES, a dying Astaire dreams that he dances a sumptous exotic ballet with Bremer, while in YOLANDA AND THE THIEF, Astaire poses as a heavenly angel to the naive Bremer, only to encounter the Real Thing.

Except for one brief sequence, the 1982 ANNIE could be a musical in the naturalistic mode. This would be in keeping with the comic strip, which seemed to place Little Orphan Annie's exploits in a largely naturalistic, if larger than life, world. As my knowledge of the strip is spotty, I don't know if the film's attribution of magical powers to Daddy Warbucks' aide Punjab is on-target or not. But Punjab provides the only example of marvelous content in the film; that of levitating a flower-vase with his mind-powers for Annie's entertainment. Thus the film falls into the category I've termed "the marginal metaphenomenal," in that the metaphenomenality doesn't really contribute to the plot and barely adds anything to any of the characters.  Yet this doesn't seem to be a phenomenon meant to be disregarded as with my first Astaire example. There's at least a degree of logic in that Punjab, being a Hindu, may have developed mental powers through the mystic arts for which India has become famous. I tend to think that there ought to be at least a tenuous chain of logic that justifies a real metaphenomenon, even as tenuous as when a vampire and a mad scientist appear in the manor-setting of ONE MORE TIME, apparently for no better reason than the tendency of monsters to show up in such settings.

Incidentally, I don't have much to say about ANNIE as entertainment: it's tolerable on that level, but it doesn't bother to address any of the social issues relevant to the conservative Harold Gray comic strip, except in the most dismissive manner.

Much more negligible in the history of film musicals is the Italian western spoof LITTLE RITA OF THE WEST. It's a silly farrago of comic scenes in which the titular Rita-- played by Italian singer Rita Pavone-- goes around beating down various cowboy opponents, except when she takes time out for non-diegetical musical performances.  The script is cheerfully anachronistic, so the question comes up: should anything be taken "seriously?"  Or should everything fantastic be dismissed in the manner as ROYAL WEDDING's ceiling dance?

The particular maybe-metaphenomenon I had to consider is seen in the still above. Following a scene in which the miniscule cowgirl beats up a guy dressed like Eastwood's "Man with No Name" (and played by former *peplum* star Kirk Morris), she blows the guy away with a "golden pistol" that doubles as a grenade-launcher. Real spaghetti westerns sometimes edge into the realm of the uncanny with the use of weird weapons, but my verdict is that the only way Rita's golden pistol would have qualified would be if it had been given even a tenuous thread of logic to justify it. No such logical chain is evoked, so in essence Rita's pistol-- really no more than a verbal reference to the 1966 film, RINGO AND HIS GOLDEN PISTOL-- is no more a "real fantasy" than Astaire's ceiling-dance.

Like ANNIE, RITA is only tolerable entertainment if one happens to be in the mood for its charms. Its most amusing sequence is one in which Little Rita triumphs over a villain outfitted exactly like Franco Nero's Django.