MACISTE IN THE VALLEY OF THUNDERING ECHOES (1964)

 

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

Though this Italian-made film was circulated under the title HERCULES OF THE DESERT, its mythology is that of the Maciste films. Maciste, rather than being rooted in any particular time and clime, tended to wander around history as the scripters' needs arose, a standout being his appearance in 15th-century Scotland in THE WITCH'S CURSE.

Prior to the appearance of the titular muscleman-- once again essayed by Kirk Morris-- there's conflict brewing in some vaguely ahistorical desert terrain. The good guys are essentially Bedouin Arabs, who may be Muslim but are not really hard-and-fast about it. This wandering tribe, the Gameli, believes that there exists a "land of green pastures" promised to them by a prophecy. However, the land lies in a valley that seems to be haunted by frightful specters who create a fearful racket, "the thundering echoes," so none of the Gameli want to pass into the valley. Further, like so many wandering tribes, they automatically draw hostile fire from the tribesmen of the big cities. One such walled city is ruled by ambitious Queen Farida (Helene Chanel), who plans to exterminate or enslave the Gameli.

The High Priest of the Gameli, though, knows how to call forth the sort of great hero they need as their champion. As reviewers before me have remarked, in most movies Maciste just wanders into trouble out of nowhere in particular. However, the scripters here must have felt like doing something with the putative meaning of his name, "born from the rock," for the High Priest performs a summoning-ritual in a cave, and lo, the biceped hero manifests out of the rocks therein.

Eventually, after Maciste kicks the asses of Farida's warriors-- and this is a Maciste with a Hercules-like level of power, unlike other iterations-- the hero wins an invitation to the queen's palace, where, like many evil queens before her, she enslaves him with her insidious potions. Naturally, there's a good-girl Gameli heroine (Spela Rozin) vying to rescue Maciste from the bad woman's clutches, and Rosalba Neri, also a renowed Euro-babe, rings in with a minor support-role.

Most of the action is just OK until the literally "bang-up" conclusion. Maciste ventures into the thunderous valley, where he finds that the "thunder" is being produced by a tribe of weird-looking guys beating on metal gongs or sheets of metal. Maciste whips them all, thus paving the way for the good guys to take possession of the valley, but the thunder-makers are never explained. Since they don't show special powers, one has to assume that they're mortals, perhaps using their phony thunder after the fashion of the Greek Salmoneus, hoping to pose as gods to unwitting mortals. Whatever the reasoning. this sequence is the most spirited one in the movie, exceeding even the sumptuous shots of Helene Chanel.

VENOM (2018)

 

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

I was no fan of the Venom character in the SPIDER-MAN comics or the quasi-franchise that evolved therefrom, and so I had no interest in the adaptation of the character in the 2007 SPIDER-MAN 3. I deemed the whole idea of the alien symbiote as a lumpy conflation of the "Jekyll and Hyde" trope with that of the ALIEN franchise. 

So I was moderately surprised that I enjoyed Sony's reboot of the franchise. The filmmakers quite logically ignore the version of Eddie Brock that appeared in SPIDER-3, and this version of the raffish reporter, as played by Tom Hardy, is a determined fighter for the Little Guy through journalistic exposure. 

He's not especially smart about how to deal with eccentric multi-millionaires whom he suspects of killing people for his scientific experiments. Brock's life is torn asunder when he makes a rash accusation against Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), who gets Brock fired from his paper while also ruining the career of his girlfriend Anne (Michelle Williams) for having facilitated the interview. Anne breaks up with Brock and he spirals down to Loser-Town for a time. However, one of Drake's conscience-stricken scientists knows that her boss is now exploiting poor people for a new set of experiments. 

Drake is the means by which at least two alien shapechangers end up on Earth. Even thirty years ago, no one could have imagined a private corporation funding a space-research program, but Drake is sort of an evil Jeff Bezos. He's obsessed with finding a way to mutate humans so that they can escape the ruined Earth-environment and conquer space-- implicitly so that he Drake can continue his aristocratic reign. 

With the help of the goodgirl scientist, Brock breaks into the research facility, so that he's on hand when one symbiote, Venom (also voiced by Hardy), breaks free and bonds his organic essence with that of Brock. Brock soon finds that when he transforms into Venom, he's super-strong, invulnerable, and able to leap tall buildings with just a few bounds. The downside is that Venom has erratic dining tastes, which include biting off the heads of his enemies-- though to be sure, the filmmakers play this down, to keep this particular ultraviolence from becoming repetitive. Meanwhile, though Drake didn't manage to capture the second alien symbiote, known as Riot, Riot gets the idea to seek out Drake and meld with him-- leading to a major confrontation between the two shapechanging buttkickers.

I'm sure I enjoyed Venom in part because it wasn't a political screed masked as a superhero movie, but the ultraviolent fight-scenes are appealing too, being less slick and overproduced as, say, most of the MCU battles. Neither the main hero nor his villain are characterized very well, but they both work as broad goodguy and badguy types, while the script finds one or two interesting things for gal-pal Anne to do. No wheels are re-invented here, but there have been so many superhero flicks that can't even get the basic elements right that VENOM is a comparative breath of fresh air.

VICE ACADEMY 3 (1992), VICE ACADEMY 4 (1995)

 

PHENOMENALITY: (1) *uncanny,* (2) *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor* 
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, sociological*

Some 'net reviewer claimed that VICE 3 had the highest budget of the six flicks in the series, but they must have spent it on costumes, since they certainly didn't use any of the money on writers.

In my review of the second movie I remarked that the producers had pruned the main characters down to just a Nice Girl and a Nasty Girl, while making both of them egregiously dumb. Holly (Ginger Lynn Allen) is still the Nasty One, trying to escape having been sent to prison to "work undercover" from the second film. Nice Girl Didi took a hike, but her sister Candy (Elizabeth Kaitan) has replaced Didi as a vice cop, apparently having graduated from the no-longer-seen "vice academy" run by the sour Miss Devonshire (played for this one film by Jordana Capra). Yet Candy isn't really all that nice-- she and Holly constantly exchange barbs and undercut one another-- but a "Nicer Girl" is also introduced, a female convict named Samantha (a strangely unbilled Darcy DeMoss). Samantha has apparently taken a correspondence course to become a vice cop once she's released from prison, but she barely interacts with the other two girl cops, mostly bouncing off Miss Devonshire and the Commissioner.

The not-very-super villain this time is a convict named Melanie (Julia Parton, cousin of the more famous Dolly), who during her escape gets her hair turned green by toxic fumes, so that she renames herself "Malanthion" (after the insecticide). This was almost certainly a petty swipe from the origin of Batman's foe The Joker, and her one schtick-- stealing women's purses after making their hair frizzy with a special hairspray-- reminds me of a similar Joker-schtick from the 1989 BATMAN. Once again the entire police force is helpless against this low-wattage thread, and so the three newbie vice cops set a trap to catch the green-haired petty crook. It's almost a given that the jokes fall flat, but at least none of the women do.

VICE ACADEMY 4 reverts back to the "nice and nasty" combo that then lasts for the remainder of the series, but both the character of Holly and the actress Ginger Lynn Allen go bye-bye. Candy is still around, being played by Elizabeth Kaitan, and she's more or less still Nice. But now Samantha, graduated from both prison and the vice academy program, is played by one Rocki Garner, is no longer the goody-good from Part 3. She's not as bitchy as Traci, the character who assumes the Nasty Girl role in installments 5 and 6. But in one of Samantha's few attempts to enact any duties close to those of real vice cops-- that of pretending to be a hooker-- Samantha rages at a potential customer who says he'd rather spend his money on a video game rather than someone so "trashy." For some reason, I found that Garner made a better foil to Kaitan than any of the other pairings. if only because Garner is taller than the average girl. The actress's height lends some credibility to a scene in which the usually incompetent vice-duo manage to beat up a male perp between them.

And what's the lame menace this time? Well, it's the crazed Malanthion again (Julia Parton), and her plans for revenge are once again pretty picayune. like attacking the vice cops, including Miss Devonshire (once more played by Jayne Hamil). However, she briefly gets something like real super-powers. She's being routinely tortured with electroshock in the local prison-- possibly a joke spun off from "serious" WIP films-- but Malanthion survives the shock and escapes. Later, she's seen at a club, where she tosses around a couple of male bouncers-- apparently with super-strength, though this power never shows up again.

Now, from that basic description, Number Four sounds as stupid as all the others. Well, it is-- but more of the jokes work on their own terms than in any of the other entries. Some include:

*After Miss Devonshire gets the dimbulb Commissioner to propose marriage, Candy offers to help find the "best man." When Devonshire claims she doesn't think Candy could find the best man, Candy claims she was once at a nude beach, where it was easy to find the "best man."

*The girls attempt to order a stripper for Devonshire's hen party, and instead of getting a male performer named Mister Centaur, they get Miss Century, the only hundred-year-old female stripper.

*Devonshire says she wants to wear wedding clothes appropriate to someone from the sixties, and Samantha mishears it as "someone in her sixties."

*Candy's suggestion for a honeymoon site: "There's Tijuana; I've heard about this donkey show--"

It all wraps up with Malanthion trying to crash Devonshire's wedding, and a swipe from the 1966 "Batman" theme song, though as usual the end "fight" is barely worthy of that name.

PASSPORT TO HELL (1965), MASSACRE IN THE SUN (1966)

 

PHENOMENALITY: (1) *uncanny,* (2) *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair* 
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

All of the Eurospy movies I've come across seem like the writers cobbled them together after watching the first four James Bond films. PASSPORT TO HELL-- which like its sequel is preceded by the spy's code name "Agent 3S3"-- had some of the real-world political content one finds in the more realistic Ian Fleming tomes. Perhaps unfairly, I tend to give the lion's share of credit to director/co-writer Sergio Sollima, who prior to his two spy flicks had written 1961's URSUS, one of the few "sword-and-sandal" movies with some good character progression. In addition, Sollima later went on to direct a couple of well-respected spaghetti westerns.

George Ardisson, who plays superspy Walter Ross in both PASSPORT and its one sequel, would also gain considerable fame as a star of Euro-westerns. but here he pulls off the difficult task of emulating the movie version of James Bond without lapsing into parody. Though Ardisson like Connery gets into assorted bizarre situations, he always seems like a guy grounded in the profession of busting heads and seducing babes for a living. At the opening, Ross's superiors tell him to locate the daughter of a spy-chief, and that he should "blackmail, torture, maybe even marry" the woman in order to get what they need.

More importantly, the spy-ring Ross is chasing was once of immense help to the side of The Allies in WWII, but has "gone rogue" now, so that the good spies need to find its mastermind, Dvorak, even if it means placing his daughter Irmgard in danger. 

To be sure, PASSPORT is only a middling thriller, punctuated by a few toughguy fights but without a solid villain to push against. The only diabolical device in the film is that one of the females in Dvorak's organization makes use of a compact that can stun a victim with projected needles.

The follow-up, MASSACRE IN THE SUN, eschews even minor references to real-world politics, but it still projects a better feeling of overall "toughness" even in its fantastic situation. Both Walter Ross and a Brit agent (Evi Marandi) are separately sent to the small South American country San Felipe, where a dictator has overthrown the former rulers. But neither agent is concerned with the dictator, but rather with a mad scientist to whom the dictator has given shelter. Seems the scientist specializes in making lethal chemical gas, and in due time Ross learns that he intends to use a missile to indiscriminately unleash his weapon on the world.

On the slightly more mundane side, the dictator shows himself both a Hefer-esque player and a fighter for equal rights, for one division of his private army is all female. I didn't catch the name of the brunette leader of the female soldiers-- played I think by one Luz Marquez-- but Sollima's script gives her a lot to d. She chastises a disrespectful male soldier by challenging him to single combat, and beats him down using only a bo-staff. She tries the same thing on Ross, who not only overpowers her but spanks her-- which, quite naturally, leads to consensual sex. Finally, the blonde Brit agent and the brunette girl soldier have a short but brutal catfight near the film's end.

Ross doesn't use many gadgets in either film. However, near the conclusion of MASSACRE he does wear night-vision goggles that allow him to mow down several opposition soldiers. This battle-scene displays much of the hallmark grittiness of the spaghetti westerns, rather than the polished violence of most superspy films.

PYGMY ISLAND (1950)

 

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

If MST3K had ever riffed on any of Johnny Weissmuller's JUNGLE JIM films, PYGMY ISLAND would have perfect for that show's humor. "Wow, another exciting walking-around-in-the-potted-plant-jungle scene!" Not to mention any number of little-people jokes that I won't even attempt to conceive.

The only halfway-interesting part of ISLAND are the scenes in which Jim and the other regular-sized characters share screen time with a tribe of "white pygmies." Most weird cultures that show up in fantasy-versions of Africa get transplanted to the Dark Continent because their ancestors get shipwrecked or something. But what in the world is supposed to have produced a tribe of white pygmies in Africa? Not surprisingly, no character in the script even takes a shot at explaining their provenance-- though the real explanation would be that most of the working little people in Hollywood-- Billy Barty, Billy Curtis, and an unbilled Angelo Rossito-- were white.

Part of ISLAND is the usual "white American lost in the jungle" trope, which means that Jungle Jim is called upon to find the missing person-- in this case, a female Army officer, Captain Kingsley (Ann Savage). She's taken in by the white pygmies, but though Jim doesn't know this at the film's opening, he does attest to Kingsley's superior officers that the pygmies just happen to possess a uniquely durable type of vegetable fiber, so durable that it would be a military asset. (This type of slightly novel plant-growth fits the same category of "exotic lands and people" as does the pygmy tribe.) So the task of finding a missing woman is made positively patriotic since the quest will also put greater resources in the hands of the United States. 

To provide conflict, some enemy agents-- presumably Communists but never so identified-- infiltrate the land of the white pygmies. For a few minutes the agents try to intimidate the pygmies by dressing up in the costumes of an infamously formidable tribe of warriors, "the bush devils." This masquerade gets dropped early on, even before Jim tells his army contacts that the "devils" must be phony because the impostors wear boots.

There's barely any action worth mentioning, no good villains, and not even a slight romantic spark between the hero and his leading lady. This may be the dullest film in the series. The only part that woke me up a little comes toward the end. The pygmies, having saved Jim from the Commies, pledge that the Americans can take their wondrous fiber any time they want, as part of a "good neighbor policy." Yeah, because the first one worked out so well...

ALIEN AGENT (2007)

 

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

This Canadian thriller crosses your basic American chopsocky with the premises of 1987's THE HIDDEN and TV's THE INVADERS. This puts it in the same bailiwick as the many low-budget sci-fi action flicks that appeared throughout the nineties, often starring kung-fu skilled actors like Don Wilson, David Bradley, and (to a lesser extent) the star of ALIEN AGENT, Mark Dacascos.

Aliens from a dying planet are looking for a new world to colonize. In a reversal of the more typical social opposition, the ruling class of these unnamed extraterrestrials has a code against invading occupied planets and continues to seek for uninhabited worlds. An impatient faction of rebels travels to Earth, using their convenient power to take over dead human bodies in order to infiltrate Earth society and to construct a wormhole portal, through which all of their allies can come to Earth en masse and can exterminate the locals. The good guys on the dying planet respond in an underwhelming manner, sending one agent, Rykker (Dacascos), to stop the rebels. Once Rykker has taken over the body of a dead criminal (just to show he's a nice guy), he tracks down the rebels, using his superior strength, regenerative abilities, and-- oh yeah-- mad kung fu skills to thwart the scurrilous plot, headed by two main villains, Saylon (Billy Zane) and Isis (Amelia Cooke).

While passing through a small town, Rykker also shows his nice-guy credentials by saving young local Julie (Emma Lahana of POWER RANGERS DINO THUNDER) from some rowdies. She becomes infatuated with Tall Dark and Reserved, even before her only relatives are slain by the alien rebels. She then attaches herself to Rykker like a remora on a shark's hide, finds out who and what he is, and aids him in quashing the rebel plans. Simple as the plot is, Lahana does bring a certain infectious charm to her role, whereas Dacascos can only go through the motions of playing the stoic alien, while both Zane and Cooke are seriously underwritten villains.

Since the budget's too low for real FX, the fights are the main attraction, but they're only fair at best.

ASSIGNMENT SKYBOLT (1967)

 

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

I suppose it was a self-fulfilling conclusion that I should have a mild liking for ASSIGNMENT SKYBOLT once I finally viewed it. I'd just stated the previous week that since I disliked Gregg Tallas's other Eurospy movie, ESPIONAGE IN TANGIER, SKYBOLT would have to be an improvement over that 1965 patch of dullness, and so maybe I gave the later film a pass of sorts, just to justify my earlier statement.

Yet, even though SKYBOLT bears some broad similarities to TANGIER, the later film does have a few interesting touches. TANGIER was filmed mostly in Spain, but SKYBOLT tops that by being possibly the only Eurospy flick set in Greece. More, while TANGIER didn't much advantage of any Spanish locales, SKYBOLT makes the most of its Greek exoticism-- particularly in a scene where superspy Dan Holland (Nicholas Kirk) engages in a Greek line-dance with a couple of hot ladies.

Even though TANGIER boasted some well-known actresses, SKYBOLT's unfamiliar femmes fatales are treated with much more care so as to emphasize both their hotness and their potential to confuse and bedevil the hero. I mentioned that the costumers for TANGIER did nothing for the actresses, but SKYBOLT comes up with some cool outfits for the femmes. In addition, whereas in TANGIER the hero is seen beating up a woman for information, this time director/ co-writer Tallas provides sadistic equity, for the  hero both whips a girl and gets whipped by one. (He also gets electro-tortured by a man, but who cares about that?)

This time the agent's out to corral a stolen nuclear bomb, a plotline patently stolen from THUNDERBALL. The villains are as dull as the ones in TANGIER, and the hero sports no gimmicks, though one of the lady spies does have one of those mini-dart weapons. The fights are OK but not memorable, and Kirk is reasonably likable in the role, though he doesn't seem to have made any other spy-type films thereafter.

So all in all, just a decent little thriller with some rare local color. If anyone actually used the name "Skybolt" in the dubbed script, I must have missed it.