SWAMP THING (1982), THE RETURN OF SWAMP THING (1989)

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


Where the two low-budget SWAMP THINGS are concerned, I'm not sure which is less desirable: a plodding, nominally serious treatment of the famed comic-book monster, or a lively but horribly lame comic take on the same material. Wes Craven both wrote and directed the 1982 adaptation-- the first comics-character to make it to the big screen since 1978's SUPERMAN-- but he doesn't really bring any special insight to the work.

The original character was Alec Holland a scientist working in the Florida swamps with his wife on a biological restorative project. Spies infiltrated Holland's project to steal his project, killing both of the scientists despite the attempts of an American agent, Matt Cable. However, thanks to his formula Holland's body merged with the flora of the swamplands, so that he rose to a second life as the plant-creature Swamp Thing.

Craven doesn't mess with this template much. Agent Cable gets a sex-change, becoming Holland's possible romantic interest Alice Cable (Adrienne Barbeau). Because Craven wants to suggest some sparks even after Holland dies and is resurrected, the wife of the comics-story becomes Holland's sister. (It may be that the actress was originally told she was a wife, going by the severe look she gives Holland when he's first seen chatting with Alice.) After that, the evolution of Swamp Thing is pretty much on-target. The monster-hero's perpetual adversary in the comics was a mad scientist named Anton Arcane, but here he becomes the mastermind behind the spies who bring about Holland's death. Arcane wants Holland's formula in order to experiment on a new breed of super-warriors-- but what he gets is a hulking plant-monster who shrugs off gunfire and trashes Arcane's henchmen.

After some repetitive encounters in the swamp, with the monster helping Alice against her pursuers, both of them are captured and imprisoned in Arcane's house. While the villain amuses himself by applying the serum to one of his henchmen, Swamp Thing-- who's lost one vegetable arm to a thug's machete-- gets his best scene, exposing his arm-stump to dawning sunlight and willing himself to grow a new arm. (The scene might have been better played silent, but unfortunately we get some inappropriately triumphal SUPERMAN-style music.) Swamp Thing has a final confrontation with Arcane, who "monster-izes" himself, and after the villain's defeat he leaves the heroine behind, accepting his isolation in the solitary swamp.


This was a fairly simple but accurate translation of the 1970s SWAMP THING comic. However, by the mid-eighties, DC Comics had launched a new run of the title-- in part because the first movie was reasonably profitable-- and during that time, the team of writer Alan Moore and artist Steve Bissette made fannish history by giving the moss-backed monster some new dimensions beyond just skulking around the swamps. An example of one of the best stories appears in this review, showing the creature enjoying a strange tryst with human heroine Abigail Arcane.

I have to assume that either director Jim Wynorski or one of the credited writers read this 1985 comic, since RETURN includes a tossed-off reference to a major motif in the comic-tale, wherein Abigail has a visionary experience after eating a tuber growing from Swamp Thing's body. Since Wynorski and his people play the whole thing for laughs, I can't imagine why they bothered to include such a scene, unless they simply wanted to fill time.

Arcane, though killed in the first movie, has been revived by his rogue scientist-allies, and now he has another whole compound in the swamp. He invites his stepdaughter Abby (Heather Locklear) to said compound for a visit, but he's got a deeper ploy in mind. He believes Abby has some unique genetic potential, like that of her mother, which Arcane can use to stave off death. Instead of instantly imprisoning the helpless young woman, the cultured villain procrastinates, inviting Abby to dinner while Arcane's lover Lana darts jealous looks at the younger woman.

Eventually Abby escapes the compound, and when she's overtaken by the villain's hirelings, Swamp Thing comes to her rescue-- though he's apparently no longer immune to bullets, since he's seen comically running from a fusillade. His strength is apparently less as well, since he's seen bludgeoning henchmen with (of all things) a baseball bat. (Allegedly this stupid scene appears because Wynorski was a big WALKING TALL fan.) While Arcane's henchmen get a lot of dopey asides, Swamp Thing and Abby more or less fall in love, though Wynorski plays this for laughs as well. It all leads up to another big fight between Swampy and one of Arcane's fiendish creations, though this trifling action doesn't create any more excitement than anything else.

So I guess my verdict is that the nominally serious if dull movie was a touch better than the rampantly stupid one. Still not much of a choice, though.

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1962)

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *irony*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*


Though I can at times appreciate the acid wit of producer-director Robert Aldrich, many of his works strike me as pointless exercises in grotesquerie, as if he were desperately trying to convince critics that he was a master of Nabokovian cultural observation.

I hadn't re-watched BABY JANE in over thirty years. I remember thinking that it did satisfy me in terms of delivering shocks and lurid emotions, and I'm certainly not against either of these in principle. During my recent re-viewing, though, I found BABY JANE tedious going-- and not simply because it was a horror-thriller in the naturalistic mode.

For the most part, it's a two-character story. Blanche (Joan Crawford) and Baby Jane (Bette Davis) are sisters brought up in the vaudeville tradition, though in their earliest days Baby Jane was their father's favorite, in that she had a Shirley Temple-like appeal for audiences. The film opens by showing the child-actress doing a routine that some would call "kitschy," and Aldrich, presumably following the book, uses this incident not only to detail the early conflicts between the sisters, but to make fun of the unsubtle commercializing of Baby Jane's image by her father.

Later, as adults, the sisters' fortunes are reversed: Blanche becomes a popular actress, while the studio considers Baby Jane used goods. A mysterious accident, possibly caused by Baby Jane's resentments of her sister, leaves Blanche crippled. The two sisters live for years in the family house, Blanche supporting Jane with her wealth as Jane supports Blanche as a caregiver, but Jane still nurses deep resentments and drinks to excess. When Blanche makes the decision to sell the house and find medical treatment for Jane, Jane reacts by keeping Blanche prisoner in the house and terrorizing her.

Though BABY JANE reputedly sparked the so-called "horror hag" subgenre, the 1962 film isn't nearly as interesting as Aldrich's follow-up, HUSH HUSH SWEET CHARLOTTE. (In my review I observed that CHARLOTTE felt like "a dumbed-down imitation of Tennessee Williams," but hey, that still plays better than a half-assed version of Nabokov. Crawford is fine, but Davis's hammy performance is tiresome. Victor Buono got his only Oscar nomination for a supporting role as a pianist who answers Baby Jane's deluded advertisement for an accompanist, and though he's good too, I can't help feeling that when his character expresses lordly contempt for the low-class kitsch of child actors, he's expressing the very sentiments-- whether from the original book or solely from the screenplay-- that made the project attractive to Aldrich.

THE WIZARD OF BAGHDAD (1960)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical*


Here's another "Arabian knockwurst" that I watched purely to determine whether or not it fit into my category of combative films. "Not" turns out to be the case.

American versions of Old Araby are probably at their best when they simply admit that they're superficial, colorful trifles, given to any number of anachronisms. That said, WIZARD OF BAGHDAD doesn't provide any support for that generalization.

The wizard of the title is none other than low-class genie Ali Mahmud (Dick Shawn). Despite living in some roughly medieval era of Baghdad, Ali constantly spouts all sorts of anachronistic jokes, my favorite (so to speak) being a line that uses the term "snafu." Shawn plays the part as if he were a Borscht-belt comedian who'd been transformed into a genie, and after warbling a nonsense-song over the credits, Ali reports to Asmodeus, the chief genie of all genies. This scene sports one curious if inept attempt at conjuring up a fantasy-atmosphere. As Ali enters the palace of the genie with the weirdly Greek name, he's confronted by floating heads, like a skull and various animal-heads. The heads look terrible, but I have to assume someone thought they would give the fantasy-palace some atmosphere.

Asmodeus seems to have a position not unlike a military general, for he reams Ali for being a hard-drinking, hard-loving slacker who hasn't advanced to a higher state of geniedom during his years in the business. Asmodeus decides to give the goof-off a last chance: he's charged with making sure that Baghdad fulfills its potential to be the greatest city in Old Araby. Ali doesn't want the assignment, and he cavils at being forced to give up his flying carpet for a mere flying horse, but he descends to Earth anyway. Around the same time, aging sultan Rashid consults a female oracle who counsels him to sign over his kingdom to his daughter and her future husband, the son of another powerful lord, though both offspring are still children.

Ali can't resist indulging in wine and women, and so he's drunk as a skunk when an evil invader, Julnar, infilitrates Baghdad with his men, kills Rashid and opens the city's gates to an invading force. The sultan's girl-child Yasmin is too young for marriage, so Julnar simply keeps her prisoner for a future wedding. Husan, Yasmin's intended, flees the invaders and is taken in by a tribe of desert-bandits, who raise him as their own. Meanwhile, Asmodeous waxes wroth and takes Ali's powers from him, so that he's forced to get a job as a court jester. (Given how unfunny Shawn is in this film, it's hard to believe Ali doesn't starve to death.)

Seven years later, Yasmin's old enough to marry, and Julnar begins making wedding plans. By happenstance the princess crosses paths with Husan, takes a fancy to him, and inducts him into her personal guard. The scenes between princess (Diane Baker) and unknown prince (Barry Coe) are the only halfway entertaining parts of the film, particularly given Yasmin's attempts to make Husan fall for her.

Ali more or less hovers on the edge of the action, having conversations with his horse, who can't fly any more but who can talk to Ali, though no one else understands the equine. Ali finds himself moved by the plight of the imperiled lovers. He finally gets invested enough to seek out Asmodeus again and to demand his powers back. And the head genie is so pleased by the young sprout's gumption that, well, he just gives Ali back all of his magic mojo. Ali returns to Earth in time to save Husan from the headsman and to thwart Julnar's army, all with the cheapest possible FX. There's are a couple of mild fights at the conclusion, but since Ali is the star, these don't acquire a combative value.

George Sherman directs in journeyman fashion, with almost no interesting setups. Though producer Sam Katzman was known for cheap productions, WIZARD actually looks modestly expensive compared to a lot of his B-films-- though eight years previous, Katzman's THIEF OF DAMASCUS proves considerably better trivial entertainment.

SAILOR MOON S: THE MOVIE-- HEARTS OF ICE (1994)

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


I've never been a big fan of the manga/anime franchise SAILOR MOON, though I must admit it's one of the few Japanese properties that's enjoyed high visibility in the U.S. Still, this stand-alone movie has the advantage of being based on a manga-tale by the creator of the Sailor Scouts, so at least it has the necessary blend of sentiment and silliness.

Since the movie appeared around the same time as the third season of the animated TV show, the script makes no attempt to provide new viewers with the histories of the main character, middle-school girl Usagi (a.k.a. Sailor Moon), or any of her ensemble-mates, most of whom are named against planets in the solar system. (One exception is a pint-sized kid, "Sailor Chibi Moon," meaning "child moon," who has her own complicated arc in the TV series.) To be sure, the rest of the Sailor Scouts don't have much personality, so their primary contribution is to bring all sorts of cosmic powers to bear on the threat du jure. Sailor Moon's civilian ID pretty much sells the rest of them, since young Usagi has all the faults impossible for most heroes, in that she's conceited, flighty, ditzy and occasionally chicken-hearted. The appeal of the series focuses on Usagi's consistent ability to get over her weaknesses and metamorphose into her "higher self," Sailor Moon.

One regular character-- albeit not a member of the hero-ensemble-- is Luna, one of two intelligent cats who hang around with the Scouts and give advice. (Luna is female, the other cat, Artemis, is male.) As the primary threat approaches Earth-- an evil "snow fairy," Princess Kaguya (named after a character in Japanese folklore)-- Luna becomes the fulcrum of the "B-story." After suffering an injury, Luna is taken in by an astonomer named Kakeru. This fellow doesn't have any idea that Luna is an intelligent alien cat, but Luna falls in love with him despite the biological impossibility. Kakeru has an astronaut-girlfriend, Himeko, but the two of them have had a falling-out. Kakeru, despite being a scientist, is obsessed with the legends of Japanese snow-fairies, and he becomes involved with the evil Kaguya when she and her "snow dancers" arrive on Earth, planning to freeze the planet for no particular reason.

The best action occurs at the climax, as all of the cosmically powered Scouts take on the ice-queen, but Luna gets the emotional crux of the story. Given that she already knows her love for the human Kakeru is impossible, she gets Sailor Moon's help so that Luna can take the form of the folkloric Kaguya in order to get him free of the evil ice-queen's thrall.

The potential conflict between practical, scientific Himeko and the overly dreamy-minded Kakeru is one that might have been better developed-- but since SAILOR MOON was focused on adolescent audiences, this particular psychological conundrum remains unsolved.

THE RAWHIDE TERROR (1934), THE VANISHING RIDERS (1935), WILD HORSE PHANTOM (1944)

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


SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Here are three "weird westerns," all of which appeared together in a DVD collection, but are otherwise unrelated. All three are also combative adventures, for what that's worth.

THE RAWHIDE TERROR, the weirdest and most incoherent of the three, may be the only B-western of which the "monster" is the star. In a prologue, a wagon with a father, mother, and two kids is waylaid by a dozen white men masquerading as Indians. The bandits kill the mother and father but unaccountably leave both male children alive. The older brother wanders off laughing madly, and the younger is left alone.

Some fifteen years later, the former bandits have become pillars of the community in a small town called Red Dog. However, a mysterious killer, "the Rawhide Killer," begins strangling all of the men one by one. The mad murderer is a lanky fellow wearing a slouch hat, vest, and a rawhide strip over his face. Since no one knows who he is without this "mask," the strip doesn't serve any real purpose, particularly when it's strongly hinted that the Killer is the maddened survivor of the wagon-murders.

The short film, originally projected as a segment of a western serial, was retooled into a B-feature when the serial-plan fell through. Thus it's hard to tell who the story's "hero" is, a wandering cowboy, who has a fairly decent fight with Rawhide-guy, or Red Dog's sheriff. The latter character gets more attention in the film's jumbled latter half, concluding with the tossed-off revelation that the sheriff is actually the other orphaned kid. But the Killer, though played with gusto by William Barrymore, gets most of the narrative attention.

THE VANISHING RIDERS turns around the usual tendency of weird westerns to have the villains create the illusion of phony ghosts. Good guy Bill Jones (played by an actor whose real name was, oddly enough, the same as the real moniker of "Buffalo Bill") wants to bring a gang of outlaws to justice. To this end Bill and his kid sidekick Tim decide to play on the superstitious fears of the outlaws (this is, interestingly, four years before the debut of Batman). The crusader and his youthful partner dress themselves and their horses up in skeletal outfits and drive the outlaws crazy for a while, until it's time for the hero and his helpers to beat down the villains with an extended fight-scene.

This B-western is at least tolerable compared to the zaniness of RAWHIDE TERROR, but the only real entertainment shows up when an old fellow (who has "comedy relief" written all over him) unknowingly insults the leader of the outlaws to his face, only to be spared by the leader's sense of humor.

WILD HORSE PHANTOM, a cheap modern-day western from the PRC filmmakers, gives RAWHIDE TERROR a run for the "most incoherent" prize, even though on the whole PHANTOM has (slightly) better direction and production values. The title is the most off-putting aspect, since none of the horses in the story are important to the story. Even the steed owned by series-hero Billy Carson (Buster Crabbe) isn't significant, though the beast gets second-billing. There are a couple of candidates for "phantoms" in the story, but neither have anything to do with anyone's horse.

Carson works with the warden of a prison to let outlaw-leader Link Daggett escape prison with his gang in the hope that the crooks will go looking for their cached loot. Carson is involved because the money was stolen from the bank of a certain town, and if the money isn't returned, a bunch of farmers will lose their farms. I have serious doubts as to whether any real authorities would release a whole gang to achieve this end, and indeed, the crooks murder another ex-con. This scene takes place so that the con's comic-relief buddy Fuzzy will be motivated to attach himself to Carson's attempt to follow and eventually re-capture the gang. That said, the needless murder of an innocent is clearly OK as long as those salt-of-the-earth farmers don't lose their lands.

The gang seeks out an "old dark mine," but Daggett can't remember just where the loot is, which provides an excuse for both the heroes and the villains to wander around in the caves for long stretches. A few times a macabre laugh rings out, but this isn't much of a "phantom," for it's just a neighboring rancher trying to scare the intruders away from the loot he's discovered. A far more justifiable phantom is an oversized bat-- allegedly recycled from PRC's horror-cheapie DEVIL BAT-- which attacks Fuzzy, leading to some comical moments. There's no attempt to explain the bat's provenance, though much later Fuzzy finds a much smaller bat hiding in his clothes, which is possibly a present from the big one. The antics of Al "Fuzzy" St. John are the only fun part of the overly complicated story, since even Crabbe's riding and fistfights come off as dull this time.

ZORRO AND THE THREE MUSKETEERS (1963)

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


This is one of the many mediocre swashbucklers churned out in Europe during the fifties and sixties, and I review it here only because I wondered whether or not the presence of a faux "Zorro" in the film caused it to qualify as a film with an uncanny phenomenality.

Now, it's not an objection that the film takes Zorro, a character who originally appeared in the early 19th century, and plops him down in 16th-century France, so that he can mix and mingle with the Three Musketeers and their milieu. However, the naturalistic mythology of the Musketeers, as essayed by the filmmakers, overwhelms any uncanny propensities.

Former Tarzan Gordon Scott, the only recognizable name in the cast, appears in France at the time of a war with Spain, but there's not much history here: just the usual conflicts of the Musketeers and their enemy Richelieu. There's no real explanation of why Scott's character-- who isn't Don Diego de la Vega-- has chosen to wear a black mask and black attire in order to rob evil nobles, and for that matter the hero barely appears in his customary regalia except in one scene. It's true that there's a quick reference to Zorro's penchant for carving his initial in the skin of certain opponents, but this is no more than a casual toss-off before the film returns to more Musketeer hijinks.

I stated in this review of two SHADOW films from the late thirties that I didn't necessarily consider the second film to be uncanny simply because the main hero was vaguely associated with the mythos of the Shadow. In the case of that second film, 1938's INTERNATIONAL CRIME, the hero never dresses up in Shadow-regalia, and so it's easier to deem it as purely naturalistic, like a dozen other detective films of its type. In the case of ZORRO VS. THE THREE MUSKETEERS, we have a hero who does dress up like Zorro, albeit very briefly. Yet his costumed persona is seen so briefly that the impact is utterly nugatory, and so Scott's character might as well be a mundane masked bandit.

Aside from this classificatory conundrum, the film is largely devoid of entertainment value, even if one happens to like this sort of cheap Euro-adventures.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *irony*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological, psychological*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

George Romero's original NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD deserves all the praise it's been given for its revolutionary effect on horror movies. I'm not talking so much about the gore factor. Gore had started to appear with greater frequency throughout the sixties, and had NIGHT never existed, horror-films of the seventies probably would have pursued trails of, well, entrails with no less enthusiasm. The uniqueness of Romero's creation is that gory goings-on are used with considerable intelligence, giving the viewer something that's less than a morality-play but more than an allegory.

There had been many films before NIGHT in which a motley crew of largely unrelated characters are forced to band together against a particular threat. Indeed, the entire "old dark house" subgenre usually depends on stranding an ensemble of characters in some remote mansion while a killer picks them off one by one. In place of an old mansion, Romero gives us a remote house in the country, and the adversary is not one killer, but a horde of "ghouls," dead bodies given life by outer space radiation. Though the creatures were later termed "zombies," the original term is more accurate, since the distinguishing characteristic of ghouls is that they unearth and devour dead bodies.

Does NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD have a message as such? I would say yes only in the sense that its message is no message: that the whole work is fucked up and perhaps beyond redemption, even though the ghoul-threat seems to be on the wane by picture's end. That's one reason I term the film an "irony," a literary mythos indicating that things are so corrupt that there's no real possibility for right action.

Most "trapped ensemble" films feature a hero who's basically right about everything the group needs to do to survive. But although the character of Ben (Duane Jones) attempts to fill the post of nascent leader, his efforts are as doomed as those of anyone else. There's also usually an opponent to the leader, a stumbling-block if not an outright villain. But although the Romero-Russo script makes Harry, one of the people fleeing the ghouls, into a loud, unlikable fellow, he's not seen as being unquestionably wrong regarding the strategy the group should pursue to ward off the attacking ghouls.

The nub of the disagreement between Harry and Ben is that Harry wants everyone in the house-- that is, Ben and three other survivors, in addition to Harry's wife and ghoul-bitten young daughter-- to take refuge in the cellar, which can be boarded securely and has no windows that the ghouls can penetrate. Ben wants to rely on boarding up all doors and windows on the ground floor so as to retain the possibility of getting away if they can find an opening. Though Ben is presented as the more reasonable of the two, neither's idea is without problems. Harry's own wife points out that if they hide in the cellar, they won't know whether or not rescue forces show up. Yet by film's end, everyone's agreed to follow Ben's strategy, and everyone but Ben ends up dead-- and he escapes only because he barricades himself in the cellar, as Harry wanted to do. (That said, if Harry and his wife had taken refuge in the cellar, they would've found themselves trapped with their ghoul-infected daughter, who does indeed end up taking her mother's life.)

On a related matter, though many critics have treated Ben as the voice of reason-- not least because he's portrayed by a black actor at a time when black actors didn't usually play the lead role-- he shares a lot of Harry's faults. Desperation moves Ben to insist on the group trying to reach a car outside the house and gassing it up. Thus he underestimates the group's ability to fend off the ghouls long enough to accomplish this-- with the result that two of the survivors die. Harry, who went along with the plan, fearfully shuts the door in Ben's face when Ben tries to get in. Ben bursts in, and after securing the door, gratuitously punches Harry a rather excessive four times, which suggests that he's taking out his frustrations on the older man. Later, just prior to the climax, Harry's resentment of the beating causes him to draw a rifle on Ben, though his overt motive is to keep Ben away while Harry and his wife flee to the cellar. But Harry isn't actively trying to kill Ben when Ben wrests away the gun and shoots Harry dead, despite the more pressing matter of numerous ghouls breaking into the house.

As mentioned earlier, the struggles of this little group of survivors becomes somewhat problematic as Romero shifts his focus to the retaliation of gun-toting humans, who find it relatively easy to shoot down the slow-moving ghouls. (This leads to one of the script's funniest lines: "They're dead-- they're all messed up.") Some critics have made much of the dismal ending, when Ben encounters some of the hunters and they shoot him dead before he can identify himself. While it's impossible for modern audiences to see this scene without thinking, "white guys pot-shooting black guy," Ben's death would have been the same in the script had he been played by a white actor. Indeed, Romero had commented that he had intended to use a white actor until Duane Jones gave the best audition.

I don't know if Romero's film, with its unsettling vision of a literally dog-eat-dog world, sparked something in the makers of seventies horror films, though it's not impossible to imagine NIGHT encouraging such works as THE HILLS HAVE EYES and TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. But I know that I'd like to think it had such an effect, on some subconscious level at least.