FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER (1958)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological*

In this 2020 review I reviewed two of Richard Cunha's 1950s horror-films. I found that the second time around I quite liked the lively SHE DEMONS, Cunha's first directorial effort, while his second, GIANT FROM THE UNKNOWN, was merely watchable. I have not yet re-screened his third film, MISSILE TO THE MOON, but I remember it as also at least watchable. Cunha's final metaphenomenal film, however, is a bland disappointment.

Like Cunha's other films, FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER was shot in about six days. But whereas there's a little life infusing the formulaic occurrences in the other films, DAUGHTER seems like a sterile knock-off of other "teen monster" films that debuted around the same time, particularly 1957's successful I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF.

Possibly Cunha had even less money than usual with which to work, because it's plain that the film is limited to a very few sets and outdoor scenes. Most of the film takes place either in the laboratory of researcher Carter Morgan, or in other parts of that house, which he shares with his niece (presumably orphaned) Trudy Morton. Carter and Trudy have a friendly relationship, but the young woman isn't so sure about Carter's colleague Oliver Frank. After Frank starts working with Carter, Trudy has disturbing dreams about changing into a monster and terrorizing a local woman. Trudy's friends, including boyfriend Johnny, think she's just letting her imagination get away from her.

The truth is that Oliver Frank is really Oliver Frankenstein, grandson of the original mad scientist. He's served by a creepy older man. Elsu, who eventually reveals that he was a boy when the first Frankenstein created his first monster. Elsu serves Oliver even though the old fellow knows Oliver wants to create the first female monster. Oliver has been slipping Trudy with a transformative chemical-- taking a leaf from the book of Doctor Jekyll, perhaps-- which does indeed transform the girl temporarily. However, Oliver wants a permanent monster-- and for some reason, he doesn't use Trudy as his subject, but one of her friends. The friend gets turned into a bulky grotesquerie (played by a male extra), who inevitably goes berserk and turns on his creator.

Cunha and scripter Barrie run through all of these tropes in a desultory fashion, as if in a hurry to get it all over with. There was one line that might've earned a laugh back in the day, when Oliver claims he wants a female monster because he thinks a woman will be easier to control. He thinks this despite the fact that he comes on to Trudy and she rejects him soundly. For what it's worth, this may be one of the few times in a Frankenstein film when both the mad scientist and his demented servant are hot for the same lead female. But on the whole, DAUGHTER is a poor relation of the better B-movies of the period.

WILD WILD WEST (1999)

 

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

I recently said that I found THE FIRST POWER "amiably stupid" rather than "offensively stupid." but WILD WILD WEST is the opposite.

It didn't have to be that way, of course. The 1965-69 WILD WILD WEST teleseries took a bizarre premise-- two American secret service agents fighting super-genius masterminds with a Bond-like arsenal of gimmicks-- and made it a charming if formulaic program. Whereas the James Bond in all media focused only upon one main character, the WEST series cleverly figured out a way to balance two heroic types: one the "tough guy," played by Robert Conrad, and the other the "trickster," played by Ross Martin. Despite their differences, the respective characters, James West and Artemis Gordon, were shown as being collegial comrades, occasionally one-upping each other but always having one another's backs. The six writers credited with the 1999 film, though, decided that the best way to go was the tried-and-true "mismatched partner" trope.

WEST-the-film was in its time often criticized for the improbable casting of Will Smith in the role of James West, a super-tough Union army officer who's supposed to be able to operate with impunity in post-Civil War America. This improbability is definitely a narrative problem, insofar as the script doesn't play up the improbability, but instead presents the concept with straight-faced intensity. However, some early actors considered for the James West character included such actors as Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise. Such casting would have eliminated the situation of a Black secret agent in late 1800s America. However, all else being equal, that film probably would still have pursued the same sterile trope that the finished movie did, and so would probably have been just as bad.

The plot: Confederate general "Bloodbath" McGrath is separately pursued by both army captain James West (Smith) and U.S. marshal Artemis Gordon (Kevin Kline), and they get in each other's way trying to capture their quarry. (It doesn't help that Gordon disguises himself as a female prostitute and West criticizes the marshal's imitation of femininity.) However, the disputatious duo are forced to work together by President Grant, who wants them to figure out who's stealing a bunch of American scientists. This new concern dovetails with the pursuit of McGrath, when the agents learn that the Confederate general answers to a mad genius, Doctor Loveless (Kenneth Branagh). In addition, a toothsome young woman named Rita (Salma Hayek) attaches herself to the heroes, telling them that one of the missing scientists is her father. So, because both men are warm for her form, they let her come along on their investigation.

Loveless kills McGrath and slaughters a bunch of his diehard Confederate troops (one of the few scenes that has a little gravitas), because the evil genius has a far more divisive plan than did the seceding South. As West and Gordon spy on Loveless, they learn that he wants to partition both the Union and all potential U.S. states into six parts, with Loveless controlling one portion while various European powers and the whole Native American populace will divide up the rest. Why Loveless has any regard for Native Americans when he's a total racist toward Blacks like James West is a mystery the script does not even try to reconcile. Loveless's means of bending the Union to his will is a gigantic robot spider, constructed by all those scientists he kidnapped, and of course West and Gordon overcome all their differences and work together to destroy the villain and his evil schemes.

It's hard to believe that director Barry Sonnenfeld had made such strong formula-flicks as the first MEN IN BLACK and the two ADDAMS FAMILY films in the same decade as WILD WILD WEST. Had I not known who directed WEST, I could have easily believed that it was some hack first-timer who was trying to imitate the worst "high-concept" tropes of earlier successful films. Every jokey conflict of West and Gordon is from hunger, and West's racial conflict with julep-sucking Southerner Loveless is undercut by the fact that Loveless is also "legless," tooling around all the time in some motorized wheelchair. Branagh is just as shrill and tedious as Smith and Kline, in marked contrast to the relative logic of the villains from the TV show. The rest of the actors have nugatory roles. Loveless has a handful of tough-girl henchwomen, all unmemorable, while the only notable thing about Hayek is that NEITHER of the hot-to-trot heroes got to score with the female lead.

Well, one of two saving graces: I did kind of like the design of the giant robot spider, even if the logic of using it to divide up the country is indeed lame. It's too bad the giant spider's agent didn't hold out to get him a better role than WILD WILD WEST.

BATTLE QUEEN 2020 (2001)

 

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

Time sure flies after you've made bad movies. The makers of BATTLE QUEEN 2020 thought that a mere nineteen years would leave them enough room to have the Earth transformed by a marauding comet, so that their movie could show human society transformed into a world of the "haves" and the "have nots." Wait, don't we already have that? Oh, but the world of BATTLE QUEEN supplies all the "haves" with out-in-the-open prostitutes and no busybody law enforcement involved. 

The presence of institutionalized prostitution is the only sociological difference between BATTLE QUEEN and a million other futuristic tyrannies, and neither director Daniel D'or nor any of the three scriptwriters has the slightest idea as to how to deal with the oldest profession in sci-fi terms. It is, to no one's surprise, just a gimmick so that main character Gayle (Julie Strain) and a bunch of other hooker-characters can strut around nude or half-nude, while not performing unimaginative softcore sex scenes. 

The pace of BATTLE QUEEN is pretty much like your average softcore sex-film. Characters more or less drift from place to place, and every scene not involved with sex is desultory in terms of visuals and dialogue. Following a narration that lays out some basics of the new 2020, Gayle provides some narration as well, though nothing much about her personal history. Implicitly she's one of the underclass who were trained in prostitution to serve the corrupt "Elite," and she was so good that she can pretty much strut around anywhere she wants without much opposition. At some point she befriends revolutionary Spenser (martial arts-actor Jeff Wincott) and they try to figure out some way to overthrow the Elite, albeit with barely any sense of urgency. And as uninteresting as Gayle and Spenser are, the villainous dictators are even more pathetically colorless. 

An adventure-film need not have a stunningly original plot to grab an audience, but it does need to have action. By 2001 Wincott had ample experience serving up butt-kicking scenes, but BATTLE QUEEN is centered around Strain, who drifts around the majority of the scenes showing off her goods. She has one scene beating down two guardsmen that just barely qualifies this film as a combative adventure-- though it's not clear where a future-hooker got martial fighting-skills-- but a later scene almost cancels out what heroic presence she earns. When Gayle spars with Spenser, the intent is to portray her as a badass, when in fact it's obvious to any viewer that she's just fending off pre-choreographed blows and kicks. There's one other kung-fu hooker, whose non-speaking role is played by one Eva Dawn Nemeth, and she looks far better in her stunts than Strain does-- though of course Strain had by 2001 somehow become known as a major "B-movie queen." Personally I get little out of the Strain films, though at least, unlike some softcore sex symbols, she has no compunction against at least partial nudity, and so is giving at least some audiences what they want.

LUST FOR A VAMPIRE (1971)

 

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

Writer Tudor Gates receives sole credit for writing all three of Hammer Films' so-called "Karnstein trilogy," which built loosely upon the template of J. Sheridan LeFanu's 19th-century vampire novel CARMILLA. I had high praise for Gates' third movie in the series, TWINS OF EVIL, but my memory was that the first two films in the series were not quite so well articulated. The jury is still out on THE VAMPIRE LOVERS, but the middle film, LUST FOR A VAMPIRE, confirms my recollection.

Both of the first two films focus on Carmilla Karnstein, a vampire from an equally vampiric family. In VAMPIRE LOVERS, Ingrid Pitt plays Carmilla, who spends most of her time getting lesbian fang-action at a couple of aristocrats' mansions in the late 18th century, only to be outed and executed. In this sequel, the role is essayed by Yutte Stensgaard, and the action takes place forty years after Carmilla's slaying. 

The vampire-parents of Carmilla (Mike Raven, Barbara Jefford) are not seen in the earlier film, but apparently they've been hanging around their ancestral castle for four decades, keeping low but occasionally sucking blood from the locals. At least the locals relate their fears of vampire activity to visiting English writer LeStrange (Michael Johnson), who's come to the area to research the legends for his occult-themed stories. One assumes that the Karnsteins haven't done anything overt enough to get the villagers to storm their castle (which does take place at the film's end), but there's no good reason given as to why they wait forty years to capture a local virgin and use her blood to resurrect Carmilla (who, for most of the film, assumes the anagrammatic name "Mircalla.") LeStrange happens to visit a local girls' finishing school while doing his research, sees the recrudescent Carmilla attending classes, and becomes besotted with her.

It may not be entirely Tudor Gates' fault that LUST feels so slackly written. After the success of VAMPIRE LOVERS, the producers may have instructed the scriptwriter to give them more of the same thing. Further, LUST was also just the second film to be directed by long-time Hammer writer Jimmy Sangster, and Sangster may not have known how to spice up the script's slower sections. 

A major problem with the film is that all of the vampires' motives are obscure at best. The first movie followed the book in implying that the vampiress formed some personal erotic connection with a fellow student. Here, Carmilla just goes through the motions of feeding off a couple of female students at her new bailiwick, which would seem to be a bad idea for a bloodsucker trying to remain clandestine, the equivalent of "shitting where you eat." The viewer never knows if she has some endgame, either of her own volition or planned for her by the parents who brought her back. Does she plan to leave the school and seduce some wealthy aristocrat, which might be to her long-term benefit, and that of her parents? Gates' script is content to have her flounce around the school with the other sexy starlets, titillating the audience but not really doing anything. Most of the support-characters suffer from similar vagueness of motive as well.

Though LeStrange is too dull a blade to ferret out Carmilla's true nature, one of the teachers at the school (Ralph Bates) does figure things out. He foolishly offers his services to the vampiress, who simply kills him, but the teacher's death raises LeStrange's suspicions about the object of his affections. When the lightbulb does go off in the young man's head, he really doesn't seem that revolted by Carmilla's murderous nature, as if his Great Love simply overwhelms all other considerations. The script has Johnson and Stensgaard mouth all the right passionate lines, but even if the two actors had better chemistry, the romantic angle doesn't come alive-- possibly because Gates couldn't figure out how to sell Carmilla's hetero romance after filling VAMPIRE LOVERS with blood-soaked lesbianism.

As noted earlier Carmilla is finally exposed, causing her to flee to the safety of the ancestral castle. The villagers fire the castle, and curiously, Count Karnstein tells his wife and daughter not to worry, that fire can't hurt them. While I like the idea of vampires being invulnerable to fire-- maybe they just fade into insubstantiality, as Stoker's Dracula does-- Karnstein ought to have been a little concerned that if his castle burns down, it's easy for his enemies to find him and his family and stake them all. 

Stensgaard's Carmilla is of course the movie's main character, and though the actress looks good in the role she doesn't manage to put any great energy into the few emotional scenes given her by the script. Thus she shares some blame for the fact that LUST FOR THE VAMPIRE merely proves watchable, but never stylish, suspenseful or even all that sexy.

TEEN TITANS: THE JUDAS CONTRACT (2017)

 

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

Though I had assorted criticisms of the original JUDAS CONTRACT  from the Wolfman-Perez NEW TEEN TITANS run, I considered it a solid work of melodramatic action-adventure. Not so this DTV adaptation, the second adaptation of the Titans made within DC's Original Animation line (though this JUDAS is at least better than the Titans' previous outing, the underwhelming JUSTICE LEAGUE VS. TEEN TITANS).

Adaptations can rarely avoid changing elements of the source material, and one may argue that total fidelity is not even desirable. That said, there should be a good reason for every change made. An example of an acceptable change can be viewed in JUDAS's opening scene. The opener has nothing to do with the main story, just giving the viewer a quick introduction to how the Earth-based Titans first made the acquaintance of the alien member-to-be Starfire. Of the five Earth-heroes seen in this short sequence, four are Silver Age members-- Speedy, Beast Boy, Kid Flash, and "Dick Grayson Robin." The fifth member is Bumblebee, a Black superheroine who appeared only briefly in the Titans franchise during the 1970s before the successful reworking of the concept into the Wolfman-Perez iteration. Given that Bumblebee is only there for a few minutes, no longer than Kid Flash and Speedy, I speculate that she's just a placeholder for Wonder Girl, who over the years was so often revised that the writer may've wanted to avoid that briar patch of associations. 

Some members for the main narrative are changed as well. Since the original comics-story provided the transition in which Dick Grayson took on the mantle of Nightwing, he appears largely unaltered. Like Wonder Girl, Cyborg is missing, but Raven shows up with barely any intro, though admittedly she got a lot of exposition in the previous DC Titans-cartoon. That flick also brought in the "Damian Wayne Robin," so it's understandable that he too is inserted into the JUDAS narrative. Damian-Robin is tolerable, but sadly, LEAGUE-TITANS also placed "the Jamie Reyes Blue Beetle" on the team as well, and his separate arc (he wears alien armor that sometimes gives him problems) drags every time he's on screen. (I've read a small sampling of the comic-book original and find him underwhelming in that medium too.) Beast Boy is present but he seems to have undergone a humor lobotomy, and of course the "judas" of the story, Terra, has a substantial presence. More about the changes to her later.

In the original comic, Deathstroke has a grudge against the Titans because he thinks they caused his son's death, and that's why he convinces Terra to join the super-group in order to betray the heroes. Deathstroke's grudge was always a weak motivation, so in its place the writer inserts an equally weak one. This time the villain resents his having been ejected from the criminal organization founded by Damian's father, so he has a hate for Damian. 

In the comic, once Terra betrays the Titans to Deathstroke, he sells the captured heroes to the HIVE organization, whose leader plans to drain off the heroes' powers, killing them and using those powers for some vague purpose. As it happens, that trope wasn't too far from a scheme by another Titan-foe, Brother Blood, who'd appeared in issues just prior to JUDAS CONTRACT, so the movie's writer excises the HIVE and puts Blood in their place, but to no great effect. It does make the JUDAS-movie a different sort of "villain-crossover," though. 

Original-JUDAS also introduced new member Jericho, a virtuous son of Deathstroke, but here he's demoted to some minor action, almost getting killed but surviving. Thus Nightwing alone is responsible for rescuing and freeing his teammates, though the resulting fracas may be one of the most desultory in the history of DC's animated features. (There sure were a lot of heavily shadowed scenes for a superhero cartoon.) Deathstroke and Terra have a falling out for a different reason, but Terra dies in more or less the same way.

And now we get to the Matter of Terra. I remarked in my comics-review that Marv Wolfman makes her a total "bad seed," who's evil just for the hell of it. The script for JUDAS doesn't follow this trope, choosing instead to suggest, albeit not very well, that Terra was traumatized by Bad Stuff that happened to her in her chaotic native country. 

Wolfman also made it clear that Terra had enjoyed sex of some sort with Deathstroke, which traumatized some readers and raconteurs so much that some authors attempted to retcon the event. I would not have been surprised if writer Ernie Altbacker had just not bothered to raise the question, and in some ways that might have been preferable to his actual strategy. This time out, Terra urges Deathstroke to sleep with her, and he refuses for vague reasons. One might accept that the senior villain might have had a moment of morality, or even that he just didn't want to piss where he ate, so to speak, and maybe mess up his master plan. But late in JUDAS, Deathstroke betrays Terra to Brother Blood, and tells her that it's too bad they DIDN'T sleep together. I think I prefer an outright leap into transgressive material over such pointless equivocations.

Though Wonder Girl doesn't actually enter the diegesis, a coda suggests that she, or someone who looks like her, may take Terra's place in future stories-- though as yet no further TITANS animations have appeared from the DC folks.

THE FIRST POWER (1990)

 

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

THE FIRST POWER is a generally dumb blend of action and horror elements, but perhaps because it seems reasonably energetic, I choose to view it as "amiably dumb" rather than "offensively dumb."

Los Angeles detective Logan (Lou Diamond Phillips) relentlessly pursues a serial murderer dubbed "The Pentagram Killer," because he kills victims after carving a Satanic pentagram in each victim's hand. He gets an anonymous informant's call from a female psychic who will direct Logan to the killer's hideout, but only if Logan promises not to seek the death penalty for the criminal.

This setup will be given more explanation later, when we learn that psychic Tess (Tracy Griffith) doesn't want the Satan-worshipper slain because somehow this will give him access to the titular "First Power." What's never explained is the movie's first venture into terminal dumbness, in having Tess asks a police detective to somehow discourage a death penalty, which is generally under the control of district attorneys, judge, and lawyers. Nevertheless Logan humors the psychic, and ends up capturing and convicting the Pentagram Killer, a.k.a. Patrick Channing (Jeff Kober). Channing appears to die in the gas chamber, but undergoes a Satanic resurrection through "the first power," which is supposed to be one of the powers of Jesus Christ. So I guess Channing's post-death abilities are supposed to be a true "imitatio diaboli," in which a minion of the Devil satirizes the righteous associations of the Christian faith. 

Writer-director Robert Resnikoff really didn't need to bother with this bogus mythology; all he needed to do was to say that, as a result of bargaining with Satan, Channing gained the power to have his spirit jump into the bodies of other mortals, sometimes (but not always) if they're low in spirit. Anyway, Channing starts killing again, and psychic Tess comes forward to help Logan deal with this metaphysical menace. Channing's powers while possessing others are not consistent-- sometimes he can make his bodies levitate, and sometimes not-- but they're impressive enough to convert Logan away from his cop-skepticism. Tess gets Logan to contact a nun named Sister Marguerite (Elizabeth Arlen) who has recourse to a weapon that can vanquish this evil spirit. But until Logan gets the weapon, he has to deal with all sorts of possessed bodies coming at him, demonstrating supernatural powers (mostly jumping and tossing people around, stuff easily faked by stunt men). Eventually there's the usual throwdown at the end, and Channing is apparently destroyed, though the film ends with the suggestion of a recrudescence that never eventuated in a sequel.

The stunts are the real stars of this show, and despite some flubs they're generally well handled. Both Logan and Tess are paper-thin characters, but the actors playing them have decent chemistry together, leading to a not unexpected romantic arc. There's barely any horror as such here, though occasionally it's creepy when the possessed victims speak with Kober's gravelly voice. The movie's only power in our world is its ability to kill time in a mostly inoffensive manner.

SHAOLIN INVINCIBLES (1977)

 

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

Within the corpus of kung-fu fans who love their chosen genre at its nuttiest, SHAOLIN INVINCIBLES is best known as "the one where the hot girls fight the gorillas." Being of that elect group myself, I'll happily admit that the "girls vs. gorillas" scenes are indeed the movie's highlight. However, from the standpoint of determining the film's phenomenality, the gorillas, like all the other uncanny elements, play second fiddle to one marvelous lunatic conceit: that the unnamed masters of the gorillas can "give tongue" like nobody's business.

I've used the term "uncanny" for a lot of bizarre body-effects in martial arts films because I felt that the core idea of these effects was that of bending, rather than breaking, the laws of causality. So I've stated that when martial artists "harden" their bodies to be immune to blows, that's "bending" rather than "breaking." I even made the same determination for a warrior who could stretch his limbs a few feet, in MASTER OF THE FLYING GUILLOTINE. But hey, if you can stretch your damn tongue several feet out of your mouth, you're not just a martial artist with some extraordinary body-extension ability-- you're a bloody demon, or the offspring of one. INVINCIBLES never offers one word of explanation for these glossal abnormalities, probably because some FX-guy thought it up and the writers just quick-worked it into the script.

The conflict is straightforward so as to not get in the way of the fights and effects: a tyrannical emperor has a whole family killed for a minor offense. A kindly Shaolin priest saves two girls from that family, Lu Sziu (Chia Ling) and Lu Yu (Lung Chung-erh), and raises them to avenge their families with their kung-fu skills and their swordsmanship. (So, not one of the more peace-minded Shaolin priests.) The sisters separate for a bit and kill a few of the Emperor's minions, which serves to put the villain on his guard so that he can start sending killers after them. Then the girls get back together, and for some unknown reason, one of them starts dressing like a man for a while. On top of that, the obliging Shaolin priest sends two other kung-fu warriors (Carter Wong, Dorian Tan) to help the ladies out. This naturally makes for a very episodic flick, but INVINCIBLES succeeds more than many similar films at capturing the "anything goes" vibe.

Aside from the tongue-trainers and their gorillas-- who not only fight with kung fu but also can resist sword-blades-- other menaces include a castle with traps like poison gas and flamethrowers, a guy who fights with a gourd-on-a-chain (which can also snare a sword-blade), and a fighter in a fright-mask who reveals himself as a traitor to the girls' vengeance-quest. I've graded the mythicity as poor but it's still great fun, and both Chia Ling and Lung Chung-erh look great, though Chia's character gets more attention. (They meet a peasant on the road, and he raves about Lu Sziu while saying nothing about Sister #2.)