MARRIED WITH CHILDREN: "DO YOU THINK I'M SEXY" (1990)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

Like the sixth season MWC episode "If Al Had a Hammer," this fifth season opus is metaphenomenal only in depicting a weird transformation that other characters clearly see, even if no explanation for it is offered.

It's business as usual at the Bundy household, with Al and Peg running each other down constantly. (Peg offers Al the choice between showering or fixing the malfunctioning doorbell; he doesn't immediately do either, though the arc of the story is all about what happens when Al starts caring about his appearance.) A new neighbor, a sexy young thing, comes over and asks for the "loan" of Peg's husband to help move her couch. Peg continues to insult Al as a counterpoint to the young woman's fulsome compliments. But once Al shows the new neighbor some chivalry by helping her out, this snowballs as the local neighbor women start fancying Al. Peg can't believe that the husband she's spent so many years neutering has become attractive to other women. Even Kelly gets enthusiastic about the supposed "new hunk in town" until she finds out it's her own dad.

Al cleans himself up and starts dressing well, and even his nemesis Marcy shows a little interest in his new persona. Kelly has one of her few good insights, claiming that if you think you're sexy, other people will too. Peg is utterly unable to cope, but to her good fortune, Al's own pessimism comes to her rescue. After being offered the chance to become a rich woman's sex-toy, Al has an existential moment in which he realizes that there's no point in his flirting with other women, because "I'm married, with children." Then, despite being clean and well-dressed, Al "devolves" to his slob-self before the eyes of his family, and Peg is thrilled to have her beaten-down hubby back again.

On a sidenote: Peg's torments of Al are once more mirrored by Kelly's tortures of Bud. This time, Bud takes on the job of fixing the doorbell but foolishly trusts Kelly to make sure that the power is off. Kelly not only doesn't seem too broken up by her brother's electrocution, she takes him seriously when he suggests that next time. she should provide a bucket of water for him to stand in. Given Kelly's history, this suggests Bud himself may have a streak of sibling masochism.

LEGION OF IRON (1990)

 

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

At least one imdb review wondered why LEGION OF IRON is not better known among enthusiasts of bad cinema. And therein may lie the film's only real relevance: that even a film that's "so bad it's good" has to have something about it that strikes audiences as a misbegotten response to something they might normally appreciate. PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE may work for viewers because the audience is aware of good alien-invasion films like 1953's THE WAR OF THE WORLDS.

LEGION's concept is as preposterous as anything in an Ed Wood movie, but it doesn't have a chance of coat-tailing on any better films. At the outset, two high-school students-- football star Billy (Kevin T. Walsh) and his girlfriend Allison (Camille Carrigan) -- are abducted and transported to a bizarre underground civilization which combines aspects of ancient Roman arenas with modern ideas of fight clubs. No rationale for the setup of this weird city is offered, nor does reigning queen Diana (Erika Nann) really explain why Billy was selected to be one of the gladiators pressed into service. (Allison is only brought along to use as a means to persuade Billy to obey the rules of the Roman Fight Club). LEGION's three writers don't even bother to come up with a name for the bizarre city.

Billy, though no more than a flat stereotype of a moralistic American kid, only reluctantly participates in the games-- and even then, only because Queen Diana comes up with a potent motivator, allowing one of the recent victors to have his choice of bedpartners. Billy is forced to watch Allison raped by muscleman Rex via closed circuit TV, and after that, the football player lusts to destroy the rapist. 

Diana, a Sadean princess of the first order, clearly hopes to convert the virtuous kid to her evil, but he lacks any training in mortal combat. Enter the hero's trainer, a Black guy named Lyle, who willingly trains Billy while assuring the youth that he too wants to win free of Diana's evil dominion.

Oddly, the writers of this non-epic keep Billy squeaky-clean, but Allison is for a time converted to the dark side. In one scene, Diana threatens to kill both of the newbies unless Allison beats Billy with a club, and she complies, albeit reluctantly. So far, not that bad. But then Diana somehow seduces Allison, presumably with Sapphic persuasions, so that for one scene Allison dresses and acts like a tart. This humiliation to Billy is furthered when he challenges Diana to a swordfight, and she easily trounces him. But she spares him for future corruption-- and a little whipping down the line as well-- not realizing that eventually Billy and his allies will bring the Queen's weird ancient-modern cult crashing down. 

Erika Nann gets the best lines, preaching her nihilistic philosophy of power, but the dialogue is still unmemorable, and she's not able to make the character come alive even to the extent that, say, Tor Johnson makes his dopey policeman perversely interesting. The other actors are at best adequate, which puts them a little above the players in a Ted V. Mikels film, but their characters are no better. I suppose the guy playing Lyle-- who calls himself "Black Superman" at one point-- embarrasses himself the least. Yet his character is gratuitously killed so that Billy and Allison (once more back to being a good girl) to escape their evil fate. The arena fight-scenes, presumably the department of four-time director Yakov Bentsvi, are competent, so in that respect LEGION is a little better than the "action" one sees in a Wood or Mikels film. But the film just doesn't invest enough energy in its own lunacy to deserve the "so bad it's good" tag.

VAMPIRE IN VEGAS (2009)

 

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

I wasn't expecting much of a Jim Wynorski film with a title like VAMPIRE IN VEGAS. Even if he'd been playing the idea of a "Vegas vampire" for laughs, Wynorski is extremely variable in terms of producing even basic B-movie entertainment. For instance, I liked his DEATHSTALKER sequel, but his comedic take on the SWAMP THING sequel was tedious in the extreme. A look of the imdb credits for VEGAS' writer also wasn't encouraging, given that Nicholas Davidoff was mostly a camera guy who wrote just one other feature film, one of the ANACONDA sequels.

Yet VEGAS is not played for laughs, even though it does feature a lot of clumsy humor, mostly centered around various dopey supporting characters (particularly a pair of Vegas cops who seem like comedians trying out failed schticks). But there's the germ of a decent idea set forth in VEGAS' opening moments, when king-vampire Sylvian (Tony Todd) relates his reasons for taking up residence in Nevada's Sin City: because it's a "city that never sleeps." Sylvian is a three-hundred-year-old Black vampire (who presumably took his name from "Transylvania"), and he's been trying for years to find a scientific way to nullify his kind's vulnerability to sunlight, so that they can operate in daylight hours without loss of power. He's already done pretty well for himself in Vegas, managing to mount a campaign to become Nevada's governor despite his only appearing at night. But Sylvian knows that he can't fulfill his reign in the wee hours alone, so he works with an experimental scientist (Delia Sheppard) to concoct a serum that will act like SPF 30.

Now, I'm not going to say that Davidoff's script is any great wonder. He's inconsistent about his vampire lore or the various characters' motivations. However, a lot of B-flicks can barely manage to bring together even two major plot-threads. One of the threads I've mentioned: two Vegas cops are drawn into investigating the immolations of Sylvian's test subjects. The other is a romantic entanglement between two crazy young kids in love, Jason (Edward Spivak) and Rachel (Sonya Joy Sims). Jason and Rachel are due to be married soon, but Jason's buds hijack him for a bachelor party in Vegas. Rachel is encouraged to follow Jason to check on things, and both crazy kids get pulled into a sex club run by Sylvian's minions. In no time, both Jason and Rachel also become test subjects for the scientist's experiments. Sylvian gets his immunity serum, and for good measure tries to turn good-hearted Rachel to the Dark Side. However, Jason's able to drink Sylvian's blood and call upon his inner vampire, resulting in a Battle of Old Blood and Young Blood.

VEGAS is cheaply made, and for many viewers that would doom it, even if any of the humorous bits had been funny. However, Wynorski does keep a certain level of lively action going, particularly thanks to the vampire henchpeople. (Frequent Wynorski player Melissa Braselle gets most of the action scenes.) Tony Todd is unquestionably the best actor in the room, but Spivak and Sims give him decent support, making one forget the guys playing the doofy cops.

CURSE OF THE KOMODO (2004), KOMODO VS. COBRA (2005)

 

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

I've seen lots of utterly forgettable "big-critter" films, but the two KOMODO films by Jim Wynorski are certainly contenders for the bottom of the barrel. It's of note that Wynorski, whose output in all genres is highly erratic, later assembled at least a tolerable big-critter film in 2010's DINOCROC VS. SUPERGATOR, even though he had helmed neither of the monsters' individual features.

CURSE is about as basic as a big-critter film gets. A military project sets a team of scientists to breed giant Komodo dragons on a remote island. Then the monsters break loose and kill a bunch of scientists and soldiers, though a few from both groups manage to hide from the dragons. Then a group of heist artists charter a helicopter to the island, planning to go to ground with their ill-gotten gains. Instead, the crooks and their pilot (nominal hero Tim Abell) are forced to team up with the other survivors to escape the fierce predators, as well as to escape a military cover-up, a plot to bomb the island into nothingness. 

The only touch of originality-- and it might well have been borrowed from some other obscure film-- is that when the dragons' venom infects a human, the human goes Living Dead on his fellows. But the script does nothing interesting with this touch, and so all we have is a bunch of actors running around, a few of whom-- Abell, Gail Harris, George "Buck" Flower-- are familiar B-movie faces.

KOMODO VS. COBRA uses none of the characters from the first film. Presumably all the action takes place on a new island, where idiot scientists fed growth serum to both a Komodo dragon and an ordinary cobra, resulting in two big creatures (though some outsized leeches also appear in one scene). 

This time the combination of actors running around consist of one surviving scientist and a team of environmentalists, seeking to learn the island's mysteries. (As in many of these films, sympathy for the environment doesn't earn the ecologically conscientious any points from predators.) Once again, the military is responsible for both the experiments and the prospect of eradicating the evidence via carpet bombing. I don't believe any of the castaways succumb to a "living dead" syndrome, though in a coda one guy left on the island starts to mutate into a serpent-human.

The actors-- Michael Pare, Michelle Borth, Jay Richardson-- acquit themselves well with their nothing roles. But Wynorski blows the film's only real entertainment potential in that the implicitly promised monster-battle doesn't come until the film's last minutes, and it's so quick and underwhelming that I can't even rate KOMODO VS. COBRA as a combative film. 

HAKAIDER (1995)

 

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

I know nothing about the KIKAIDER mecha-hero franchise that spawned this film, which in Japan sported the Image Comics-sounding title MECHANICAL VIOLATOR HAKAIDER. I watched an "extended director's cut" on streaming, but aside from a handful of arty visual touches, I didn't see much to distinguish this movie from dozens of tokasatsu TV shows.

Hakaider is first seen in a human guise, name of Ryo, when a group of treasure-hunting burglars break into a tomb that actually serves as Hakaider's prison. When the thieves try to kill the bound man, Ryo transforms into the dark, armored being called Hakaider and lurches forth to pursue his destiny-- which happens to lie in a futuristic city called "Jesus Town."

Not until we're halfway through the film does the script bother to explain the protagonist. Gurjev, the tyrant master of Jesus Town, created Hakaider to be his enforcer, but Hakaider rebelled, and Gurjev imprisoned him. Subsequently, Gurjev-- whose name sounds strangely like that of the Armenian mystic Gurdjieff-- created a more pliable armored servant, the all-white Michael, though it's not clear if Michael too can transform into a human being. Aside from Michael, various soldiers who serve the tyrant, and a small group of rebels, hardly any inhabitants of Jesus Town are seen. 

The seesaw fights between Hakaider and the forces of Gurjev offer modest entertainment, making them far less impressive than even a decent Godzilla film. There's a very minor romance-subplot between Ryo and a female freedom fighter, but the main relationship is between the creator Gurjev-- who sports wings sprouting from his back like an angel-- and his two armored servants, one given the name of an obedient angel of the Judeo-Christian god.

There's a minor reference to the concept of free will here, but the writers' overall use of Christian imagery is generally meretricious. Some Japanese productions have succeeded in tapping into the imaginative nature of non-Japanese religious icons without necessarily being attuned to the religions themselves, but HAKAIDER is not one such. On a minor note, some reviews call Hakaider an "antihero," but such are his origins that I think the tried-and-true term "monster" is more applicable.

FORTRESS 2: RE-ENTRY (1999)

 

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

Stuart Gordon didn't return for the second and last entry in the chronicle of John Brennick (Christopher Lambert), but the writers of the original FORTRESS, Troy Neighbors and Steven Feinberg, did. They managed to replay many of the essential motifs of the first film, though with a bit less emotional conviction-- partly because the film sidelines Brennick's connection with his wife and child, partly because almost every other character but Brennick is new.

Ten years have passed since the first film, and for some reason Brennick, his wife and ten-year-old boy haven't gone to ground in Canada, but have hidden in some rural section of the U.S. Members of a resistance movement against the corrupt corporation Men-Tel find their way to Brennick and try to talk him into lending them his military skills. However, Men-Tel overtakes the rebels and kills them. Brennick sends his wife and child down an escape tunnel, which gets them out of the story, while he himself is captured.

Brennick awakes in a new "fortress," this time on a space station, but again there's a quirky warden, Teller (Patrick Malahide). Like the previous prison director, this one has intermittent conversations with the AI computer, but he also nurtures dark plans to dominate the world by turning the station into an attack satellite. As in the first film, Brennick gathers a coterie of helpers who help him fight the power, among them resistance fighter Elena (Liz May Brice), a woman with whom Brennick may have had a fling prior to marriage. She poses a very brief threat to Brennick's familial loyalties, but Teller is the main foe, though he lacks the earlier villain's repertoire of cyborg soldiers and computer-monitors. Indeed, his authority is compromised by the president of Men-Tel (Pam Grier), who arrives at the station to relieve Teller. But for all the effect the Prez has, she might have been written out. Eventually Teller is defeated and Brennick is not only freed but gets to re-unite with his family, giving the grim protagonist a happy ending of sorts.

FORTRESS (1992)

 

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

Though I won't say writer-director Stuart Gordon never made a dull film, he oversaw enough high-energy movies that I've come to expect at the very least a decent thrill-ride.

FORTRESS is a prison movie that happens to be set in the near future of 2017, when the government has become so oppressive as to restrict all couples to bearing just one child. An ex-military married couple, John Brennick (Christopher Lambert) and Karen (Loryn Locklin), lost a previous child, but they want another chance. Thus Karen becomes pregnant a second time, and the two of them attempt to cross into Canada to escape the harsh U.S. law. Both of them are caught and sentenced to long sentences in a maximum security prison "fortress." Like many such future-prisons, they're imagined as being run by private corporations with no government oversight, and the Fortress is managed by an inevitably corrupt company known as Men-Tel. Despite the company's name, its employees, from the guards to Warden  Poe (Kurtwood Smith), control the prisoners not through their minds but through their stomachs. Devices called "intestinators" are implanted in the prisoner's intestinal tracts, and when computerized monitors, under the command of a central computer called "Zed," detect bad behavior, the prisoners experience wrenching stomach pains.

Brennick and Karen are inevitably separated into different sections of the prison, so for most of the film the audience follows Brennick as he, "the new fish," makes friends and enemies among the populace. His fighting skill and fierce morality soon make his a charismatic figure to the other prisoners, thus bringing upon him the wrath of Poe. However, Poe's interest turns from Brennick to his wife, as he invites her to become his "companion." Karen accepts to save Brennick's life. Thn she learns that when her child is born, it will be appropriated by Men-Tel and turned into one of a set of experimental cyborg soldiers. Thus Karen conspires with her husband and his friends to pull off a Great Escape.

The danger to the couple and their baby naturally informs the main conflict, and the revelation that the quirky Poe is himself a company cyborg further stokes the heroes' need to escape. There are a number of solid action-scenes in FORTRESS, though Gordon has done better in his high-octane career. Lambert once more executes his standard heroic persona of a terse, driven man of action.