KING OF THE JUNGLE (1933)

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


One year after the debut of Johnny Weismuller in TARZAN THE APE MAN, and some months before Buster Crabbe essayed the role in TARZAN THE FEARLESS, Crabbe had the chance to essay one of the more atypical "ape man" knockoffs in KING OF THE JUNGLE.

I've not read the original novel on which KING is based, Charles Thurley Stoneham's THE LION'S WAY, serialized in 1929. But since the book concerned a young boy being adopted by lions, I think it's pretty likely that Stoneham borrowed his idea from E.R. Burroughs, since Tarzan had been around for over ten years previous. Yet if KING is an accurate representation of the source novel, then Stoneham certainly wasn't a slavish swiper. The author's hero "Kaspa the Lion Man" may have a pedagogical upbringing akin to Tarzan's, but Stoneham's hero may be the least wild of all the wild men.

Director H. Bruce Humberstone-- who would later helm two official Tarzan films-- quickly moves past the "origin story," in which a blase couple go traveling in the Congo and promptly get killed, leaving their toddler son to be adopted by a lion. The boy grows to studly manhood amid a pride of lions, communicating with them only through roaring noises. The nearby natives leave the "lion man" alone, but white hunters capture him, and soon a promoter named Forbes (future "Charlie Chan"Sidney Toler) decides that the wild foundling will be perfect for his circus, dubbing the nameless youth "Kaspa the Lion Man."

It's significant that even though Crabbe's character looks just as buff-and-tough as Weismuller's ape man, Kaspa isn't seen getting into fights. He and some of his lion-brothers are captured in a pit, and then shipped to America in cages. A customs official foolishly lets Kaspa out of his cage, whereupon he swims to shore and mostly avoids the pursuing constables rather than fighting with them. He meets his "Jane," a schoolteacher named Ann (Frances Dee), and she "tames" him rather easily, in particular charming the savage beast with piano music. Through her influence Kaspa more or less resigns himself to joining Forbes' circus, not as an attraction but as a lion-tamer able to put his brethren through their paces. Kaspa becomes civilized enough to learn how he can make enough money to buy back the lions and return to the jungle with them, but in the meantime he and Ann fall into a very chaste love. (The only acknowledgement of sex comes through a few of the female circus performers, who make clear that they like the way Kaspa fills out a loincloth.)

Since the script hasn't really set up a villain as such-- Forbes being a reasonable fellow who more or less forgets about his desire to exhibit/enslave Kaspa-- a minor villain is tossed in, a fellow who loses a hand to a lion and then tries to destroy the beasts. All he succeeds in doing is starting a fire that ravages the circus and unleashes many of the animals (a standout scene being one where some elephants run amuck in a city-street, knocking over cars and a fire hydrant). Kaspa's only heroic deed in the film consists of keeping his leonine siblings from either killing or being killed, which then leads to a happy-ending resolution.

Since KING has so little in common with the sexy, savage world of W.S. Van Dyke's TARZAN THE APE MAN, I'll conjecture that Paramount simply bought the option on Stoneham's 1929 work as one of many acquisitions, and then rushed KING into production in order to take advantage of APE MAN's release, without actually seeking to tailor the film to resemble any previous cinematic Tarzan iterations. KING is something of a forerunner to the 1984 film GREYSTOKE, in paying more attention to the foundling's personal life than to exotic adventure, but most of the script is banal, despite the fact that one of the three scripters was the celebrated author Philip Wylie. I've no way of knowing how much Wylie contributed, but it's interesting that his earlier novel GLADIATOR resembles KING OF THE JUNGLE, since GLADIATOR is also about a hero for whom internal dramatics are more important than extroverted adventures.

THE VAMPIRE AND THE BALLERINA (1960)

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


When I recently re-screened Renato Polselli's VAMPIRE AND BALLERINA, I noted its use of two vampires-- a beautiful female and a (usually) ugly male-- I wondered if it might have been influenced by Mario Bava's BLACK SUNDAY, which also came out in 1960 and also featured a similar vampiric duo. However, a check at IMDB discloses that Polselli's film came out about three months before Bava's-- which makes the timing probably too close for any influence on Bava by Polselli, either. Possibly both are picking up, albeit belatedly, on tropes used by Riccardo Freda's I VAMPIRI.

Though BALLERINA is limply plotted, it does get across one sociological trope common to many vampire films: the encounter of the blase modern world with the supernatural domains of Old Europe. After an establishing scene in which a local girl is exsanguinated by an unidentified vampire, the film focuses on a traveling troupe of sexy ballerinas who visit the region where the vampire's castle stands. (Presumably this is Italy, since most of the characters have Italian names.) Two blonde dancers, Luisa and Francesca, have their respective boyfriends Giorgio and Luca along for the ride, and the viewer doesn't get any sense that there's any trouble between any of them that might open the door to a demon lover. Indeed, Francesca and Luca become engaged during their sojourn. However, when the two girls wander off the track, they must take shelter from a storm in the castle. They meet Countess Alda, who naturally has a portrait of a lookalike ancestress on her wall, and who has a really ugly servant named Herman. Herman gets Luisa alone and vampirizes her, and after that it's just one routine vampire-trope after another, until the two boyfriends finally get wise to the goings-on and exterminate the two bloodsuckers via the sunlight solution.

The cinematography is far better than the plot, though the film's erotic elements are fairly tame, and even Alda's attempt to seduce Luca is confined to verbal suggestiveness. The best aspect of the story is that Polselli keeps the viewer guessing as to whether Herman or Alda is the true master of the situation, since at the closing each of the vampires accuses the other of being the real evildoer. Since Alda's the one with the portrait on the wall, it seems a little more likely that she vampirized Herman at some time in the distant past, and that he began dominating her at some later point.

The most mythic aspect of the narrative appears close to the beginning. An old fellow playing host to the dancers tells the girls that vampires began as "evil men" who indulged themselves in cannibalism, until an "angel of the Lord" changed them into vampires. This isn't a very Christian-sounding legend-- particularly since ordinary peasants suffer from the depredations of blood-drinkers-- and it's possible that Polselli loosely borrowed this idea from the myth of Lycaon:

n the most popular version of the myth, tested Zeus' omniscience by serving him the roasted flesh of Lycaon's own son Nyctimus, in order to see whether Zeus was truly all-knowing.

In return for these gruesome deeds, Zeus transformed Lycaon into a wolf, along with his offspring

FANTOMAS (1913-14)

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


Having finally read the first of the Fantomas books, reviewed here, I then made it my business to check out at last the five-part serial by Louis Feuillade, refurbished and packaged by Kino with a commentary by film-scholar David Kalat.

Given that I wasn't all that mesmerized by some of the earlier Feuillade serials, such as the 1915 LES VAMPIRES, I didn't exactly hurry to seek out FANTOMAS, though it seems as if I've been hearing rapturous accolades ever since I started reading early film-criticism in depth. Nevertheless, I attempted, as much as possible, to watch the serial with an open mind, keeping in mind some of the virtues I'd found in the novel.

Each of the serial's five parts is based on a separate novel by authors Allain and Souvestre. Critic Kalat informs me that the novels were so widely popular in France that most of the audience knew what happened in them, and thus Feuillade could pick and choose what elements he filmed, assured that the audience already knew what happened. That said, I found it surprising that IN THE SHADOW OF THE GUILLOTINE, Feuillade's adaptation of the first book, omits some of the prose work's best stuff. I fully understand why a filmmaker would eschew the novel's initial "is Fantomas real or not" approach, and why Feuillade begins his adaptation by having Fantomas, in one of his many disguises, appear before one of his victims. But the director gives only cursory attention to the serial's two viewpoint characters, the police inspector Juve and his young reporter-friend Fandor, whose interwoven history is so important to the novel. Other scenes from the novel appear in helter-skelter fashion, and one of the more shocking scenarios-- in which an innocent man is killed by the guillotine-- is understandably altered to spare the victim's life. The villain's pursuers never lay hands on the evildoer, though Juve does daydream about meeting Fantomas clothed, as in a famous illustration, in evening-wear and a domino mask.

JUVE VS. FANTOMAS is the best of the five segments, which are largely independent of one another, aside from the trope of Fantomas escaping each time. For the first time, Fantomas is seen in a sort of "costume," an all-black outfit with a dark hood like that of an executioner. One of the villain's more exotic crimes involves unleashing a python on his victims, and Juve manages to both anticipate and counter his foe's snaky attempt on his life. The sequence ends with the apparent deaths of both Juve and Fandor when Fantomas blows up the building they're in-- the only true cliffhanger in the set, and the only episode I found effectively atmospheric.

THE MURDEROUS CORPSE is one of the duller entries. It opens with the conceit that only Fandor escaped the explosion, though, if it's true that everyone knew the novel, then everyone back then would've know that Juve too survived, concealing that fact in order to infiltrate the villain's gang with the aid of yet more clever disguises.This time the main crime involves Fantomas making gloves out of a dead man's hand in order to leave only the dead man's fingerprints behind. This episode features the only instance in which Fantomas commits an on-camera act of violence: decked out in his executioner's costume, the evildoer comes up behind a French cop and strangles the cop with a sash.

FANTOMAS VS. FANTOMAS-- This is the second-best episode, helped out by many sequences at a colorful costume ball. The opening shows Juve reacting to the imprecations of the local newspapers, to the effect that because he Juve has not caught Fantomas, then this can only be because-- shades of J. Jonah Jameson-- Juve actually IS Fantomas. There's also the complication of a famous American detective who comes to Paris to capture the villain, though since the guy sports the risible name "Tom Bob," the viewer probably doesn't anticipate his showing up Juve. There's an antic sense of fun when no less than three people dressed like Fantomas attend the ball, not counting Fandor, who has a similar but not identical outfit.

THE FALSE MAGISTRATE is the last episode, and the one most affected by missing or decayed footage. It's some malarkey about Fantomas stealing some jewels, and though this time Juve and Fandor actually lay hands on the villain this time, he escapes them by the ingenious method of wearing a pair of fake arms. How he knew he's need fake arms before he was caught is anyone's guess.

David Kalat correctly anticipates that many viewers may not take to Feuillade's underplayed, almost elliptical method of story-telling. He makes an interesting but not convincing argument about how Feuillade pioneered an approach to pulp fiction called "fantastic realism." I just think the guy was a sloppy storyteller, and remain unimpressed by his alleged genius. I'm sure, however, that his approach to the wild pulp-content of the Fantomas novel impressed the heck out of many intellectuals of the time, particularly Rene Magritte, since the underplaying of melodrama is similar to "high art's" attempts to distance emotion and affect. Still, Kalat's enthusiasm for the material is somewhat infectious, and I appreciate his mini-history of the Fantomas character in various media, as well as the character's influence on other fictional figures.

ALADDIN AND HIS LAMP (1952)

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


Though there's almost no chance that this 1950s programmer influenced 1992's ALADDIN, it's an interesting coincidence that this is one of the few English-language pictures, prior to the Disney film, to give the keeper of the lamp a rather swashbuckling nature.

To be sure, the filmmakers, director Lew (THE RAVEN) Landers and two screenwriters, were probably channeling one of the story-tropes from 1924's THIEF OF BAGDAD. The opening establishes that an invader named Bokra and his soldiers have taken over Bagdad and that the leader plans to marry Princess Zafir (the always reliable Patricia Medina). Aladdin (Johnny Sands), who happens to be a thief rather than the lazy layabout from the Arabian Nights tale, decides that he wants an up-close look at the famed beauty, and just like the Fairbanks-thief, Aladdin scales the palace wall and pitches woo to the princess. Zafir's not a shrinking-violet, as she slaps his face, but on some level the viewer's led to believe that she's covertly impressed by his daring.

Aladdin escapes the palace with his hide intact, but, in the biggest similarity to the folktale, an evil magician, one Mahmud, persuades the thief to haul an innocent-looking lamp out of a deep well. Aladdin takes the job, but when the magician seems a little too eager to dispense with his helper's services, Mahmud angrily seals Aladdin up in the well. However, the thief soon discovers that he can call upon the genie of the lamp to obtain freedom and riches. But there's a catch not present in the original tale. The genie wants to win his freedom from the lamp, and he can only do so if he slays his master. However, the genie can only make an attempt on his master's life immediately after the master makes a wish. Further, to judge from the forthcoming attempts, the genie has to disguise himself as a mortal and kill his master with a weapon, rather than just zapping his enemy into dust.

While nasty Bokra plots to make Zafir marry him, Aladdin conjures a fabulous palace to impress the princess. In a plot-thread not unlike the Disney film, Zafir can't be won over by phony miracles, so the piqued Aladdin uses his second wish to conjure up the world's most beautiful woman, only to find that she doesn't please him as much as Zafir. (It helps that Zafir makes the scene in time to save the hero from his baser nature.) After both wishes, Aladdin manages to thwart the genie's assassination attempts. However, before Aladdin can make his third wish, Mahmud intrudes and steals the lamp-- though, being a secondary villain, he soon yields pride of place to Bokra.

Without going into further plot-details, suffice to say that Aladdin is a doughty type in this version, good with a sword or with his fists. However, when Bokra gets into the act of genie-conjuring, he gets a little too incautious about observing the rules-- thus paving the way for the genie's freedom and the lovers' reunion. The genie even tosses in a little moralizing at the end, regardless the fruitlessness of idle wishing rather than taking action. Be that as it may, I grade LAMP's mythicity a little higher than the average Oriental sword-and-slipper flick for its ingenious play on the tropes of genie-mythology.

Aside from JUNGLE JIM IN THE FORBIDDEN LAND, this was Landers' final metaphenomenal film, though during his later TV career he executed some SUPERMAN episodes as well.

SUICIDE SQUAD: HELL TO PAY (2018), BATMAN AND HARLEY QUINN (2017)

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


Whatever minor virtues one may find in the shabby, mishandled live-action SUICIDE SQUAD, its greatest benefit to fans of superhero videos may well be that it paved the way for HELL TO PAY. In fact, while the original SUICIDE SQUAD had its fair share of nasty moments-- par for the course for a feature about career criminals working for the U.S. government-- HELL has an advantage over the comic book. The comic had to allow many of its villains-- both those in the Squad and their opponents-- to keep on living, so that other DC authors could use them as needed. But director Sam Liu and writer Alan Burnett are able to kill cherished characters right and left, all to the effect of giving this OAV a justifiable air of grimness and grittiness.

The premise of HELL only works if one buys into the idea that many, if not all, characters in the DC Universe believe in the reality of both heaven and hell. Amanda Waller, the ruthless C.O. of the Suicide Squad, orders her crooked charges to fetch her a special "Get Out of Hell Free" card, precisely because Waller believes that her many "Black Ops" activities on behalf of the U.S. will someday place her in the depths of perdition with the rest of the sinners. Thus six members of the Squad-- Deadshot, Captain Boomerang, Copperhead, Killer Frost, Bronze Tiger, and Harley Quinn-- must go in search of the supposedly mystic device. If they fail, Waller can activate explosive chips in their skulls so that the ex-villains will lose their heads. If they succeed-- and they have considerable opposition from such heavy-hitters as Zoom, Vandal Savage, Blockbuster and Silver Banshee-- the Squad's only reward will be a little time commuted from their jail sentences, while the "outta hell" card falls into the hands of someone who doesn't deserve it.

HELL is a good example of hardcore adult-oriented pulp, with loads of murderous violence and a dollop of suggestive sexuality, particularly from the asides of Harley Quinn, though this version is not nearly as funny as Margot Robbie's take on the character in the live-action film. However, HELL's best feature is its renunciation of the live-film's ghastly take on Deadshot, of which I wrote:

I try not to be offended when a film drastically revises a favorite character. But in place of Ostrander's driven, trying-to-be-affectless killer, Ayer substitutes a one-dimensional "I'll slap you up side the head" badass with no redeeming character points. Possibly this version came into existence purely to showcase the limited talents of Big Name Star Will Smith. However, whereas Hugh Jackman sold audiences on the appeal of Wolverine by sheer talent, Smith simply coasts on playing a character-type he's already done before.

HELL does keep one trope from the 2016 flick: Deadshot has a teenaged daughter who never existed in the comics. But, joy abounding, the dumb "street-smart" Will Smith version is dumped in favor of something closer to the comics-version: cynical, yet not as incapable of feeling as he'd like to be.

Sam Liu also directed BATMAN AND HARLEY QUINN, but the script by Bruce Timm and Jim Kreig emulates the style and content of Timm's signature animated series BATMAN (1992-95). Given that Timm concocted Harley Quinn for this series, it's a given that she has the same appearance and verbal characterization, as well as her "ambiguously lesbian" relationship with gal-pal Poison Ivy.

Batman and his former sidekick Nightwing team up once more when they learn that Ivy has joined forces with the Floronic Man, and that the villains plan to obliterate humanity in order to give the world back to the Plant Kingdom. But the heroes need the expertise of Harley to find her old buddy, and thus, amid much prickliness, Harley is enlisted to fight on the side of the angels.

BATMAN AND HARLEY QUINN is an enjoyable romp, though some of the action-scenes prove repetitive, as do the inevitable conflicts between uptight Batman and his clownish co-star. On the good side, Harley and Ivy have a really nice girl-fight, and Harley gets some really good lines, though not as many as the scriptwriters may've thought. The character "Swamp Thing" makes a cameo appearance for the sake of a rather lame joke.

SHIN GODZILLA (2016)

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


My visceral response to SHIN GODZILLA is "too many bureaucrats, not enough Godzilla."

Intellectually I can respect that SHIN is a new take on a familiar set of tropes-- one of which is a trope that's barely been used since the original GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS. The first film in the long-running franchise is all about Godzilla fighting against the military might of Japan, and nothing else, and SHIN GODZILLA follows this template. In contrast, every Japanese-made Godzilla film since the original has followed the template of the second outing, GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN. This sequel was the first time the Big G was shown battling another colossal monster, and as I argued in my review, this served to divert some of the violence away from human targets:

One immense benefit of the battle between the two creatures is that their conflict distracts from the audience's expectations of seeing Osaka ravaged as Tokyo was in the first film.  That said, their conflict also has some of the same ego-boosting effect seen in KING KONG: when Godzilla triumphs over the formidable Anguirus, he proves that he is "top lizard" much as Kong did in defeating various dinosaurs.  Thus Anguirus is in some sense a stand-in for Osaka: the extended-- and exciting-- wrestling match of the two colossi takes the place of a more expensive general destruction of the city.  Though this maneuver may have had its roots in economics, the "monster duel" would become one of the central tropes of the Godzilla franchise, becoming far more important than the trope was in the original KONG or in most of its recapitulations.

No other monsters appear in SHIN, nor are there invading aliens or scientific madmen. If anything, SHIN follows the "humans fighting giant monster" pattern of the giant monster-films of the 1950s, particularly the one that purportedly inspires GOJIRA, 1953's THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS.  In fact, since the new Godzilla takes place in modern times, the script, written by co-director Hideashi Anno, is obliged to set aside the traditional origin, in which Godzilla is a prehistoric creature awakened and given super-powers by atomic testing. Still, "Shin Godzilla" is birthed by a more modern concern; that of the dumping of radioactive waste in the oceans. Thus the new Godzilla can't represent the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, though he can incarnate a looser conception of the hubris of modern man-- in this case, a creature that presumably starts as some modern animal, yet thanks to the radioactive waste, goes through a series of macroevolutionary transformations until it reaches the apex of its creation

Like the old 1950s SF-flicks, SHIN's narrative spends a lot of time following the activities of assorted humans as they strive to cope with the advent of a monster beyond their understanding. As in the older flicks, most of the humans rate, at best, as passable in terms of their characterization. Yet Anno's script is endlessly fascinated with the real-world consequences of the monster's invasion: devoting painstaking details to the ways in which government employees second-guess one another even in an emergency, or wrangle about details, or even concern themselves with the social status of their scientific experts. The two most developed viewpoint characters, Japanese functionary Rando and U.S. envoy Kayoco, are young politicians who are intensely aware of their career opportunities even in the midst of combating a giant monster.

One trope that SHIN develops far more than any earlier Godzilla film is that of the "pseudo-science rationalization." From the first film onward, entries in the Godzilla franchise barely bother to explain any of the giant monsters in terms of then-current science. However, Anno's script makes it a major concern for Japan's scientists to dope out Godzilla's nature as a means to capture/destroy the creature. These cosmological myths, as well as the attempt to make the mutant symbolize all of unpredictable nature-- and maybe even of God-- are give SHIN GODZILLA a better than average mythicity.

As for Godzilla himself, the new version is tolerable but far from a match for the original classic design, or even the re-design for the so-called "Millennium Series."

THIEF OF DAMASCUS (1952)

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


Most of the "Arabian Knockwursts" that came out of post-war Hollywood are pretty forgettable, and THIEF OF DAMASCUS, one of many cheapies knocked out by producer Sam Katzman, has no better a script than any of the others. However, Katzman must've lavished a comparative fortune on the art direction, since THIEF is noteworthy for a vivid use of contrasting colors, without nearly as much mix-and-matching of costumes from different historical periods.

The 1944 ALI BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES is probably a loose influence here, in that again the heroes use the magical "open sesame" cave as a refuge where they can escape the forces of the evildoer. However, the gimmick for which THIEF is best remembered is that forgettable soldier-hero Abu Amdar (Paul Henreid) receives aid from four figures out of the genuine Thousand and One Nights: Scheherezade (Jeff Donnell), Sinbad (Lon Chaney Jr.), a lamp-less Aladdin (Robert Clary), and Ali Baba (Philip Van Zandt), Following the example of the 1944 flick, Ali Baba is the leader of the Forty Thieves, not their enemy, as he is in the original story.

Even for this sort of trivia, it's surprising that someone felt the film also needed to conjure with the immortal THIEF OF BAGDAD, since there's no "thief" as such in the story, even if the hero shares the first name of the thief in the 1940 remake. Abu is a general who somehow rises to a command position in the armies of the rapacious Khalid (John Sutton), and suddenly decides that Khalid is a really bad guy because he won't spare the city of Damascus. To his credit, Abu expresses this opinion even before he talks treaty-terms with Damascene princess Zafira, with whom he immediately swaps lusty glances. Khalid doesn't like his second-in-command challenging them, and tries to have Abu arrested. Abu goes on the run, and in seeking to defend himself from pursuing soldiers, he does steal a sword from a smithy (though this doesn't really serve to justify the "thief" title).

The sword, though not magical, is made of the newly-created "Damascus steel," and so shatters any ordinary blade turned against it. This really doesn't play a big role in the story, however, which is much more concerned with (a) Khalid trying to marry Zafira, only to be comically blocked by the wiles of Scheherezade, (b) Abu getting help from the other three Arabian Nights luminaries, although only Ali Baba and his thieves are much help, while Sinbad and Aladdin just supply comedy relief. Eventually Abu does use both the special Damascus swords and the "open sesame" cave to undermine Khalid's forces, to defeat Khalid and to marry the princess.

There's one side-plot atypical for the subgenre. Some time after Abu has met Zafir, his true love, he enjoys a little canoodling with an old girlfriend, Neela (Elena Verdugo). Usually the main hero is so lovelorn for his new paramour that he doesn't even look twice at former lovers. Of course, Abu's canoodling takes place so that Neela has a motivation to almost betray the hero's forces. In order to make up for her almost-betrayal, Neela sword-fights some bad soldiers and acquits herself by dying heroically.