THE BLACK SCORPION (1957)

 

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

THE BLACK SCORPION, while not one of the great classics of 1950s science fiction, is certainly one of the era’s better “giant creature” films. Such films continued to appear throughout the sixties, but many of them—KONGA, GORGO—seem to follow the model of the Japanese Godzilla franchise, rather than focusing on the purely animalistic threats seen in THEM and TARANTULA.

SCORPION’s direction by Edward Ludwig is as crisp and efficient as any of the works of Jack Arnold and Gordon Douglas, and the movie is well served by the familiar faces of Richard Denning and Mara Corday, even though the predominantly Mexican cast mitigates against the game of “find the familiar actor.” The film’s primary weakness is the formulaic script. Though both of the scripters, Robert Blees and David Duncan, produced some better-than-average original stories, it’s clear that neither of them was capable of equaling the cosmological and sociological myths found in the Sherdeman-Hughes THEM. Blees and Duncan may have taken a page from the first GODZILLA film, since SCORPION’s oversized beasties also emerge from Earth’s subterranean core. But the ways in which the scripters have Denning’s geologist character gradually discover the presence of giant monsters in Mexico are predictable, and the main viewpoint-characters played by Denning and Corday are both one-dimensional. And whereas THEM has Edmund Gwenn to inform the audience about all the fascinating aspects of ants, there’s no advocate for arachnids in SCORPION.

All that said, to fans of fifties SF, SCORPION is most notable for the stop-motion effects of Willis O’Brien, which were also presumably the main selling-point for fifties audiences. O’Brien, of course, is justly lauded as one of the co-creators of the classic 1933 KING KONG, and most of his subsequent work seems like a footnote to KONG. SCORPION is no exception here, but IMO it provides a much more interesting footnote than either THE SON OF KONG or MIGHTY JOE YOUNG.

Consider: one aspect of ’33 KONG that barely appears in the later giant-ape films is the sense of “nature red in tooth and claw.” King Kong, apparently the last of his species, reigns over an island full of beasts constantly preying upon one another, and Kong is no less savage than any of them, even if his heart is softened by the emotion of love. Such visions of brutality are played down in O’Brien’s other ape flicks, and even the ’33 KONG cut an O’Brien scene deemed too violent for contemporaneous audiences, in which sailors were slaughtered by a congeries of giant spiders and insects.

Did either O’Brien or someone else conceive of SCORPION as a recapitulation of that long-vanished scene of insectoid mayhem? This theory is supported by the scene in which Denning’s character descends to the underworld to learn the nature of the giant scorpions, and he sees a handful of other big insects. The other big beasts are only there to provide a skein of logic for the long-term survival of the prehistoric scorpions in their subterranean Skull Island. For that matter, though there are some effective scenes in which several big scorpions attack the surface world, the star of the show is the biggest, meanest, and blackest member of the brood. The Black Scorpion asserts his sovereignty late in the film, when for no explicit reason all the scorpions go mad and attack one another, until the Big Black One is the only survivor. This simplifies the mission of the humans, who now have only one Achilles Heel to attack instead of several.

Though the Black Scorpion is too far from humanity to inspire any of the sympathetic aspects of the original Kong, he does at least emulate Kong’s sheer ferocity. The climactic scene, in which the big bug fights off tanks and helicopters with his invincible stinger, might be seen as the capper to O’Brien’s career, given that nothing he did in later productions—THE GIANT BEHEMOTH, THE LOST WORLD—equals the sublime wonder of this scene. If everything else in the film had been this good, SCORPION could have surpassed THEM.

On a minor note, though some viewers find themselves uncomfortable with racial images in KING KONG, the script for SCORPION is blameless in this regard. Some fifties films might be fairly accused of ethnocentrism, but all the Mexican characters in SCORPION are simply pictured as normal people reacting to a fantastic situation. Even the cute Mexican kid is nothing but a kid who happens to live in Mexico, and since he barely interacts with Denning’s character, SCORPION easily wards off any accusations of cultural paternalism.   

BATMAN: HUSH (2019)

 

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

Like most animated video adaptations of comic-book narratives, HUSH departs substantially from the original work, eliminating many of the plot-threads and cutting back on the number of villainous guest-stars. By itself, this is no great forfeit. In the original HUSH, a great deal of the book’s appeal inhered in seeing Big-Name Artist Jim Lee do his rendition of Batman and his many allies and enemies. This isn’t a pleasure one can derive from studio animation films, except when they sedulously imitate the stylings of a master like Tezuka or Moebius.

I don’t imagine that anyone watching the film will care, for instance, that the film’s script cuts out one villain, Killer Croc, and sticks Bane in his place. At times I was a little surprised that the script kept some of the plots that only nominally contributed to the overall plot, such as guest-starring appearances for Superman, Lois Lane, and Lex Luthor. For the most part the flick adequately adapted those sections of the original tale that it kept.

HUSH’s greatest deviation is that it writes out the character of the very Bat-villain after whom it’s named, for the script cuts down the narrative complications by revealing that Hush is just an old foe in a new outfit. I suppose the filmmakers’ rationale was that they had no particular reason to keep a new Bat-foe around. Animation studios don’t put out as much material as publishers of monthly comic books, so the former don't need as many new stories for DTV flicks. But it's sort of like doing an update of CITIZEN KANE in which one decides that the real focus of the story ought to be the investigative journalist.

As far as keeping to Loeb and Lee’s theme—that Batman is traumatically alienated from even his closest friends and romantic partners (Catwoman, naturally)—the filmmakers choose not to go down that path. The script for HUSH thus chooses a simpler and less challenging trope: Batman, because he lost people close to him, is fixated on saving even the worst criminals he encounters from death. This code of behavior leads to a final schism between Batman and Catwoman, though not for the reasons cited by Loeb's narrative. In fact, while HUSH the comic is mostly about Batman, with Catwoman having the status of a "guest star," Batman and Catwoman are together so much throughout the video that they're as much partners in this story as Batman and Robin are in most of their adventures.

The fight-scenes are well handled, the standout being an athletic bout between Catwoman and Harley Quinn. But only once did the script excel in terms of humor. The original HUSH saga predated the introduction of Batman’s son Damian, but by the time the story was adapted to a DTV format, Damian had already appeared in other Batman animations. Here he contributes a minor moment of humor by excoriating the main hero for his questionable taste in women, including Damian’s own mother. But that's the only memorable moment of humor in the flick.

ABSOLUTE DUO (2015)

 

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

This 12-episode anime TV show didn't run nearly as long as the original light novel series or the manga,. Even without having read either of those, I tend to think a lot of action and characterization must have been crammed into these 12 episodes. 

ABSOLUTE is one of many "teenagers learning about their special powers" concepts, and if there's any profitable comparison between such Japanese takes on the idea and serials like the American X-MEN, it's possible that the anime versions place much more emphasis on the disparate characters coming together to form a seamless unity. In partial compensation, animes based around teenagers are also replete with teen issues about friendship, romance, and fanservice.

As with EVANGELION and a host of other related concepts, the teens are forced to train their special powers to meet some extremely vague menace. In the case of ABSOLUTE, the menace is some anti-government force called "the Rebels," but the Rebels' origin and ideology is never known. The menace is just there to force all the teens together for maximum melodrama.

In this case, all ABSOLUTE teens have the ability to manifest solidified weapons out of their personal energies, and those weapons can take such forms as guns, swords, or, in the case of one main character, a gauntlet-shield. However, the super-teens are supposed to work in teams of two, and are expected to form "duos" with complementary fighters. 

Toru, the fellow with the shield, bonds early on with a purple-haired Scandinavian nymphet named Julie Sigtuna, who can manifest twin swords. It seems a little counter-intuitive to make a female from Scandinavia, land of tall people, into a standard doll-like girl protagonist, but there you have it. Julie is also somewhat emotionally blank, which stems from a family trauma that supplies much of the melodrama. Being a foreigner also makes her an outsider to Japanese customs, so that she can insist on sleeping in Toru's bed (non-sexually) without seeming like she's overly forward. There are the usual melodramatic issues about forming a pair of warriors becoming a romantic couple, and these are no better or no worse than dozens of others. Most of the other students are comely, bouncy teen girls, and their arcs are probably somewhat adumbrated by the series' limitations. And even though the supposed villains don't do much here, the students have to cope with a manic teacher with two personalities, a busty woman who does her teaching in a getup reminiscent of a Playboy bunny.

On the whole, ABSOLUTE is not an absolute time-waster, but one could find better fare on which to waste one's time.

MARRIED WITH CHILDREN: ["THE CHRONICLES OF AMBER"] (1994-95)

 

PHENOMENALITY: (1-3) naturalistic, (4) *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: (1-2) *fair,* (3-4) *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, sociological*

I mentioned in DEGREES OF MASTER ANDBACHELORDOM that the teleseries MARRIED WITH CHILDREN possessed a loose bachelor-thread, more or less reducible to the show’s frequent gag-line, “A Bundy never wins, but a Bundy never quits.” In addition, I’ve observed a lesser bachelor-thread in assorted episodes, which can be expressed with a play on a 19^th-century lyric, “Men must work, and women must weep.” In the world of MWC, this becomes “Men must lust, and women must torture them.”

For most relevant episodes, Al is the primary recipient of the torture. Even the series-title expresses that he’s condemned to be “married with children,” which means providing for a wife and kids—wife Peggy, daughter Kelly and son Bud-- who hold him in contempt. As with his spiritual predecessor Dagwood Bumstead, Al is also frequently subjected to both physical and mental cruelty by the rest of his family. However, whereas outside the household Dagwood usually only suffered at the hands of other men in the workaday world, Al is victimized by both male and female antagonists, particularly by fat women attending the shoe-store where Al labors. Indeed, there’s often a sense that women in general exist to torture men. In keeping with this informal principle, MWC also devotes considerable time to the torture of Al’s son Bud Bundy. As far as familial sufferings, early episodes confined most of preteen Bud’s agonies to verbal torment, usually coming from Bud’s dimwit but more sexually active sister Kelly. On occasion writers seemed tacitly aware that Kelly tormenting Bud paralleled the regular assaults that Peg mounted upon her husband. In an early episode Kelly asked her mother whether she minded that she Kelly teased Bud, and Peg responded, “No, that’s why we had him!”

As actor David Faustino grew older, MWC scripts set up teenaged Bud for many greater sufferings, mental and physical, and he too also paid a price for being a mere male in a female-centric world. Further, the writers also pushed the parallel that Kelly sometimes devoted herself to torturing Bud as much as Peg did with respect to Al. Of course, while Peg constantly badgered her disinterested husband to provide sexual pleasure, Bud only got mockery from Kelly because he wasn’t getting as much sex as she was. But on those occasions when Kelly physically tortured Bud—often pretending ignorance that she was hurting him—the scripts ventured away from the territory of simple slapstick and more toward the domain of Sade. This progression can be seen through the lens of four ninth-season episodes dealing with a support-character named Amber, whom I interpret as a reinforcement of Kelly’s sadistic relationship to Bud.

Amber (Juliet Tablak) shows up in a Bud-centric episode where he’s atypically not attempting to find sexual satisfaction. He’s studying to ace his tests for college, in the hope of escaping the poverty of his immediate family. Attempting to study, he gets rid of Al, Peg and Kelly by giving them money to leave him in peace. This engenders one of the show’s slight flirtations with incest-tropes, for Kelly is so happy over the windfall that she tells Bud, “If you weren’t my brother--" Bud pays the comment no attention except to make a joke at the expense of Kelly’s sluttiness.

However, once everyone’s gone, Bud gets distracted in a good way by Amber, who has moved in with her aunt Marcy (Al’s feminist nemesis, and on two occasions, one of Bud’s sexual interests). Unlike most of the women Bud meets, Amber almost immediately has sex with him, despite evidence that she’s already had a lot of sex with other guys. Amber distracts Bud so much that he fails his college tests, though future episodes send him to a university anyway, and for once an episode ends with the prospect of Bud getting multiple rolls in the hay.

Amber’s second appearance in the episode “Sleepless in Chicago” is a mere throwaway in which her relationship to Bud is not referenced. The main plot concerns Al’s agonies when, for involved reasons, must take Jefferson’s place in bed with Marcy, hence the “sleepless” aspect of the title. Amber appears in one scene, walking into the room where Al, pretending to be Jefferson, hides his face. This loses him the chance to see Amber display her breasts in the presence of her supposed uncle-by-marriage. As a minor point, Kelly endeavors to get some attention from her father. Upon failing, she remarks that Al’s lack of paternal affection has resulted in her seeking the company of older men with money.

Neither of these episodes, though entertaining, are mythically significant. However, the third Amber story, “Kelly Takes a Shot,” increases her psychological mythicity by making her Kelly’s ally in Bud-torture. Bud importunes Amber for more sex, but she insists on waiting until the time is right for her. Amber also criticizes Bud for “taking shots” at Kelly by ridiculing her acting talents, and further implies that Bud’s not getting any until he helps Kelly’s acting career. Bud unknowingly plots his own doom by guiding Kelly to audition for the commercial role of “the Fryer Tuck Girl.” To win this honor, Kelly must beat a more experienced competitor in an archery-contest. Kelly is quite aware that Bud’s using her to get a “shot” with Amber, and when the contest comes down to performing a great feat of archery to impress Fryer Tuck, Kelly retaliates by announcing that she’s going to shoot an apple off Bud’s head. After terrorizing her brother, Kelly has a moment of compassion and spares Bud—but only until her opponent insults Kelly. At this point Kelly launches her arrow, almost carelessly, and neatly impales the apple. Bud, however, is so terrified by the experience that he regresses into childhood. Later, when Amber approaches him to give him his reward, he responds, “Yuck, girls!”

Bud recovers his normal propensities in time for the final Amber-sode, “User Friendly,” but once again, Amber won’t put out. However, in one of the show’s occasional ventures into the metaphenomenal, Bud gets sexual healing from a university “virtual reality” program. Within the context of an advanced VR-program, Bud can have all the sex he wants with a computer-image of Amber. But it’s not Amber who initially takes issue with Bud’s horniness, but Kelly, who protests that the sex isn’t real. Bud then has a long speech in which he condemns women for the way they exploit the male of the species.

Now, it should be kept in mind that when Bud has imaginary sex, this should be no skin off Kelly’s nose. However, as if both Kelly and Amber feel threatened by male independence from female control, they join forces to sabotage Bud’s virtual fantasies. They enter the VR laboratory and alter the input to Bud’s brain so that he imagines himself participating in the mating-ritual of a tribe of apes It’s not expressly stated that Bud is subjected to the role of “the female” in the experience, though that type of humiliation would certainly be within the series’ bailiwick of low comedy. Later Kelly and Amber exult in their victory over men while Bud watches a nature-show and becomes aroused by sexy apes. The character of Amber never reappears after this episode, and the writers didn’t make another attempt to give Bud a regular girlfriend. Nevertheless, for the remaining two seasons, Bud's sister continued to provide him with his almost weekly dose of submission.        

ALADDIN AND THE DEATH LAMP (2012)

 

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

Of the combative movies I've started to review for the Supercombative Blog, ALMIGHTY THOR currently holds pride of place as the worst so far. However, ALADDIN AND THE DEATH LAMP is a good contender for second place.

As one might expect from the title, this is a reworking of the simple but evocative Arabian folktale, with a lot of banal SF-tropes grafted on to the story. Here the genies are other-dimensional demons who are constantly seeking to seduce mortals into letting them invade the human world. Years ago, one of the jinn's invasion was foiled by four adults, three of whom were killed. The one who survived, name of Khalil, raised the children of the other three adults, but the kids-- who are now adults by the time of the main story-- have only been told that they are all orphans. But a greedy merchant, more or less serving in the role of "the magician" in the original tale, knows that there are special devices, lamps and/or rings, through which one can control the jinn. The merchant talks the three orphans-- Aladdin, his "sister" Shifa and his "brother" Luca-- into ferreting out the jinn-devices. In the course of things, Aladdin and his quasi-siblings find out their heritage, but where Aladdin is Gallant, seeking to do the right thing, Luca is Goofus, the screwup. (I'm not sure why the bad guy has an Italian name when everyone else sounds vaguely Arabic, but since Luca like the merchant is greedy, maybe the former was named for "filthy lucre.")

The settings don't look even remotely like the Middle East and the CGI is minimal and banal. The three main actors do their best, but the dialogue gives them nothing to work with.

NEXT AVENGERS: HEROES OF TOMORROW (2008)

 

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

Most attempts to forge “legacy versions” of popular established comics-characters fall flat because the authors are trying to recapitulate the elements of the earlier characters in contrived ways, often to make them appeal to a new generation of readers, to political factions, or to various other considerations having nothing to do with the dynamics of storytelling. Not surprisingly, the third original-to-DVD iteration of the Avengers from this particular animation house is poorly named, for the young descendants of the original Avengers are more “heroes of yesterday” than “tomorrow.”

I won’t bother detailing the particular conglomerations of these “Young Avengers,” since at no time do the writers of the story come up with anything inventive. One of the teens is the daughter of Thor, another is the son of Black Panther, another the son of Ant-Man and Wasp, and the last is the son of Captain America and the Black Widow. The writers’ only concern is to make sure the Cap-kid gets the shield, the Ant-Man kid does the requisite shrinking, and so on.  

The basic setup is equally routine. Thirteen years previous, the monstrous mechanoid Ultron slew most of the Avengers. Iron Man fled with the children of his fellow heroes and raised them in seclusion, training them for an eventual reckoning. Ultron finds their hiding-place and sends forth robotic versions of the dead Avengers to slay them and their mentor. The kids learn that one other Avenger, the Hulk, still survives in seclusion, so they go looking for him, aided by yet a fifth Avenger-spawn, the son of Hawkeye.

The Hulk—now sporting the grey hair of an old monster—is the movie’s only saving grace, for he’s allowed to have a rip-snorting battle with Ultron. But all of the rest is just time-killing trivia.  

HELL NIGHT (1981)

 

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

HELL NIGHT is a lively if somewhat inconsistent blend between the slashers of the early eighties and the “killer in the haunted house” trope that arose in the 1930s and arguably flowered in the 1960s.

Rather than using the name of a holiday like HALLOWEEN, the fulmmakers build their story around an adolescent ritual: that of college fraternities and sororities putting pledges through “hell” to qualify for admission. Four pledges—Seth, Denise, Jeff and Marti (top billed Linda Blair)—allow themselves to be locked into a vacant mansion. Seth and Denise plan to use the hazing-ritual as an excuse to have sex and drugs, while Jeff and Marti are more reserved representatives of adolescence. (Marti, in addition to sporting a name with dominant male associations, is atypical in being versed in auto repair, though she’s not portrayed as being especially unfeminine.) Three “hazers” lurk outside the mansion, planning to hassle the pledges, but all the youths become targeted by two madmen secretly living therein. Most of the collegians are wiped out but Blair’s character gets the honor of being an early “Final Girl” while the two murderers are slain.

Though the college-kids are given some decent lines of dialogue, they’re still vapid characters. There’s a big character shift for fun-and-games Seth, in that he briefly escapes the mansion grounds to summon the cops. Unable to convince the constables that he’s not playing a frat-prank—one of the film’s best scenes—Seth takes on a heroic attitude by charging back to fight the killers again. But the transformation isn’t convincing.

HELL NIGHT’s most interesting aspect is the backstory of the mansion. Before the pledges are locked in, a frat-boy informs them that the domicile’s former occupants, the Garths, consisted of a husband and wife who bore two sons and two daughters, all of whom were developmentally challenged in some way. Supposedly Old Man Garth slew his wife, three of his children, and himself, leaving only one survivor, Andrew Garth—though Andrew somehow escaped the custody of the state. For most of the movie, the audience is led to assume that Andrew has remained hidden in the mansion for years, and that he alone launches the murderous (though not very bloody) assaults on the collegians. Then, late in the film, the writer tries to spring a surprise on the viewer by revealing that Andrew’s brother Mort also survived and has been helping with the killings. This “surprise” allows the students to think that they’ve triumphed over a killer, only to have another waiting in the wings—but given the earlier story about the Garth family, the revelation feels like a cheat. In addition, both Garths appear as nothing but shadowy, hulking figures—the actors playing them don’t even receive billing—so there might as well be just one, since they’re virtually identical. The murders are largely pedestrian until the memorable big finish, where Final Girl Marti manages to slay her attacker in an inventive manner worthy of Laurie Strode.