THE KILLER SHREWS (1959)

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

Watching THE KILLER SHREWS is a little like watching Sisyphus roll his boulder up to the top of the hill. You know that the boulder's going to fall down the other side as soon as it gets to the top, but you have a mild admiration of the condemned man's persistence.

SHREWS was the first film-credit for both director Ray Kellogg and writer Jay Simms. The same year, the two would collaborate on THE GIANT GILA MONSTER, which makes SHREWS's storyline look pretty good by comparison. While only the humans are in screen, SHREWS seems to be a fairly adequate thriller about the characters being besieged by murderous animals. When the "killer shrews" are on screen, however, no one above the age of five is likely to be able to take them seriously.

The hero of the film is sailboat captain Thorne Sherman (James Best). He and his pilot sail to a little-known island in order to deliver supplies. Sherman soon learns that two scientists, Doctors Baines and Craigis, have been experimenting on the tiny animals called shrews, in order to see if they can reduce their metabolism, for reasons that are never too clear. In addition to a servant and some livestock, the party also includes Craigis's daughter Ann (Ingrid Goude) and her former fiancee Jerry (Ken Curtis). It doesn't take long before Sherman realizes that there's trouble between the former lovers, and Ann begins showing Sherman favor-- chiefly because, when Ann was in danger earlier, Jerry preserved his own life rather than protecting her. It takes Sherman longer to find out the nature of the danger: tiny shrews that have been mutated to the size of wolves, so omnivorous that they'll almost totally devour their victims, even the bones.

The hubris implied by the careless scientific experiment takes second place to the duel of Sherman and Jerry for the fair Ann. Though both Best and Curtis became celebrated for later television roles, their performances are just fair, while that of Goude is dull. The best acting, oddly enough, is from Gordon McLendon as Doctor Baines, who's presented as the standard absent-minded scientist, and yet seems a little more convincing in his role (possibly because, despite the smallness of the role, he was also one of the producers).

BANDITS, PROSTITUTES, AND SILVER (1977)

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

This 1970s chopsocky, issued under an assortment of English-language titles, is probably best known as one of the many films starring kung-fu diva Angela Mao. It's also one of the few films of the kung-fu craze to boast a female director, one Pao-Shu Kao. who also co-wrote BANDITS. The film is better organized than a lot of contemporaneous films in this genre and sustains a strong sociological theme about the evil custom of selling women into prostitution. The fact that the story takes place in a typical quasi-medieval period doesn't rob it of relevance to modern times, unfortunately.

Though Mao is the most recognizable names to Westerners, she's not the star. Don Wong plays honest kung-fu artist Shang Li, a man who's fallen in love with Shao Choy, who has been contracted-- implicitly by her parents-- to serve in a brothel. Shang can buy out Shao's contract if he has enough silver, but he's just a poor wagon-driver. Sparrow, a scheming bandit, offers Shang a means of making big money if Shang helps Sparrow rip off a silver shipment via wagon. When Sparrow pulls off the heist but threatens to slay all witnesses, Shang fights and kills him. Despite opposing the bandit, Shang still needs the stolen silver and absconds with the loot, intending only to use as much as he needs to buy out Shao Choy's contract.

Another couple of bandits-- Mao's unnamed character, and her husband, a renegade Shaolin-- decided that they'd like the silver for their own reasons. In addition, a third conspirator, Pao, is also after the loot. The married bandits end up becoming allies to Shang, in that they're impressed with his romantic motivations, but this earns them the enmity of Pao. Pao manages to kill both husband and wife, though the evil genius is vanquished by Shang in a final combat with a singularly inventive method of death-dealing.

The only metaphenomenal elements of the film are the weapons used respectively by Pao and by Angela Mao's character. Pao uses a complicated ring-and-chain weapon slightly reminiscent of the "flying guillotine" gimmick, while the bandit queen, oddly enough, has miniature rotary buzzsaws attached to her shoes, capable of cutting anyone she kicks. There is of course no explanation as to how the saws can possibly be powered in this period film, so I have to attribute it to "the magic of chi" or something like that. No technology or magical method is explicitly evoked, so the metaphenomenality is only explicable as some obscure kung-fu trick, in line with the fellow who can cling to walls in THE FIVE DEADLY VENOMS.

BATMAN: RETURN OF THE CAPED CRUSADERS (2016), RETURN TO THE BATCAVE (2003)

PHENOMENALITY: (1) *marvelous,* (2) *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: (1) *adventure,* (2) *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*


RETURN OF THE CAPED CRUSADERS-- the first of two DTV animated films which re-united Adam West, Burt Ward and Julie Newmar in their iconic Bat-roles-- doesn't come close to the more inspired lunacy of the 1966 teleseries. Granted, it gets the overall "look" of the series better than DC's odious "Batman '66" comic books. But while the series mixed corny slapstick with knowing irony (and just enough real adventure to please the kids), RETURN is pure corn, with bits of fannish trivia thrown in (something that the producers of the teleseries could not have cared less about).

The plot seems somewhat indebted to numerous 1950s and 1960s Batman-stories in which the hero or his sidekick Robin underwent some sort of bizarre physical transformation: Giant Batman, Baby Batman, Super-Strong Robin, etc. This time, Batman (West) and Robin (Ward) are faced with yet another teamup of the TV-show's four most celebrated villains: Catwoman (Newmar), Joker, Riddler and Penguin. As a result of Catwoman's attempt to brainwash Batman to make him evil, the hero loses his sanguine cool and becomes a full-time bastard. With the help of a "replica ray," Batman creates numerous duplicates of himself and uses his "clones" as a task force to ride herd on Gotham. Robin and Catwoman team up to restore Batman to his goodguy status.

It's fun to hear the three main actors reprise their roles via voice-work. There are numerous shout-outs to the teleseries (most of the signature villains created for the show participate in a gang-battle against the Bat-clones, such as Egghead, King Tut, et al), as well as to the Golden Age comic book (one sound-effect during a fight goes "SPRANG") and later DC iterations (Miller's DARK KNIGHT is conspicuously quoted). Joker, Penguin and Riddler don't get anywhere near the good lines that Catwoman gets, though, and might as well have been some of the also-ran villains of the series. And though this Catwoman isn't the super-athlete seen in the current Bat-comics, this time she does get a minor fight-scene against some of the villains. This diverges from the policy of the teleseries, which almost never allowed its female guests to take part in scenes of violence (not counting the co-starring Batgirl in the third season, obviously).

The live-action telefilm RETURN TO THE BATCAVE, though made thirteen years earlier, nevertheless mines almost the same field of corny humor, though Bat-fans won't find anyone catering to their love of trivia here. In this tale, real-life actors West and Ward become involved in the theft of the Batmobile by persons unknown, and get mixed up with other actors with whom they worked on the Bat-series, Julie Newmar and Frank Gorshin. There are bits of series-trivia worked in, but nothing very arcane, and the producers seem to have believed that the casting of the old favorite actors was the movie's main selling-point.

During the investigation, West and Ward get into a couple of not-very-real fistfights meant to ape the style of the "biff-bam-pow" kinetics of the series, but done with two really old guys in mind. So there's no intention of really delivering any sort of action along with the comedy. There is, however, an uncanny element in the form of a sleep-gas bomb, so at least this silly thing isn't a total capitulation to naturalistic thinking.

NEVER TOO YOUNG TO DIE (1986)

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


NEVER TOO YOUNG TO DIE is a prime slice of 1980s cheese. But whereas its content is no better than the average dopey Chuck Norris flick, I tip my hat to director/co-writer Gil Bettman for laying on the cheese thickly. This is to say that, unlike most 1980s formula-films, Bettman-- by all accounts was just an undistinguished journeyman on most projects-- succeeds in keeping things visually interesting.

Of course, the film can't help but be risible when the hero is a young John Stamos, who would later gain fame for the "Full House" teleseries. To his credit, Stamos gives the simple role as much authority as possible, instead of playing it campy-- which may have been a temptation, if indeed one of the uncredited writers of NEVER was really Lorenzo Semple Jr. of "Batman" fame. As a line near the end of the film tells viewers, Stamos's character-- saddled with the unbelievable name of "Lance Stargrove"-- is the person who's "never too young to die."

To the extent that the film is about anything, it's a typical story of a young man coming into his own by avenging the death of his father. If the film said anything about Lance's mother, I missed it, but the key aspect of the young fellow's life is his longtime estrangement from his father, Drew Stargrove. However, Drew has a perfectly sensible reason for keeping his distance: he's actually one of cinema's many James Bond knockoffs, which the film amply signals by having Drew played by ex-Bond George Lazenby. While Lance is busy developing his gymnast skills, Drew's getting killed trying to prevent a madman from poisoning the water supply of a major city.

The actor playing the madman is probably the only reason most viewers would watch. In keeping with the eighties attitude toward alternative lifestyles, villain "Velvet von Ragnar" is played as a flaming transexual by Kiss-band member Gene Simmons. The viewer never knows whether or not Velvet is a literal or figurative transexual, but in addition to his daring plan to extort cash with the dubious threat of water-poisoning, he commits numerous crimes against fashion, attired in blowsy dresses, a Cher wig and artificial, poisoned fingernails. Velvet personally kills Drew Stargrove, thus setting in motion the cycle of vengeance.

In due course Lance is informed of his paternal unit's death and is uncertain as to how to respond. He's particularly miffed when he checks out his father's house and finds it inhabited by sexy too-young-for-his-father Danja Deering (Vanity). For someone who doesn't seem to evince any memories of his mother, he seems pretty pissed by the implication that Danja might be his father's sex-partner, though over time the young woman denies being anything but Drew Stargrove's colleague. However, she also has a piece of software smuggled to her from Drew, and the evil Velvet Von Ragner-- who controls a horde of weirdly garbed punks straight out of a MAD MAX audition-- wants that software.

After that setup, most viewers can probably write the rest of the story themselves. Under attack by Velvet's thugs, Lance must team up with Danja to fight them off, eventually both making love to the lady spy and avenging his slain sire. (A deflected Oedipal situation, perhaps.) Lance, Danja and the late Drew at one time or another all use spy-gimmicks like mini-explosives so as to keep with Velvet, his freaky gang and his deadly fingernails. Though Simmons seems to have the most fun with his over-the-top role, Stamos gets the best line in a climactic battle with Velvet:

"You're just one of each [male and female}. But I'm a whole man!"

If nothing else, this popcorn movie succeeds in getting away with the sort of reactionary line that's entirely verboten in today's politically correct world.

SOLO (1996), R.O.T.O.R. (1987)

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


These two films are linked only via subject matter, in that both focus on robotic protagonists, one a noble "thinking machine," the other a remorseless killer. They were filmed almost ten years apart and may have both taken a certain amount of influence from THE TERMINATOR, but I review them here because they have opposing flaws.

SOLO is a well-mounted, fairly expensive action-film, but it's bad because it has, unlike its android hero, no soul. The titular character is invented by an American research program as a mechanical substitute for men in the field, and he's deployed in Central America in order to use his superior strength and endurance to combat guerrilla insurgents. However, Solo, though not capable of expressing emotion, somehow develops a conscience and doesn't want to kill anymore. Solo escapes his handlers and takes refuge in the jungle, eventually finding his way to a small village. For a time the android tries to learn humanity from the poor folk, and then defends them from guerrilla attacks. However, the American military isn't willing to let things go, and so they send a second android to subdue Solo.

The badness here is SOLO's utter predictability, and much of the fault lies in the performance of Mario Van Peebles. Granted, it's challenging for any actor to simulate an intelligent android, but a good performer can at least show some semblance of such an imaginary being's thought processes. Van Peebles, always IMO a superficial actor, merely keeps his expression blank-- though in a sense his blankness matches that of the script. Whatever the merits of the original novel, the film-script has no interest in the process by which Solo becomes sentient. His interactions with the Central Americans follow a completely routine progression-- there's even a cute kid involved!-- and the only saving grace is a pretty good fight between Solo and the updated android. It's perhaps a symptom of political correctness that the "bad android" is white, which begs the question as to why the robot's creator, a white guy (Adrien Brody), chose to make Solo look black in the first place.

The sins of R.O.T.O.R. are more obvious, given that this howler is more in the mold of Edward Wood Jr. According to IMDB, this was the only feature film completed by Cullen Blaine, who produced, directed, and co-wrote R.O.T.OR., but whose credits are dominantly "art department" chores for numerous cartoon works.

The abbreviated title applies to a robot cop being developed for the Dallas police department by the comically named scientist "Coldyron." Despite copious textual comparisons between Coldyron and Doctor Frankenstein, the scientist acts and talks most of the time like Dirry Harry Callahan:

The only difference between a hero and a villian is the amount of compensation they take for their services. At our pay scale, I'd say we're closer to heroes.

Like Harry Callahan, Coldyron butts heads with the establishment. Though he's informed the politicians that R.O.T.O.R. won't be ready for deployment against criminal scum for four years, a particularly corrupt politico kicks Coldyron off the project so as to activate the robot-cop and benefit from the publicity. It naturally does not occur to the politician that he might get bad publicity from a robot-gone-berserk, but nonetheless he puts a secondary scientist in charge of the project. In no time, R.O.T.O.R.. gets loose and starts administering maximum punishments for minimal crimes. So the courageous Coldyron decides to destroy his creation, with the help of a lady scientist named Steele, who also happens to have "biceps of steel."

The only thing that makes R.O.T.O.R. marginally more entertaining than SOLO is that the former is so dumb that it isn't entirely predictable. As stupid as the movie's plot is-- particularly in terms of a "surprise ending"-- Blaine and his co-scripters supply a non-stop barrage of awful lines, such as:

It's like a chainsaw set on frappé.

 I got more than a newspaper. And you get to guess what it is.

And my favorite:

 Let me tell you something, mister. You fire me and I'll make more noise than two skeletons making love in a tin coffin, brother.

SHARKTOPUS/ S. VS. PTERACUDA, S. VS. WHALEWOLF (2010, 2014, 2015)

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


What's better than MEGA SHARK VS. GIANT OCTOPUS? Well, to quote the old commercial, "You got your Megashark in my Giant Octopus!" This marketing strategy resulted in not one but three movies focused on a genetic creation of mad science, Sharktopus.

I've little to say about the first SHARKTOPUS. Once or twice the multi-tentacled CGI critter is a little imposing as he attacks sailboats or people on shore. apparently being a fully air-breathing entity even though all of his genetic material came from gill-bearing sea-creatures. One would think that such an outrageous concoction wouldn't prove especially trainable, but nutty scientist Nathan Sands (the ubiquitous Eric Roberts) actually creates the hybrid beast to sell to the U.S. military. When Sharktopus gets loose, Sands sends his overly obedient daughter Nicole to corral the creature, with the help of a hunky bodyguard, the heroically named Flynn. The two of them bond over shark-catching, which is perhaps an adequate way for Nicole to put her daddy issues to rest.

I don't rate most of these "ordinary people kill off colossal beasts" flicks as belonging to the combative mode. However, I was modestly impressed with the way heroic Flynn has to tag this big beast with an exploding dart, reminding me ever so slightly of a similar scene in IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA.  So SHARKTOPUS gets over the threshold.

There's no problem making such a determination for SHARKTOPUS VS. PTERACUDA, since the main focus of the narrative is upon the battle of two huge hybrids, the latter a genetic cocktail taken from a pterosaur and a barracuda.

Sequel #1, written and directed by two new hands, does keep continuity with the first film. Although the original Sharktopus gets blown to hell, it leaves behind an egg-sac with an identical replica of itself. Lorena, an amateur marine biologist finds the baby freak and raises it to maturity at the seaquarium where she works for her uncle. Around the same time another mad scientist, Syme (Keith Carradine), works on another hybrid for the military, the Pterasaur, claiming that it will be a vast improvement over mere aerial technology.

Lorena tries to train the creature to be pacific, but when the Pterasaur gets loose, Syme needs a creature capable of giving the flying monster pause. Syme buys the Sharktopus from Lorena's uncle over her protests, and then the mad scientist-- who has but one bodyguard, another hunky guy-- tries to use Sharktopus for his own purposes. Naturally both monsters get loose and create havoc, with the most memorable scene going to Sharktopus's beheading of Conan O'Brien. Lorena, unlike the female lead in the previous film, starts out with a boyfriend, but when he gets killed by one of the monsters, it doesn't take her really long to bond with the hunky boyfriend against Syme.

Director Kevin O'Neill brings a little more panache to the struggles of the giant beasties, and writer Matt Yamashita concocts more passable incidents for the human people caught in the middle. Undoubtedly the filmmakers knew that there was going to be another iteration in the series, for while Pteracuda gets blasted, Sharktopus not only escapes death but apparently kills off the protagonists, despite having shown some affection for its "mother" earlier.

To date, the Shark-Octopus Opus ends with SHARKTOPUS VS. WHALEWOLF, easily the best of the three, though still quite poor on the mythicity scale. This time, writer Yamashita emphasized as many comedy elements as possible without actually making it a comedy, starting with the latest in the line of mad scientists, Doctor Rinehart (Catherine Oxenberg). Sporting a deliberately thick German accent and an apparent devotion to the ubermensch, Rinehart decides to experiment on a washed-up Dominican baseball-player and mutate him with DNA taken from an incongruous pair of mammals, whale and wolf.

While Rinehart is indulging in mad science for its own sake, local policewoman Nita Morales rides herd on a raffish boat-captain named Ray (Casper Van Dien), whom she obviously likes despite his irresponsibility and alcoholism. She drafts Ray and his sidekick Pablo to go hunting for the Sharktopus. The three of them encounter the monster but manage to get back to land without being eaten. However, around that time Rinehart's pet monster-- which usually acts more like a big dog than a wolf-- begins prowling for prey. If the film has a highlight, it's probably the point when Morales is summoned to break up a fight between Dominican gang-boys, and encounters both monsters at once, who immediately, like the gangs, start battling over "turf." To further complicate matters, Ray is indebted to a local voodoo priest, who wants Ray and Pablo to get hold of a piece of Sharktopus's heart so that the voodoo-man can gain control over the big beast.

Yamashita provides a lot of crazy business for both his protagonists and their monstrous foes, including some jokey behavior from the shark-creature. I've usually deemed both Van Dien and Oxenberg to be rather bland performers, but they really set their teeth in their respective colorful roles. Thanks to a better variety of business, the two of them are at least as much fun as the clashing colossi.

THE COVER GIRL MURDERS (1993)

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*


SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

As with my review of APRIL FOOL'S DAY, there's no way I can address the phenomenality of this item without revealing the story's big secret: that the "murders" depicted are all a big fake, and that there is no psycho-killer, just a hoax-- though not for the same reasons seen in the psuedo-slasher, and with none of the "uncanny effect" of the earlier film.

Magazine owner/fashion photographer Rex Kingman (Lee Majors) is so domineering that he has "king" in his name twice. He rides herd over a covey of models, including his editor/ex-lover Kate (Jennifer O'Neill), and he desperately needs to score big with his next magazine publication, to prevent his being bought out. He and a few assistants fly Kate and the models out to a deserted island for a photo shoot. In jig time, the group gets stranded on the island and models appear to be die off, though very little blood or gore is ever seen.

This time, the lack of gore isn't just because this is a TV-movie; it's because the models are part of a cabal, organized by Kate, to drive the tyrannical magazine-owner into desperation. Kingman's a heartless user who doesn't care about his "ten little Indians" getting knocked off, or even, apparently, about whether he might be a target for death himself. But in due time he gets weirded out enough by the crusade of the "pseudo-psycho" that he signs away his magazine to Kate and the others, and then has to cry in his beer when the hoax is revealed. The end.

This "phantasmal figuration" is inexorably naturalistic. Even though there is an attempt to suggest the presence of a psycho-killer, the phony killer lacks any uncanny aspects, and therefore is more in line with naturalistic types of "perilous psychos" like those in FRENZY and THROUGH NAKED EYES.
In place of bloody mayhem, the telefilm offers assorted sexy photo-shoot scenes, though the banal direction robs these scenes of any real punch. Jennifer O'Neill is the only actress who projects real charisma, and she has the best single scene, which is actually a "cheat," since it involves Kate dreaming that she's being attacked by a masked psycho, despite her knowledge of the hoax. Lee Majors, however, is beyond awful. No matter how many vile, heartless things he says, his delivery is the same as it was for the Six Million Dollar Man, which makes it impossible for the viewer to properly despise Kingman. However, given the lack of even an imaginary psycho like "Buffy St. John" of APRIL FOOLS' DAY, Kingman is by default the movie's central character, not unlike the more eminently hissable victim of 1947's SCARED TO DEATH.