PHANTASM (1979), PHANTASM II (1986)

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

In two essays, here and here, I spent some time showing how one subcombative horror-film, Sam Raimi’s 1983 EVIL DEAD, started out as a story about demons wasting a cabin-ful of disposable victims. Then, after the first film's success, the next two film sequels moved into combative territory, building up one character, Bruce Campbell’s Ash, as a formidable demon-slayer. I was aware of a similar transformation in Don Coscarelli’s PHANTASM series, but I hadn’t realized that Coscarelli was ahead of Raimi in both departments. That said, except for sharing some of the same “splatter” techniques, PHANTASM does not greatly resemble the EVIL DEAD series in tone.

In Stephen King’s book DANSE MACABRE, he claims that his son defined death as “when the monsters get you,” and Coscarelli’s PHANTASM embodies that attitude toward fatality. The film opens in a downbeat manner, as three small-town residents—Mike, his older brother Jody, and their mutual friend Reggie—mourn the loss of another friend, Tommy. Unlike the mourners, the viewers of the film know that Tommy was murdered by a strange demon-woman. However, Mike observes suspicious activity on the part of the funeral home's head mortician—a gaunt old fellow billed as “the Tall Man” (Angus Scrimm). Young Mike’s investigations reveal that the funeral home conceals a gateway to another world, and that the corpses of those interred at the graveyard are not allowed to rest in peace. Instead, the corpses are revived and mutated into dwarf-sized minions later called “Gravers,” and they’re sent through a dimensional portal to another world, where they serve as slave labor. However, when Mike tries to reveal his discovery to Jody and Reggie, they think he’s come unhinged, due to the effect of grief upon his young mind. Meanwhile, the Tall Man seeks to silence the boy who has uncovered his alien secrets.

Despite some fast-paced and ultraviolent scenes—particularly when the Tall Man unleashes unique weapons, silver spheres with knife-like attachments—PHANTASM always keeps a dream-like feeling of shifting realities, even after Mike finally manages to convince Jody and Reggie to the looming danger. Coscarelli’s script does not attempt to justify the Tall Man’s operation in terms of logical motivation, and thus, despite the science-fiction trappings, the monsters of the Morningside Funeral Home might as well be demons from the world of death, preying upon the bodies of the deceased simply out of general malice. In a similar manner, the later Freddy Krueger, nominally a vengeful revenant, would take on the stature of a child-killing demon. Jody perishes, leaving Michael and Reggie to struggle against the depredations of the iniquitous otherworlders. The film ends by suggesting that the heroes are ultimately defeated by the emissaries of death.

Seven years later, Coscarelli gives two of his characters, Mike and Reggie, the chance to become “fearless ghoul killers.” Mike was not killed as the end of the 1979 film suggested, but was declared insane and institutionalized for seven years, making him nineteen at the start of PHANTASM II. Reggie, for his part, has more or less forgotten his experiences of the first film, and when Mike once more tries to probe the mysteries of the funeral home, the older man tries to keep the younger one from exposing his obsessions. However, the boundaries between dream and reality break down once more. Mike has dreamed that Reggie’s house will blow up—and then it does, killing the older man’s family committing him to the cause.

The first film has no significant female characters; it’s purely a tale of men fighting demons. But here Mike also dreams of a young woman in another city, Liz, and tells Reggie that she too is being victimized by the Tall Man’s operations. Armed with a variety of weapons—a chainsaw, a drillbit, and various guns—the two men set out to prevent the death-demon from claiming more victims. For her part Liz suffers the loss of her grandmother, later made into a dwarf-thing by the aliens, but she acquits herself well in fighting back against the phantasmal evils.

Despite the sequel’s greater emphasis upon combative action, Coscarelli maintains the first film’s sense of oneiric dread, the feeling that at any given time the forces of the irrational can invade the waking world and sweep everything down to dusky death. In future posts I plan to examine the other three sequels, the better to judge their combative elements. As for the mythicity of the first two films, Coscarelli’s sci-fi rendering of the Great Unknown proves ingenious, but he never elaborates his general notion into a concrescent concept, which may be the overall result of his emphasis on unpredictability. And though many films about killing monsters center primarily on the monsters, here the monster-killers, both in their subcombative and combative phases, are the stars of the shows.

ALLAN QUATERMAIN AND THE TEMPLE OF SKULLS (2008)

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

Big surprise: a mockbuster-film, created to coast on the success of a bigger-budget release, proves disappointing. For me, though, the disappointment has nothing to do with TEMPLE failing to equal INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL. Rather, it’s a letdown to see another half-assed adaptation of Rider Haggard’s 1885 classic KING SOLOMON’S MINES. The only interest the film sustains for me is the question as to whether it’s a worse adaptation of the book than the long and lumbering 2004 Hallmark Channel rendering. Both are about equally (and pointlessly) unfaithful to the book, but TEMPLE is at least over with more quickly. So I guess it’s only second worst.

As in the book, white hunter Quatermain (Sean Cameron Michael) is engaged to take a party into an unexplored African region to look for a missing European, the brother of one Henry Curtis. The missing man went looking for treasure, hoping to find the legendary diamond mines of King Solomon. In the book the hunter’s expedition is all-male. But for decades, most if not all cinematic adaptations of the Haggard work have worked in a female lead, so this change is at least expected. Still, in the 1937 film the expedition starts out all-male and is forced to add a female character who needs an escort back to civilization. Here, Curtis wants to bring along his cousin Lady Anna (Natalie Stone) for no reason, unless he anticipates that Quatermain will need a romantic interest. (FWIW, the actress puts in the best performance in this limp noodle.) TEMPLE also adds a villain, Ainsley, who like the missing man wants to find the fabulous treasures of Solomon (which I think are somehow associated with the “temple” of the title). Ainsley—played with great hamminess by Christopher Adamson, as if he thought he might become the new Chris Lee—claims to be from South Africa, but he later appears to be a Nazi, though nothing else about the film suggests the 1930s.

After some dull scenes in which Quatermain and his two charges escape Ainsley’s wrath, the trio begins the slow, slow trek to what the book calls Kukuanaland. In the book a young African man, Umbopa, joins the expedition because he’s an exiled heir to the kingship of the isolated domain. TEMPLE makes its version of Umbopa into a female with the same purpose but no special martial skills, so that one wonders how she thinks she’s going to fight the guy in charge for the throne.

In the novel, the villains are the tribal chieftain Twala and his witchfinder henchwoman Gagool, who tyrannize the Kukuana people with their cruelties. In addition, the Kukuanas are so isolated from the rest of Africa that nearly none of the people have ever seen a white person. In the book most of the Kukuanas mistake the white adventurers for gods, and treat them as such until Gagool—the power behind the throne, as it were—exposes the heroes for mere mortals. Though I don’t think this trope is inherently racist, and though I don’t think Haggard uses it negatively, I also don’t fault TEMPLE for dropping this particular aspect of the story. In fact, the only thing the movie gets right is that the Kukuanas, though somewhat more aware of white people than their prose predecessors, are believably diffident about these pale-skinned intruders. The movie’s best scene, possibly drawn from one of the film adaptations, takes place after Henry is reunited with his lost brother. Some of the male natives surround the duo and start chanting; as if seeking to exorcise the white demons. Yet the tribesmen fall silent when the brothers start singing an English hymn, implicitly because the music is so unlike anything the Africans have ever heard. On a minor note, political correctness also does not force the tribal women to cover up but allows them to show their bosoms openly.

However, such correctness does crop up in the film’s decision to de-emphasize Twala and Gagool. The nasty old witchfinder is only in the film for five minutes, though at least she illustrates the perils of superstition. After she points out a supposed witch among the gathered tribespeople, Gagool’s henchman cuts the victim’s head clean off with what looks like a big lobster-claw glove. Bad King Twala remains more indispensable to the narrative, but his evil is eclipsed by a greater evil—for somehow awful Ainsley has managed to reach Kukuanaland ahead of the expedition. Because Twala wants his little piece of heaven to stay isolated from the outside world, the chief makes a deal with the South African, to let Ainsley kill his enemies. However, Ainsley blows the whole deal when both he and Twala fall out over Lady Anna, at which point Ainsley kills Twala and flees with Anna. This development forces hero and villain to contend in the depths of Solomon’s Mines—as well as, incidentally, paving the way for Umbopa’s ascendance.

Sean Cameron Michael makes a dull Quatermain, but he’s given nearly nothing to work with, except in the middling romantic interludes with Stone’s Anna. Though the producers shot some or all of the film in South Africa, they seemed to go out of their way to select mild, unimposing locales for the shoot—such as the great mountains of the novel, “Sheba’s Breasts,” which in the movie become a couple of mildly rolling hills. If the filmmakers couldn’t find good locations, they might have as well lensed the whole thing in Hollywood.

BATMAN: “THAT DARN CATWOMAN” (1967)

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

Though this was the next-to-last of Julie Newmar’s Catwoman outings, “That Darn Catwoman” proves the best of them. Earlier episodes suggested that, despite his unwavering moral compass, Batman was unavoidably tempted by the enchanting evildoer's captivating charms. Catwoman, for her part, tried to find ways to bind Batman to her, even if it meant reducing him to a brainless hulk, as seen in "The Cat's Meow." In this episode, she comes up with the perfect way to convert the do-gooder to the forces of evil. The Princess of Plunder enlists teenaged protégé Pussycat (Leslie Gore) to test a new drug, cataphrenic, on Robin.The test prove a spectacular success. Upon meeting Pussycat, Robin doesn’t even seem tempted by the pretty young thing, and she complains that his “education” has been lacking. After he's been drugged, the Boy Wonder reacts more like a normal randy teen, hot to trot and ready for thrills.

Of course, one has to contemplate that since Catwoman’s main target is Batman, she probably could have found any number of ways to drug the Cowled Crusader when he was off-guard. In addition, there was nothing to stop her from doping him at the end of the episode’s first part, when her thugs have rendered Batman unconscious. But if she had done any of these things, the story would’ve fallen apart, so…

Scripter Stanley Ralph Ross sets Catwoman on a mission to gather lots of cash, the better to purchase some info that will lead to a major score. For once, Ross eschews a lot of his cornier humor, and cleaves closer to the camp aesthetic. Robin, before getting converted to evil, gives a lecture at the “Aaron Burr High School.” Catwoman’s three thugs—Spade, Marlow, and Templar—are named after three famed detecrive-heroes. There’s even a throwaway reference to a minor James Cagney movie, when the villainess tells Batman to drive her to “13 Rue Madeleine.”

Most of the episode’s first part revolves around the horror of solid citizens as they see Robin turned into a ruthless thug for Catwoman, one who doesn’t even remember Batman. Robin even attacks noble Batman, who won't fight back and thus gets creamed by his erstwhile partner. Catwoman even uses Batman’s earnest wish to see Robin revert to normalcy as a means to trap the hero. She then puts her foe in a de rigeur deathtrap, but there’s no daring escape in the second act. Batman merely pretends to accept Catwoman’s demand that he become her ally. Then, before she drugs him with cataphrenic, he cons her into letting him take a headache pill—which is actually a universal antidote. Again, a clever villain does something dumb so that the hero can come out on top. She even overlooks the way her supposed stooge's memory works in a very selective manner.

Nevertheless, the script’s minor lapses in logic don’t efface the strength of what I choose to call, after Thurber, “the war between Batmen and Catwomen.” Catwoman is designed to embody every temptress who ever lured a man into wicked ways, and Batman is the stalwart hero able to resist even massive temptation. “Good Batman” stays in the driver’s seat, but he can only succeed by pretending to be “Bad Batman,” by being both lust-driven and subordinate to his “cat-lady” boss. The show’s status of “family programming” assures that the hero doesn’t have to make the supreme sacrifice—though one can write one’s own story about what happened when the two spent the night in the Batcave, sans chaperone. Batman comes close to queering his own game by sending the cops to the Catlair to capture Robin and Pussycat. Nevertheless, Catwoman gets caught up in her gamesmanship and goes ahead with her big scheme. Robin regains his normal moral compass and shows up in time to help Batman beat up the henchmen. Catwoman escapes only so that she and Batman can have another quasi-romantic confrontation on top of a building, and this leads to yet another seeming accidental plunge for the Queen of Crime. In the final coda, a very subdued Batman gets the last words, wondering—correctly, as it turns out—if she only sacrificed one of her nine lives.

BATMAN: “THE ZODIAC CRIMES” (1967)

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

Stephen Kandel and Stanford Sherman collaborate on the first team-up of two major guest villains, the Joker and the Penguin. Despite the popularity of both super-fiends, Penguin plays a fairly minor role, just as Catwoman did in “The Sandman Cometh.” Joker is wholly responsible for conceiving the pattern for his crime-wave; that of stealing both valuable and valueless items to fufill his “Zodiac Crimes.” But the authors don’t manage to come up with twelve good crimes patterned after the astrological signs, and so they resort to some lame metaphorical interpretations. For instance, the Capricorn crime consists of the villains’ attempt to knock off the Dynamic Duo. Saith the Joker: “Batman’s the goat, and we’re going to get him!” Fortunately, there’s enough wild business going on that these failings don’t really spoil the overall fun.

Cesar Romero is at his best confounding the duo with numerous schemes, the most capricious being his ploy of polluting Gotham’s reservoir with “Joker jelly.” Predictably enough, all of the Clown Prince’s henchmen are named after the planets, but only one—his moll Venus (Terry Moore)—proves of consequence to the narrative. In “The Joker Goes to School” the villain figuratively seduces high-schooler Susie with the lure of quick riches. Here, though the script tells nothing of Venus’s background, there’s the suggestion that Joker has at the very least furthered the young woman’s dedication to villainy. Like many molls before her, Venus turns soft after beholding Batman’s manly charms. Usually, this earns them nothing but a sententious lecture on moral virtue from the hero. This time the moll becomes the bone over which hero and villain battle, each trying to convert her, either to good or to evil. Further, though Batman never steps over any lines of propriety, there’s a slight suggestion that he may be swayed by her charms, since he allows the repentant Venus to assist them in their crusade, rather than simply turning her over to police custody. Moore plays the part with campy flair, imitating Marilyn Monroe’s breathy pattern of speech, even when she’s in the act of betraying the duo. In one scene, the Joker arranges to ambush the crusaders in a museum, and what appears to be a female Greek statue comes to life, proving to be what Joker calls “Venus Unobserved.” (I assume that this is a clever literary reference, possibly either to a 1950 Christiopher Fry play or to a sixties slang term for a lesbian sexual position.)

As for Penguin, he doesn’t have a lot to do in the first two sections of the episode’s three parts. Still, Burgess Meredith gets a chance to shine as “Don Juan Penguin,” using his improbable masculine wiles to soft-soap the wishy-washy Venus into unintentionally betraying the crimefighters again. The episodic narrative concludes with a lively fight in the Batcave and some added humiliations for the super-crooks. Despite all the emphasis given to Venus’s reformation, there’s no mention of her fate in the coda, only some silly byplay about astrology with Aunt Harriet.

BATMAN: "THE CONTAMINATED COWL” (1967)

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

The second and last outing for the Mad Hatter—once again scripted by Charles Hoffman and played by David Wayne—attempts to portray a motif-crazy villain putting his modus operandi on hold. Early in the story, the Hatter tells his female companion that he’s concerned less with stealing rare hats—as his comic-book predecessor did—than with using hats to steal.

Nevertheless, “Cowl” has a minor distinction, for it’s most probably the last episode to borrow anything from a comic-book original. “The 13^th Hat” derived most of its elements from a 1956 comics-story, but did not use one incident in which Batman’s cowl was temporarily contaminated by radiation. Hoffman clearly remembered this tidbit and worked it into “Cowl,” in part because Hatter still wants to collect Batman’s headpiece—and for the same motive as in the earlier tale; to signify Batman’s defeat and death.

In a sense, the Hatter gets his wish, at least for a few days. He pulls a hat-based crime that lures the crusaders to make the scene, and then zaps Batman’s cowl with a radioactive spray, which turns the material pink. Batman staves off radiation poisoning with the usual Bat-paraphernalia, but he can’t change his colorful headgear because Alfred has all the other cowls in the wash. (Later, when Hoffman needs Batman to have a normal blue cowl available, this detail is forgotten.) Hatter next lures the duo to a laboratory, hoping to lift the irradiated cowl and finish off Batman and Robin. Despite being prepared for the villain’s dirty dealing, Batman and Robin get trapped into a radiation chamber and get turned into costumed skeletons:

Or rather, that’s what the crusaders decide to let the world think. Ostensibly the goal is to lure the villain into a false sense of security. Since Hatter’s score is not any more momentous than that of any other guest villain, one might suspect Batman and Robin of fishing for compliments. The Commissioner, Aunt Harriet, and the rest of the world goes into prolonged fits of mourning, and tributes to the fallen heroes appear everywhere, even in Soviet Russia. Though Batman and Robin remain absent, Bruce and Dick return to Wayne Manor, and in the episode’s best scene, Bruce attempts to allay Aunt Harriet’s grief by claiming that he thinks the crimefighters are yet alive.

After all this hue and cry, the ensuing revelation of the Mad Hatter’s plot and the big concluding fight-scene prove something of a letdown. David Wayne again plays the Hatter with gusto, and when his henchmen make an incautious comparison between him and other Gotham villains like Joker and Penguin, he refers to his peers as “phonies.” Given the Hatter’s turn-of-the-century attire, perhaps he thinks of himself as embodying a standard of villainy that other criminals cannot measure up to.

BATMAN: “THE SANDMAN COMETH” (1966)

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

Catwoman, once again essayed by Julie Newmar, has the honor of being the first established super-crook to participate in one of the series’ vaunted team-up episodes, albeit with a brand-new guest villain, “continental criminal” Sandman (Michael Rennie). To be sure, though, scripters Ellis St. Joseph and Charles Hoffman slant the episode in favor of Sandman.

The big score this time is not unlike the one in “The Devil’s Fingers,” in that Sandman plans to hoax a wealthy dowager into marrying him, so as to rob her blind. The woman in question is J. Pauline Spaghetti (Spring Byington)—patently named after famed magnate J. Paul Getty. Pauline suffers from protracted periods of insomnia, so Sandman poses as a famed sleep-physician in order to gain her confidence. Catwoman’s only role in this plot would seem to be one  any comely actress could have performed, in that the villainess simply poses as a patient who recommends “Doctor Somanbula.’ Indeed, when Catwoman appears on TV making her pitch, even the dimwit cops recognize her, which gives the caped crusaders forewarning of Sandman’s scheme.

Once Sandman takes a meeting with Pauline, he simply overcomes her insomnia with an artificial anesthetic. Batman and Robin are unable to prove to Pauline the phony doc's scurrilous intentions, so they track him to his lair. Sandman’s four thugs overcome the Dynamic Duo—for once, without resorting to special tricks—and Sandman temporarily brainwashes Robin, so that the Boy Wonder himself pulls the lever on Sandman’s deathtrap-of-choice. Batman escapes in a way that’s improbable but not particularly ingenious, while Sandman—who plans to cut Catwoman out of the Spaghetti fortune—gives the villainess a consolation prize in the form of Robin. Batman tracks down Catwoman and frees Robin, after which they corner Sandman and his thugs at Pauline’s spaghetti-facrory and trounce the European evildoer.

“Sandman” is certainly a mixed bag. Catwoman, who apparently has been paroled once again, doesn’t really have anything to do but hang around her Catlair while waiting for Sandman to execute the score. True, the scenes in which she tortures Robin in an electrified maze are one of the episode’s high points, and she does get to have a few minutes of romantic badinage with Batman. But the ease with which Sandman gulls the Princess of Plunder shows an unfortunate tendency of the show’s second season, that of having villains do dumb things because the script requires the dumbness. If anything, the Gotham cops ccme off a little better here than they usually do. For once, they’re proactive with a repeat offender, sending a policewoman to masquerade as one of Catwoman’s henchladies. However, Catwoman detects the ruse early in the episode’s first part, so that the unfortunate lady cop has no role but that of subordinate victim. On a more expected note, when Commissioner Gordon is about to launch into one of his effusive enconiums of the Dynamic Duo, Batman simply cuts him off by saying, “Please don’t”—which may betoken impatience more than heroic modesty.

The corn quotient goes up once more, particularly in a dopey scene where the Bat-computer exudes literal spaghetti in order to signal Pauline’s name to the confused crimefighters. Arguably as bad is a protracted scene in which a rookie cop tries to arrest Batman for leaving the Batmobile unattended. However, one of the best “good camp” scenes appears when Pauline gives Sandman a tour of her factory, explaining in loving detail about all of the previous husbands who just happened to perish in various spaghetti-making devices. One cannot help but wonder whether the sweet-seeming old lady may in fact be the only criminal the crimefighters never bring to heel: a serial “black widow” killer. Maybe that’s the reason she can’t sleep well. Early on she does mention falling asleep at a rock concert, and near the end she at last falls into a peaceful doze while watching the big fight between the heroes and the villains, perhaps in the sure and certain knowledge that as a wealthy woman she's immune to their level of conflict.

There's also an amusing gaffe in the big fight-scene, when Sandman and two thugs have already started fighting the heroes, and Sandman whistles for aid-- but no one, not even the other two thugs seen earlier, shows up.

BATMAN: “THE PUZZLES ARE COMING” (1966)

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

Purportedly, after appearing as the Riddler in the 1966 theatrical movie, Frank Gorshin refused to reprise the role for the same money. One consequence was that writer Fred de Gorter had to revise a script for a Riddler episode into one featuring a new villain, the Puzzler, essayed by Maurice Evans.

Puzzler keeps the Riddler’s obsession with leaving clues for his caped adversaries—“a crime is nothing without a modus operandi,” he tells his female associate—though by this time in the series, it’s easier to name off villains who didn’t leave clues than those who did. Puzzler’s puzzle-clues are much more vague in form than Riddler’s riddles, and thus the crusaders indulge in a lot more logical leaps than in most Riddler-episodes. Further, where the Riddler was manic, the Puzzler is cool and calculating, and certainly doesn’t get mixed up in banal fisticuffs. I assume that his tendency to lob Shakespearean quotes at all and sundry came from the actor’s best-known television role, the equally quotation-happy father to Samantha Stevens on “Bewitched.”

Puzzler’s other main obsession is with aviation, and I would presume that this motif was one de Gorter had planned to graft onto Riddler, much the same way that the riddle-fiend started harping on wax-gadgets in “Ring of Wax.” Puzzler’s main scheme involves bilking billionaire Artemis Knab—an obvious Howard Hughes spoof—out of the plans for his new jet-plane, and to that end, he gives his henchpeople nicknames like “Rocket” (the aforementioned female associate) and “Ramjet.”

Though I didn’t like the Puzzler back in The Day, his one episode is fairly strong. The proficity of references to the Bard provides some amusement, particularly when Batman, for no particular reason, starts reading one of his lines with the stilted intensity one expects of Shakespearan performances. Henchgirl Rocket O’Rourke falls into the category of molls who turn to crime as a quick path to fame and fortune, but doesn’t prove interesring in any other way. Puzzler’s episode is most distinguished for an above-average deathtrap: having the bound crusaders floating into the heavens aboard a hot-air balloon. Their escape depends partly on Robin’s mastery of birdcalls—foreshadowed in the episode’s opening scenes—and partly on the bad littering-habits of one of Puzzler’s thugs.