SPIDER-MAN 2 (2004)

 

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

                          

 

Though Sam Raimi returned as director for the second Spider-film, this time three new writers—including Pulitzer-winner Michael Chabon—authored the script. Yet the tone remained consistent, and, more importantly, the psychological mythicity remained insightful. This time round, Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) is less trammeled by paternal influences, be it of the good father-figure whose death obliges Parker to be a hero, or the bad father-figure who seeks to tempt Parker into the ways of villainy. But even after choosing good over evil, life goes on—and Parker’s role in life is often that of the schlomazel, once defined as “the fellow who always gets the soup spilled on him.”

 

At the conclusion of the previous installment, Parker sought to do the right thing and to accept his responsibility to be Spider-Man, even though he decided this meant forswearing his love for Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst). But trying to live a double life as college student and superhero costs Parker jobs and messes up his courses. Perhaps there’s some small satisfaction that Harry Osborn, Parker’s best friend and symbolic brother, is no longer in the running for Mary Jane’s affections. However, the world knows that Spider-Man was involved in the death of Norman Osborn when the latter assumed the identity of the Green Goblin, and Harry not only hates Spider-Man, he reviles Parker for giving the costumed crusader publicity. (If Harry feels any disquiet about the fact that his father openly murdered people, he doesn’t express same.) Parker’s avocation of taking photographs earns him some money, but his best market is publisher J. Jonah Jameson, who only wants pictures of Spider-Man so that Jameson can revile the hero in his newspaper. With Uncle Ben dead, Aunt May struggles financially, so much so that one wonders how she can be putting Parker through college, even with the best available scholarship. Finally, Mary Jane doesn’t entirely believe Parker’s protestations of disinterest. But when he keeps giving her mixed signals, she eventually turns to a new love. A lot of New Yorkers believe in Spider-Man as their hero, but his example doesn’t prevent a lot of other people from routine dickishness. Finally, in a development derived from Lee and Ditko’s first SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL, the friendly neighborhood crimefighter finds his powers ebbing from what might be called “performance anxiety.”

 

And then there’s the new super-villain in town. Whereas Norman Osborn barely controlled his inner Mister Hyde, and used his industrialist mojo to kill people, Otto Octavius intends to use his scientific genius to solve the world’s energy problems. When Octavius and Parker meet for a scientific confab, Octavius even sounds a bit like Uncle Ben, counseling Parker that intelligence is a gift not to be squandered, or something like that. But then Octavius’s energy-experiment goes awry, so that the harness he wears, equipped with four artificial arms, becomes fused to his body. More tellingly, the physicist’s wife dies in the chaos, and Octavius transforms into Doctor Octopus, monomaniacally fixated on the idea of repeating the experiment, as if its successful completion would undo his beloved’s passing. (This trope was probably introduced to mirror Parker’s own regrets about having taken the wrong action, for nothing like this appears in the comic books, nor do the arms of Doctor Octopus possess cybernetic intelligence.)

 

 

Though I had reservations about the Willem Dafoe version of the Goblin, Alfred Molina renders a pitch-perfect incarnation of the comic-book villain, in that Molina perfectly captures the obsessed malignance of the six-armed psycho scientist. I should note that the movie’s FX team also brings to life the complex movement of Octopus’s metal arms, particularly in combat with the hero’s spider-powers. I still believe Steve Ditko’s artistic depictions of such battles takes aesthetic precedence, but this production comes in a close second.

 

The writers do work in a few of the first film’s “temptation tropes.” Octopus sometimes talks to his arms, as if they were serpents giving him bad advice—or at least, mad extensions of his own personality. Oddly, when Octopus needs technical help with his fusion project, he ends up playing Faust to Harry’s Mephistopheles. The obsessed young industrialist will only give Octopus what he wants if the villain delivers Spider-Man to Harry’s tender mercies. However, this deep dark plot doesn’t quite turn out to Harry’s advantage, partly because he’s still just a junior devil—though it does set up a new plotline, to be worked out in the third film. Meanwhile, Octopus ends up kidnapping Mary Jane as bait for the hero, and the climax culminates not only with the defeat of Octopus’s plans and Mary Jane learning the true identity of Spider-Man.

 

While such revelations are often used just for pure melodrama, here the writers use it to resolve the conflict with which the movie began. Once Mary Jane has realized the reality of Parker’s feelings for her, she can’t marry her new fiancée—but she counsels Parker as well, telling him that he can’t just live “half a life.” Mary Jane’s pledge to love Parker despite his superhero career is the boost Parker needs to reaffirm his guilt-based commitment to a heroic destiny, theoretically free of the desire to fight crime for guilt’s sake. Yet Raimi’s final shot is not focused upon the hero swinging across the New York skyline, but upon Mary Jane watching him through the window. The responsibility she now bears is to give her man confidence, no matter how much his dangerous life torments her.

 

James Franco is arguably the weakest link amid the stellar cast, in that his performance is somewhat overbaked, but even he has some good moments. Maguire, Dunst, Molina, Rosemary Harris and J.K. Simmons are all without blemish, and it should be deemed a compliment to Simmons that later movie-franchises of SPIDER-MAN didn’t even try to equal his take on J. Jonah Jameson. Almost nothing is done with the fact that Mary Jane’s new fiancée is Jameson’s son John, with the result that John is sort of a non-character, who exists to cause Parker pain and to be jilted at the altar. And no scenes showing Mary Jane contemplating having Jameson as a father-in-law? Classic missed opportunity—but not one that causes me to downgrade SPIDER MAN 2 even slightly.  

FROM DUSK TILL DAWN: THE SERIES; SEASONS 2-3 (2015-16)

 

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

I hope no readers were waiting breathlessly for me to get around to reviewing the last two seasons of FROM DUSK TILL DAWN THE SERIES, given that I posted my review of the first season over five years ago.

In that review I noted that the first season was largely devoted to retelling the events of the movie, but in such a way as to set up the action of at least one more season of adventures for the Gecko brothers. I also noted that the series showed some potential to improve upon the movie's "sketchy" characters, who were after all designed for a balls-to-the-wall action-extravaganza.

The second and third seasons, which begin new storylines for the Gecko brothers (D.J. Cotrona, Zane Holtz) and their many supporting characters, certainly did generate some fertile new arcs for such roughly formed characters as Kate Fuller (Madison Davenport), her brother Scott, Ranger Freddie Gonzalez, and the "queen snake" vampiress Santanico Pandemonium (Elza Gonzalez). Whereas both Santanico and Richie Gecko died in the original film, by the end of the first season the vampiress has turned Richie into one of her snake-vamp kindred, and both of them have fled the Titty Twister where Santanico was held by her overlords as a sort of "captive queen."

The main thrust of the second season is to emphasize that this is the first time Seth and Richie Gecko have been apart for any real length of time. Though their separation gives both of them some time to define themselves-- when they're not fending off pursuing snake-vamps, that is-- this arc is destined to reach satisfaction when "Los Geckos" are reunited. Kate, an ordinary young woman, makes valiant attempts to succor her vampirized brother Scott, but these are less interesting than the bonding that takes place between Kate and Seth while Seth is separated from Richie. Lord Malvado, one of Santanico's overlords, sends a super-powerful "regulator" (Danny Trejo) to get the snake-queen and her servant.

This season is a decent mashup of tropes from both crime thrillers and supernatural horror tales, and the FX are always above average. However, the arcs of Kate and Santanico are not up to the talents of the actresses. The vampire queen wants power after having been kept prisoner for many years, but this in itself doesn't make her all that interesting. Kate Fuller has an impressive humanity that contrasts nicely with the Geckos' studied "too cool for school," but she's killed at the end of the season, apparently just to set up the arc of her impending resurrection in Season Three.

The third season fulfills Robert Rodriguez's stated ambition to expand upon the Aztec background of the snake-vamps. I'm not versed in Aztec lore, but off the top of my head I would say that the writers don't evoke the myths for any purpose beyond name-dropping. The Aztec lords have a range of more formidable powers than the other snake-people, but many of them are still playing power-games like mundane criminals. The exception is the death-goddess Amaru, who possesses and resurrects the body of Kate for a while, before regaining her own immortal body. Amaru's ambition is to break down the barriers separating the living world from the death-domain, and the Geckos must make common cause with Santanico and her forces in order to save the world. In fact, though Santanico doesn't get that much more interesting, even with the addition of a lesbian hookup, she is important enough to this season's story as to equal the Geckos in terms of centricity.

FROM DUSK TILL DAWN THE SERIES consistently delivers gory thrills and solid melodrama in each episode, though to be sure no single episode really stands out from the rest. Jeff Fahey, Wilmer Valderrama and Natalie Martinez (as Amaru) contribute strong supporting performances. Perhaps as a nod to the Tarantino style that infused the movie's dialogue, many characters make pop-culture references, the standout being when a character asks the Geckos if they're going to fight for "truth, justice, and the Mexican-American way."

FLASH GORDON'S TRIP TO MARS (1938)

 

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

Whether or not one agrees with me that the 1936 FLASH GORDON incorporated some adult themes into its adaptation of the famed comic strip, no one is likely to make any such claim for the sequel. 

Whereas the script for the first serial takes assorted incidents from different comics-arcs and blends them into a whole, MARS does nothing but involve the three main heroes-- Flash, Dale and Zarkov-- in a repetitive campaign to destroy Ming's world-destroying ray on the Red Planet. The arbitrary decision to transplant all of the action to Mars was someone's brilliant idea to profit from the notoriety of Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" broadcast. Possibly it would have made no difference to the writers had all the action stayed on Mongo, though. The writers, instead of exploiting Mongo's wealth of weird demi-human life-forms, confine themselves to just three Martian tribes-- the followers of Queen Azura, the bumptious Forest People, and the Clay People, the latter having been transformed into their muck-ridden state by Azura. Indeed, for complicated reasons Flash and his friends seem to spend more time freeing the Clay People from their curse than trying to ferret out the death-ray.

In the comic strip Azura was one of Flash's most memorable foes, as noted in this analysis.  But here the queen is just a dime-a-dozen tyrant who for vague reasons joins Ming in his plot to seek vengeance on Planet Earth. Her function in the strip-- to tempt Flash away from his beloved Dale-- is tossed, aside from one moment where she starts to fancy the blonde hero. She's said to use "magic" on a regular basis, though most of her effects-- like her ability to teleport-- could be easily explained as technological accomplishments. One minor plotline deals with the heroes trying to find a "black sapphire" that can neutralize Azura's powers, but this detail doesn't amplify Azura's sorcerous status, serving only to burn up time. Actress Beatrice Roberts makes some attempt to give Azura a haughty regality, but she lacks the exoticism needed to pull off such a role.

The returning actors don't fare much better. Buster Crabbe swashes buckles adequately, but Frank Shannon and Charles Middleton have little to do. Jean Rogers's Dale isn't as much of a dishrag as in the previous serial-- she refuses Flash's suggestion that she stay behind during the journey-- but her only good scene is a mind-wipe that makes her into Flash's enemy, leading to her attempting to stab her lover to death. The voyage is not markedly improved by the inclusion of a comedy relief, reporter Happy Hapgood (Donald Kerr), who proves strenuously unfunny.

The FX are adequate but the script repeats them a lot-- an energy-bridge, the transformations of the Clay People-- and there aren't even any standout hand-to-hand fights, except for a few sequences cadged from the first serial.

ADDENDUM: A poster on CHFB asserted that this serial was in theaters months before the influential "War of the Worlds" broadcast, so whatever brought about the script's change of venue from Mongo to Mars, it wasn't because of Orson Welles.

REVENGE OF THE NINJA (1983)

 

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

Prior to REVENGE OF THE NINJA the Cannon group issued ENTER THE NINJA, which, while watchable, is mostly notable for introducing martial-artist-turned-actor Sho Kosugi to American audiences. Kosugi had made about three films prior to ENTER, but evidently he impressed Cannon with his performance as the villain in that film, for here he's the hero. Similarly, though this was not the very first directorial role for Sam Firstenberg, it was his first martial arts movie, made about two years before Firstenberg launched the popular AMERICAN NINJA series.

Without inflating the significance of REVENGE, it does actually have a fairly tight plot in comparison with the average Cannon schlock. Since most of writer Jim Silke's cinematic outings were not all that interesting, maybe he or one of his producers decided they really wanted to expand on the mythology of the cinematic ninjas. Here we have two ninjas for the price of one-- one bad and one good-- and both of them make heavy use of all the exotic weapons associated with the medieval clans: caltrops, blowdarts, and the ever popular shuriken.

Kosugi plays Cho Osaki, one of the last members of a modern-day ninja clan in Japan. He's befriended by Braden (Arthur Roberts), one of the few Caucasians trained in ninjutsu, but a clan-feud breaks out and costs the life of Osaki's wife. Distraught, Osaki takes his young son Kane to America. He starts up an art gallery devoted to Asian art, in partnership with Braden. Though Osaki forswears the way of the ninja, he and his son continue training in the various martial arts, and even Braden's associate Cathy (Ashley Ferrare) joins them in some bouts, though it appears that she'd like to have a "bout" of a different kind with Osaki.

Braden, however, is using the gallery as cover for a heroin smuggling ring, concealing the dope in some of the art-figurines. However, Braden butts heats with local Mafia boss Chifano, who wants to ace Braden out and deal directly with the suppliers. Braden dons his ninja gear and starts killing members of Chifano's family to make the mobster capitulate. Kane witnesses Braden kill Osaki's aged mother and the boy flees for his life, and Chifano sends men to steal the dope from the gallery, thus bringing about a fight between Osaki and Chifano's goons. This "turf war" plotline is reasonably efficient about bringing the two ninjas into conflict over the good ninja's son, while allowing for the slaughter of a lot of the bad ninja's gangster-enemies.

Now, although this isn't your average Cannon film, where all the action erupts without cause to keep the audience happy, there certainly are some oddball setups. In one, Osaki and a policeman buddy randomly go looking for the missing Kane, confront a group of scummy looking layabouts in a park, and get into a fight with them, though the bums really have nothing to do with the boy. More amusingly, Braden uses ninja hypnosis on Cathy to make her capture Kane when he shows up at the Osaki dojo-- and the duel between a very skilled grade-schooler and a semi-trained grown woman is certainly not something you see every day.

Overall, the fight-scenes in REVENGE are much better than the average American chopsocky, particularly the climactic contest between Osaki and Braden. On a minor point, the credits bill Kosugi as both Osaki and "the Black Ninja," though no one calls Osaki that, and both of the ninjas here wear the same ebony attire. "The Black Ninja" is also the name bestowed on the villain of the next collaboration between Firstenberg and Silke, NINJA III: THE DOMINATION, which makes REVENGE OF THE NINJA looks like a John Ford film by comparison. 

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981)

 

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

                                       

 

According to a George Lucas reminiscence in Chris Taylor’s HOW STAR WARS CONQUERED THE UNIVERSE, Indiana Jones came into being partly because Eon Pictures, who controlled the James Bond franchise, refused to let Lucas helm an entry in the adventures of the famed superspy. Yet it’s hard to see any connections between Lucas’s hero—whom I’ll call “Indy” henceforth—and the Bond of the movies, aside from their mutual propensities for globetrotting.

 

Comparisons between Indy and the world-weary Bond of Ian Fleming’s books might be more appropriate; there’s a lot more sense that both characters have lived hard, danger-filled lives that may have cost them any shot at a normal existence. The first closeup of Indy (Harrison Ford) in his debut film catches the hero showing the world a grim, forbidding face. Admittedly, he’s just foiled another man’s attempt to take Indy’s life for the sake of treasure. But the appearances of movie-Bond boast nearly no scenes like this, except for ONHER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE, which was the closest adaptation of an ennui-filled Ian Fleming original. The opening RAIDERS sequence establishes Indy’s fortitude and daring, as he successfully braves an ancient Indian temple filled with traps set by long-dead men—but then the hero loses his prize to his smooth-talking rival Belloq (Paul Freeman). Both hero and villain are in essence thieves, but Indy is admirable for his courage in taking on the challenge of the temple, while Belloq uses smooth talk (and arguably, better preparation) to achieve their common end of raiding archaic treasures for the enrichment of modern museums.

                

Nor do you find this sort of world-weariness in the kid-oriented serials to which RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK pays homage. As much as Lucas and the first Indy-director Steven Spielberg may have loved old chapterplays like LOST CITY OF THE JUNGLE— or even B-westerns like those of the whip-wielding cowpoke Lash Larue—Indy’s character seems drawn from the heroes of A-level Hollywood adventure-films. When Indy remarks to his considerably younger paramour that “it’s not the years, honey, it’s the mileage,” he seems to be channeling Bogart—but it’s a Bogart who can perform prodigies of athleticism worthy of Errol Flynn or Douglas Fairbanks Sr. Some of this character may have been formed by Lucas’s credited co-author Philip Kaufman, or from Lawrence Kashdan, who wrote the screenplay. Yet Lucas probably had the principal idea of mining any and all adventure-films from Hollywood’s heyday—which makes Lucas something of a “raider of lost art,” to repeat a pun that others have made before me.

 

Although some modern audiences would frown upon Indy’s theft in the service of archaeological science, the film doesn’t really interrogate these matters closely. When we first see Indy in his “Clark Kent” academic guise—teaching a boring archaeology class while the girl students moon over the sophisticated older man—he seems quite content with his avocation as a relic-hunting adventurer. Then a crack appears when he confers with members of the State Department. Indy’s told that the Nazis are in Egypt, looking for the legendary Lost Ark of the Covenant. The government guys, unlike the hero, seem to seriously countenance the idea that the artifact might be used as a weapon by Adolf Hitler, and they want to Indy to find the Ark first. But to get a line on this particular part of ancient history, Indy has to face up to a dark part of his own history, for the only relic that can lead the hero to the Ark is in the possession of two people from whom he’s estranged: his former mentor (and father-figure?) Abner Ravenwood and Abner’s daughter Marion.

 

(Side-note: Campbell Black’s paperback novelization of an early RAIDERS script contains the nugget that Teacher Jones isn’t just getting adoring looks from girl students; he’s actively getting some action from at least one of them. I don’t know if this should be read as a backhanded compliment to Marion.)

 

Anyway, Indy journeys to Nepal to find the Ravenwoods, only to learn that Abner died there, leaving Marion (Karen Allen) with nothing but a beat-up tavern as her stock in trade. The source of the estrangement between the hero and the Ravenwoods seems to have been Indy’s affair with Marion, who by her account may have been underage, though the late Abner’s opinion of the matter is not spelled out. Marion, still in love with Indy despite her hostility, puts him off—but she can’t put off the Nazi goons who come looking for the relic with the Ark’s location. The role of the Nazi agent Toht (Ronald Lacey) is nothing less than a love letter to the career of Peter Lorre (well known for his cinematic interactions with Humphrey Bogart, by the bye). Still, the main purpose of the Nepal adventure is to forge new ties between Indy and Marion—even if they are based on financial remuneration, after Indy’s battle with the Nazis and their stooges results in the tavern’s destruction.

 

The couple arrives in Cairo with the relic. Marion seems totally on board with Indy’s plan to find the Ark, though she never makes any express comments on the hero’s mission: to somehow find the sacred Ark in the Nazis’ archaeological dig before the Nazis themselves can. More importantly, Marion’s animus toward Indy vanishes. She baits him a little, but the bitterness is gone, and it’s plain that they’ve both falling in love again. However, the heroine finds herself getting into overly deep waters with another attack by Nazi henchmen, who have been sent after Indy by their collaborator Belloq. Marion appears to be slain in a fiery explosion—and though I doubt many audience members thought her sincerely dead, Indy is forced to mourn his loss of something more valuable than any museum acquisition.

 

To make matters worse, Indy’s enemy Belloq shows up to mock him, claiming that the two of them are both lapsed followers of the archaeological “faith,” and that Belloq himself is a “shadowy reflection” of the hero, as indeed all the best villains tend to be. The conversation takes an extra note of sadism when one realizes that by this time Belloq must know that Marion is not dead, because she’s been taken back to the dig-site. The Nazi’s motivation for doing this is never very clear. In any case, the Nazis in Cairo somehow lose track of Indy, who sneaks into the camp with the correct info, hijacks some diggers to uncover the Ark’s real resting-place, and, incidentally, stumbles across Marion, alive but captive.

 

It’s no doubt a supreme test of Marion’s patience that Indy puts her rescue on hold to go after the Ark—which action might make more sense if the hero actually believed that the Ark had supernatural powers that might help the Third Reich win the war. To be sure, when Belloq interviews the captive heroine, he indicates that he’s trying to get information out of her—but at the time of the attack in Cairo, Belloq probably would have believed he had all the info he needed. He might have been sincerely trying to kill Indy in the Cairo attack, just to get him out of the way—but then, with Marion captive, why not use her to bait a trap for the hero? Was his original motivation just the desire to “take” away something from Jones, since he also sets up a possible seduction?

 

None of these quibbles take away from the film’s undeniable mastery of kinetic thrills and chills, which are far more important to this film than niggling continuity. Yet it’s arguable that even though Lucas et al have Indy betray Marion for the sake of the Ark, he does re-evaluate his priorities later on: seeking to protect her more than a relic of ancient history. Indy fails to liberate Marion, but it seems that all the warnings he’d received about the Ark’s baleful powers finally sink in. When Belloq attempts to summon forth the power of the Ark with a Jewish ritual, Indy keeps his eyes shut and advises Marion to do the same—which saves them both from the destruction wrought upon Belloq and the Nazis by the Ark, much as Lot saved himself by not beholding the devastation of Sodom. The couple’s bonding through Nazi-fighting then sets up the closure of their romantic arc at film’s end.

 

Though I believe that the main symbolic thread here is psychological—that of a world-weary man putting aside the lure of adventure for at least some romantic attachments—I also think RAIDERS has some strong metaphysical content. When I first saw the “death angels” that come forth from the Ark at the climax, I thought Spielberg, being of Jewish extraction, might have playing with the traditional idea of the mystic Shekinah. Now I think that’s a little ambitious. Still, when the Ark’s power manifests in a fiery “pillar of cloud,” that image is almost certainly derived from the narrative of the Jews’ exodus from Egypt. Even in my first viewing I thought it odd that the Nazis, the enemies of Jewry, would have thought they could call on an Israelite relic’s power with impunity, though I suppose the base idea might’ve been the real-life Nazi notion that all the great occult discoveries stemmed from Aryan ancestors.

 

Arguably, the aforesaid James Bond model does rear its head in the next three Indiana Jones films, one of which asserts that the Indy-Marion romance of the first film did not have a happy ending. Perhaps Lucas wanted his hero to have more latitude in his sexual conquests, though if so, Lucas never succeeded in making audiences think of Indiana Jones as a major lady-killer. Still, taken by itself, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK stands as the premiere salute of the “movie brats” to the adventure and romance of Classic Hollywood. 

HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER (1958)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 

MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, sociological*

The last film in producer Herman Cohen’s “teen monster tetralogy” is the oddest of the four, and the one least like a standard low-budget exploitation film. It may well be the first time a Hollywood film was used to deliver a valentine’s card to the entire genre of horror movies.

I know that even among fans it’s common to assume that during the era of Classic Hollywood, the raconteurs who made horror films were not particularly engaged with the genre; that it was all Just a Job. And ninety-nine times out of a hundred, this is probably true. However, HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER is the first time I ever saw a mainstream horror-film talk about using fright-films as “therapy” for the masses. I won’t say that Cohen and his co-writer Aben Kandel were trying to “make a statement” precisely—although Cohen did continue to work almost exclusively in the horror-genre for the remainder of his career. But I think that their story of a crazed Hollywood makeup man was one in which they drew upon some real moviemaking history—more on which later.

TEENAGE WEREWOLF and TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN were both traditional monster-films about teens turned into horrors by malevolent older men. MONSTER, however, presents the viewers with a world where both creatures were just movie-fiends created by the makeup wizardry of makeup-wizard Paul Dumond (Robert H. Harris). Dumond, together with his assistant Rivero (Paul Brinegar), has spent years in the business of making monsters for AIP Studios (or rather, a very fictionalized version thereof). When the movie starts, Dumond has just begun work on a film that brings together both the Teenage Werewolf and the Teenage Frankenstein for a battle royale. But a new regime, represented by two Eastern businessmen looking for quick profit, decides that horror films are on the way out. As is often the case with regime change, a lot of people on the AIP lot get pink-slipped, including Dumond and Rivero, who are expected to leave after finishing their current project.

Dumond is fanatically devoted to his craft, and does not go gently into that good night. He argues with the new bosses’ decision, making the claim that horror films have therapeutic uses, but to no avail: the businessmen have decided that the public wants only light entertainment. Yet plainly Dumond is not really devoted to psychological therapeutics, any more than the mad scientist of TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN really cares about scientific progress. Late in the film Dumond calls his makeup-creations his “children,” and the fact that he has no family to speak of indicates that he’s thrown all of his passion into his art. In this he strongly resembles the mad wax-sculptors of both MYSTERY IN THE WAX MUSEUM and its very successful 1953 remake HOUSE OF WAX, since they too deemed their sculptures to be their “family.” But unlike the wax-men, Dumond also has something of a god-complex. In his earliest speech, as he chats with one of the teens he’s made up as a nightmare, Dumond talks about God having created both mild and fearful forms of life. It can hardly be doubted that he’s praising his own creation-skills, though if he ever created anything but fright-figures, the script remains mum on the subject.

The God of Monster Makeup can’t keep the regime from changing, but he can visit divine vengeance upon the impious studio managers, and upon the studio, whose financial success he attributes to his own genius. Dumond tells Rivero that he just happens to have invented a foundation cream initially designed to relax the actors being made up, a cream with hypnotic properties. The calmly mad makeup man uses hypnosis on the two actors playing his monsters, causing them to go forth and slay the callous Eastern businessmen—and since the artist can’t resist signing his work, he sends the actors out dressed in full fiend-regalia. The Werewolf has no witnesses when he murders his target, but the Frankenstein is seen after his crime. Nevertheless, the investigating police, though they interrogate a lot of studio personnel, aren’t seen interviewing either of the monster-thespians.

Very little time is devoted to the teenaged actors or their alter egos; they both just get one kill apiece, and neither assumes a monstrous form for the big climax. As if to underscore the fact that Dumond is the real star, he also dons monster-makeup to kill off a nosy studio guard who stupidly hints of his suspicions about Dumond and Rivero. One scene includes an acerbic agent who gets in Dumond’s face for having interfered with the actor whom the agent represents. But the character never appears again, and it may be that the scene was added both to pad the film and create false anticipation for another murder. In the hurried climax, Dumond lures his two pawns to his home, apparently planning to cut their heads off and mount them for his makeup-collection. The actors, who have dimly begun to suspect that something’s off, manage to escape after Dumond murders his assistant and perishes in a fiery blaze.

Dumond is too much the catchpenny fiend to be as compelling as the aforementioned wax-sculptors. However, the setup provided by Cohen and Kandel seems to be a direct commentary on the fall and rise of horror films in Classic Hollywood. Putting aside the mixed bag of the silent era, America’s cinematic horror essentially began in 1931 with the first successful Universal adaptations of DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN, while the company was under the aegis of the Laemmle family. A regime change in 1936 ousted the Laemmles, and while horror films were still made for the next eight years, after that the genre was almost extinct at Universal until roughly 1950. Particularly during the reign of studio boss Joe Pasternak, horror was essentially passed over in favor of the same sort of “light entertainment” favored by the fictional studio bosses of HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER. On a minor note, old-fashioned studio makeup artists like Jack Pierce received short shrift as well, though in real life Pierce found a number of other work-venues that the mad Dumond would have scorned.

Now, when I say that MONSTER was a “valentine” to the horror genre, I don’t want to overstate the sentimentality factor. For me the most logical scenario is that Cohen and Kandel were aware of all the chaos that had arisen at Universal during that regime change, and that they decided that they could use that chaos as a template for an entertaining “behind the scenes” story of the moviemaking business, crossed with their established motif of evil older citizens manipulating victimized teenagers. (The motif makes a minor appearance in Cohen’s 1963 KONGA as well, though not with quite the same pattern.) As an added fillip, since 1950s audiences could look around and see that horror and its near relations had indeed made a comeback, Cohen and Kandel could play games with the anti-horror stance of the 1940s producers, as if to say, “see how dumb you were to cross horror off your list, you weenies!”

I don’t entirely buy the gay interpretation of the “teen monster tetralogy” seen in some analyses. All of the malefactors in the four films seem utterly uninterested in sexual satisfaction, in comparison with obtaining validation for their enormous egos. Yet it must be admitted that manipulations of all sexual persuasions were also going on “behind the scenes” in Hollywood, so nothing’s completely outside the realm of possibility.

I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN (1958)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

According to one online source, Hammer’s CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN enjoyed enough good box office in America that it was still playing when producer Herman Cohen began the shoot for TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN in late 1957. CURSE, of course, is known as one of the first Frank-films in which the mad scientist is more central to the story than his patchwork creation. The success of the British film might be why the script for Cohen’s film does not place as much as emphasis on the monster as had the two previous entries in this quasi-series of teen monster flicks, I WAS A TEENAGEWEREWOLF and BLOOD OF DRACULA.  All three, as well as the subsequent last hurrah HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER, were written by Cohen and Aben Kandel under various cognomens, but the latter two films shift the focus from victimized teens to the menace of middle-aged men. They are also much talkier films, partly due to the generally dull, set-bound direction of Herbert L. Strock.

Lead actor Whit Bissell plays the (allegedly English) Professor Frankenstein, and since no one in the story seems thrown off by the famous name, apparently in this world there’s never been a Frankenstein film, though the professor hints that he had an ancestor in the real-life monster-making business. The modern Frankenstein’s colleagues ridicule the scientist’s overly ambitious theories about organ transplant, and the frustrated scientist rants to his physicist buddy Karlton that he plans to make his associates eat crow, while tossing in occasional platitudes about the advance of science. Providentially, Frankenstein and Karlton (the latter possibly being blackmailed into giving aid) get access to the body of a teenager killed in a car-crash, and they begin their resurrection game. The monster—a bulky teen with a disfigured face (Gary Conway)—has no memory of his previous existence, but he submits to Frankenstein’s tutelage, up to the point that he starts getting anxious about being squirreled away in the scientist’s basement.

While many versions of Shelley’s scientist already have fiancees when they start building their monsters, this Frankenstein takes notice of Margaret (Phyllis Coates), a fangirl of his abstruse theories. Frankenstein courts her, not because he feels anything for her, but apparently because he wants a free secretary to maintain his privacy while he concentrates on his Great Work. The prof eventually reveals his callous, self-involved nature to Margaret, with the result that she noses around and learns about his monstrous project. Unfortunately, Margaret still thinks she can win over the prof by helping him with the monster’s upbringing. Instead, Frankenstein deals with her as the Baron of CURSE did with an inconvenient mistress, siccing the creature on her. It’s probably not a coincidence that though the camera declines to show viewers just how Margaret is killed by the teen monster, her screams go on for a little longer than necessary just to indicate her death. The writers may well have remembered the ambiguous way Mary Shelley handled her monster’s encounter with his “father’s” betrothed, so as to imply rape as well as murder.

Though the scientist does accede to the monster’s pleas to give him a new face—that of another teen, also played by Conway—the teen transplant becomes suspicious of Frankenstein’s true intentions. This results in a hurry-up-and-finish climax that spells doom to Frankenstein and his creation. Though the film’s standout line is the much quoted one about the “civil tongue,” Cohen and Kandel do give the main character a number of other offbeat lines. In one scene, Frankenstein rambles to Margaret about the wonders of science with a quote supposedly from Thomas Huxley. I couldn’t find the line on the Internet, but it sounded a lot like a similar quote from the art-critic Walter Pater. So even though this Frankenstein is an immoral madman, you can’t say he didn’t have a proper Classical education.