FENOMENAL AND THE TREASURE OF TUTANKHAMEN (1968)

 

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

I noted in my review of HERCULES PRISONER OF EVIL that Ruggero Deodato, though not cited in that film's credits, claimed to have directed most of the movie, as opposed to official director Antonio Margeritti. The action scenes in that jumped-up Ursus flick weren't very good, but they were better than what Deodato put together for this Euro-super effort. This was his first film as the director proper, albeit under a pseudonym.

Though the titular hero dresses in a all black leotard like Diabolik (though without eye-holes in his mask), Fenomenal (Mauro Parenti) is entirely on the side of the angels. After an adequate scene on a boat, where the crimefighter vanquishes a gang of drug-smugglers, Parenti (or his body double) spends very little time in the black bodysuit, but is usually seen lazing around in his civilian identity, aristocrat Guy Norton. He gets wind of some sort of conspiracy to either steal or duplicate the famed headpiece of King Tut, and I think Gordon Mitchell's character is the ringleader of the plot, but the crooks' aims were very hard to follow. The same was true of the female lead Mike (Lucretia Love), who I think was some sort of adventuress. I don't think the script ever defines her role, but there's a weird scene in which she dresses up in an outfit like Fenomenal's. Guy interrupts her snooping in some room, she judo-flips him, and he belts her. What import the scene was supposed to have, I do not know. And most of the film is like that: stuff happens without context, because Deodato and his scripter-- a one-shot screenwriter, working from an "idea" provided by Deodato-- were lazy bums.

Fenomenal, in addition to being able to see through an eyeless mask, utters a mocking laugh, but he has no personality as such. When out of costume Mauro Parenti performs as ably as a hundred other handsome leading men, but he might have shone better had the script given performers like Love and Mitchell some decent scenes to play against him. Even a fight-scene in a women's steam-room is pretty dull, and FENOMENAL ranks as nothing but a footnote both in the career of Deodato and in the history of Euro-supers.

SANTO VS. BARON BRAKOLA (1965)

 

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

As the lobby card above shows, the actual title of this film is EL BARON BRAKOLA, but since I've seen listings call the film SANTO VS. BARON BRAKOLA, I decided I'd use the more colorful title. And given how utterly ordinary this flick is, I have to get my entertainment where I can.

Sometimes Santo's villains are more interesting than he is, but the Baron's not one of these. He is, as his name suggests, just one of dozens of Lugosi-Dracula ripoffs, but this time some writer thought he'd use a different aristocratic title and a name that sounded like a mispronounced "Dracula." 

Like a lot of lucha villains, Brakola (Fernando Otes) has revived in modern times and is immediately out to avenge centuries-old grudges. The only slightly original thing about this vendetta is that when Brakola was still a lord in Spain of the 17th century, he tried to wed a beautiful young heiress, one Rebecca, but was prevented by both her family and by an ancestor of Santo's, known as the Knight in the Silver Mask. (I see no actor credit for this character, so possibly Santo plays this hero, given that the Knight is also never seen without his mask.) At some point Brakola apparently turns himself into a vampire and successfully turns Rebecca as well. The Knight has some lively fights with the powerful baron, but he escapes with his prize to a hidden tomb and for some reason both go into hibernation for the next few centuries.

The movie technically begins with Brakola reviving in modern times, but Rebecca remains dead bones. The bloodsucker decides he'll go after the modern-day descendant of Rebecca's father, even before finding out that the modern-day guy, Don Luis, just happens to have an attractive daughter, Sylvia. (In contrast to the usual practice, Rebecca and Sylvia are played by separate actresses.) Brakola makes some early forays to capture Sylvia and Santo stops him, though not without more big brawling fights. Them, at one point, Brakola manages to get into Don Luis' house (without being invited in) and he sucks some of Sylvia's blood. Only after his daughter needs an emergency transfusion does Luis suddenly remember that his ancestor left behind a document that might lead a vamp-hunter to Brakola's tomb. Luis can't translate the document but somehow Santo does, tracks the vamp to his tomb, kills the vampire and saves Sylvia.

The fights are the only interesting part of this totally derivative effort, and that's probably because Otes had a good deal of experience playing lucha-heroes, having been the star of the 1961 film wherein Santo made his film debut, though Santo's character was given some other name for that secondary role. I did think it interesting that although Rebecca was initially portrayed as a virtuous young woman, and although she doesn't do anything to encourage Brakola, no one's very concerned about trying to de-vamp her once she's been turned. She's just kind of thrust aside to set up the modern-day peril of Sylvia. 

HAPPY HALLOWEEN, SCOOBY DOO (2020)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

Though a lot of the Scooby Doo DTV movies are mediocre, most of them are mediocre in what I like to call a "comfy couch" way. One doesn't have high expectations for any of them, so they don't have far to fall. Granted, the hardcore Scooby-fan may get more aggravated than I do about a particularly poor outing, like 2019's SCOOBY DOO RETURN TO ZOMBIE ISLAND. But the flicks are almost entirely for kids, and I would tend to assume their makers are wedded to their brand of consistent mediocrity.

And yet, I can't be sure that someone at Hanna-Barbera, or whoever runs that outfit now, didn't give ear to the complaints of fans who didn't like that 2019 offering-- because the very next Scooby to come out was a vast improvement over RETURN. Its increased quality almost certainly stems from being both written and directed by Maxwell Atoms, who's had an impressive range of animation credits ranging from THE GRIM ADVENTURES OF BILLY AND MANDY to TEEN TITANS GO.

Don't get me wrong, it's still another Scooby Doo movie. But though it does pick up a couple of the lame tropes seen in RETURN-- not sure why Fred Jones is suddenly in love with the Mystery Machine-- most of the time HALLOWEEN takes all the jokes that didn't land in RETURN and gives them Frankensteinian new life. For instance, Elvira, who only had a cameo before, is strongly integrated into the plot-action (Daphne wants Elvira to be her "Mentor of the Dark"). I assume Cassandra Peterson didn't contribute to the script, since she has no writing credits, but Atoms really gave her cartoon version much of the same sexy snark as the original.

The story seems to begin in media res, also like RETURN, as the Scooby Gang foils an assault on Crystal Cove by none other than the Scarecrow, migrating from the BATMAN universe by virtue of Warner Brothers owning both that cosmos and the Scooby Doo dimension. However, even after the Scarecrow is defeated and taken off by the cops, he drops some odd hints of a future threat. Sure enough, Crystal Cove is suddenly menaced by a horde of flying pumpkin-creatures and one house-sized pumpkin that walks around on stubby legs. In order to minimize the havoc in the town, the story sends Elvira and the Scoobies (assisted by a computer-interface from Bill Nye the Science Guy) on a Big Wacky Race as they try to speed away from the "jackal lanterns" (as Shaggy dubs them). Brains-of-the-Outfit Velma tried to solve the mystery-- not believing that the pumpkins are just some weird mutation-- while Shaggy and Scooby yell a lot, Daphne switches outfits with Elvira, and Fred obsesses about traps when he's not obsessing about the Mystery Machine.

There are quite a few clever quips spread throughout HALLOWEEN, not least one in which Daphne invokes THE WIZARD OF OZ to mock the Scarecrow. There are also good visual tropes, like the image of Frankenstein Jr appearing as a parade float. But even more the in-jokes, I like the fact that the jackal lanterns are among the creepier monsters to appear in the Scooby franchise overall. A lot of Scooby-tales have dropped the ball about making their monsters genuinely unsettling. Here, the monsters seem like a revolt of the pumpkins so often slaughtered for Halloween, even though even most kid-viewers will intuit that there will be some human agency behind it all. 

I don't know to what extent girl cartoon-watchers have enjoyed Daphne and Velma having a lot of agency in the Scooby-verse-- at least, more agency than female characters have in a lot of cartoons. HALLOWEEN provides some really good moments for both Velma and Daphne without making it seem politically correct, particularly since they're still vulnerable to being funny. 

To wrap up, I consider this a crossover movie purely because of the Scarecrow's participation. In contrast, fictionalized versions of real celebrities, like Elvira and Bill Nye, don't count in my system as crossover-icons.

KRIMINAL (1966), THE MARK OF KRIMINAL (1967)

 

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

In my review of SUPERARGO VS. DIABOLICUS, I mentioned that European costumed characters tended to alternate between selfless simon-pure crusaders and ruthless criminals. The best known of the latter is seen in the well-lauded DANGER DIABOLIK, but when I came across dubbed versions of the two films adapted from the Italian comics series, I decided to give them a look.

DIABOLIK the comic series debuted in 1962, focusing upon a costumed super-burglar, and KRIMINAL the comic series appeared two years later. Not only was Kriminal more arresting visually-- he robbed people while wearing a skeleton costume-- he also tended to kill off his victims just to shut them up, though I've read that a lot of his victims were other criminals. Both serials were oriented toward showing super-crooks who were totally self-interested and whose only virtue that when not in costume they were good-looking guys who attracted lots of pretty women, sort of the "shadow-side" to the cinematic James Bond.

Though the director of the 1966 KRIMINAL was the celebrated Umberto Lenzi, I saw very little of Lenzi's directorial creativity here, any more than one sees in the majority of Eurospy films. KRIMINAL starts off a bit like 1965's FACE OF FU MANCHU, in which the starring fiend is about to be executed. Kriminal (Glenn Saxson) survives his imminent execution because one of the policemen helps him escape so that he'll reveal the location of the stolen crown jewels of England. Kriminal does return the crown jewels, with a little missing. But after that, the film descends into a lot of aimless running around after a shipment of diamonds. When one of Kriminal's potential victims tries to set him up for a fall, the handsome villain coldly murders her in a steam room. Later he tries to blow up the Brit inspector (Andrea Bosic) who's chased him the longest, and he seduces women and lets them be killed. All this chaos might have had some appeal if KRIMINAL wasn't such a slow, talky film. Even some short scenes with Eurobabe Helga Line (playing twins) don't make Lenzi's film very interesting.

THE MARK OF KRIMINAL, directed by Fernando Cerchio, still has some talky sequences, but the plot's more linear. While performing a burglary (in which an old woman dies upon seeing the skeleton-clad intruder), Kriminal (again Saxson) learns of a hidden treasure of valuable art that he may be able to trace if he can piece together a divided map left behind by an art-thief. This time Kriminal has a more formidable pair of adversaries also searching for the treasure, Mara (Helga Line in a different role) and her male partner Robson. Kriminal and Mara have sex a couple of times, but she's quite willing to kill him, and Kriminal responds accordingly. The treasure-trail leads all three to an Arab tomb. Kriminal uses his costume to scare off the two crooks' bearers and forces them to help him recover the prize, after which he tries to blow them up. However, in contrast to the first film, there's at least the appearance of justice winning out. He flees from the resolute inspector and his aides but crashes his car. The inspector seems satisfied that the villain is dead at last, and for a change there are no "Fu Manchu" moments to promise a return.

SUPERARGO VS. DIABOLICUS (1966)

 

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

I may have seen the two "Superargo" films a couple of times each, possibly with the accompaniment of MST3K-style mockeries. However, I took another look at the first film in the series, and I found it a rather pleasant "masked wrestler" film, yet one that doesn't seem as rinky-dink as the average Santo film or as condescending as a spoof like THE INCREDIBLE PARIS INCIDENT. 

Despite the rise of Marvel in the early sixties, the cinema, both live-action and animated, had little to no interest in the idea of "superheroes with problems." When sixties raconteurs did costumed heroes, they tended to emphasize the idea of characters who were impossibly noble and good-hearted, even those seen through the lens of "camp," like the 1966 BATMAN. Certainly Santo, the best known wrestler-hero, is of this stripe, though he remains a total man of mystery with no personal background. The direct obverse of this was the featured costumed criminal, which had enjoyed a vogue in Europe since the rise of Fantomas.

Superargo doesn't have a lot of background either. But he does have, unlike most film-created superheroes, an inciting tragedy in his life that moves him to dedicate his life to fighting evil. Superargo is first seen in the ring wrestling an opponent, for he's not yet a superhero, just a professional wrestler who wears a mask and costume as a gimmick. News pundits remark that Superargo is rumored to possess a level of peak physical development, as if he were another Doc Savage, but one who turned his talents toward entertainment.

But not for long. Superargo accidentally kills his opponent in the ring, and though his girlfriend Lidia tells him it's not his fault, the traumatized performer says he's leaving the wrestling-game. Lidia tells him to seek counsel from a good friend from the military. Providentially, this friend hooks Superargo up with the secret service. The law-dogs happen to need a superhero at the time, for a fiend named Diabolicus (Gerard Tichy) is threatening the world by using alchemical science to transform the world's uranium into gold. The secret service guys put the noob hero through various tests, finding that his advanced training has altered his metabolism, so that he almost instantly heals wounds. His blood pressure doesn't rise even when he's exerting himself, and he can hold his breath for unusual lengths of time. He does have some vulnerability to electricity, though it can only hurt, not kill, him. So the spy-guys send Superargo to go knock on the door of Diabolicus.

There are no more psychological arcs in the rest of the film. Diabolicus is a pretty flat villain, raging with an unfathomable desire to control the world, and keeping his own rocket at his base in case he needs a quick escape. His unnamed mistress (Loredana Nusciak) seems to worship Diabolicus, and she goes out of her way to whip a captive Superargo when the hero proves defiant. A curious trope is that at one point Diabolicus thinks he's destroyed the famous wrestler Superargo, and gets the idea that his captive is some sort of impostor. When Superargo gets free, the villain sends some goons to capture Lidia with the idea of holding her over the hero's head.

Director Nick Nostro, purportedly the writer of the film by some but not all sources, brings a great elan to the battle scenes. Superargo, while not literally super-powered, tears through the villain's henchmen so easily that he puts across the "superman" vibe far better than any live-action super-dudes of that decade. Despite the low budget, Nostro uses a lot of quick cuts and closeups to make the action more appealing. He did not work on the sequel, though, so I may not find that one nearly as key to the superhero fantasy. Time will tell...

SCOOBY DOO: RETURN TO ZOMBIE ISLAND (2019)

 

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

Back in 1998 the DTV film SCOOBY DOO ON ZOMBIE ISLAND made much of the idea that for the first time the Scooby Gang was going to encounter real monsters this time-- not only zombies, but also a mysterious race of cat people-- rather than the usual masked malefactors pretending to be phantoms. I haven't seen the film for a long time, but I remember it as competent enough, given the added fillip that the buddies had graduated to adulthood and had put away childish things-- only to find that the Real Supernatural couldn't be ignored so easily.

Aging the characters was a one-shot gimmick, and since no Scooby fan really wants to see the intrepid teens as boring adults, I don't care that this sequel/reboot had the familiar quartet and their Great Dane back in their teens, but remembering the events of ZOMBIE ISLAND as if it were just a few years previous.

However, I do care that the makers of this entertainment just replaced one gimmick with another, and that the gimmick doesn't even make for a half-decent formula outing. The premise is that Scooby's gang gets invited to an island vacation, but plotters make sure they're really returning to the Island of the Zombies. However, the sequel rushes back to the default of the original series, in which all the occult occurrences of the 1998 film are negated, and humans are once again said to be responsible for the haunted hijinks. Seeing the Scoobies re-interpret their previous adventure is about as engrossing as watching the DC universe suffer through another earth-shattering crisis.

There's one minor psychological subplot of interest. Prior to the vacation easy-going Shaggy gets tired of constantly being thrust into the mystery-solving passions of the other three, so he, with Scooby Doo's support, obliges Fred, Daphne and Velma to pledge that they won't investigate anything during their vacation. It's about the only joke that's a little bit funny, but of course the subplot's over once the group's being attacked by zombies, not to mention feral-seeming cats. The windup explanation is predictably banal, but far worse is that the teens are forced to associate throughout their adventure with a blowhard filmmaker with the unamusing name of Alan Smithee.

There are a few shout-outs to devoted Scooby fans. A prologue shows the meddling kids capturing three phony phantoms-- the Snow Ghost, the Creeper, and the Spooky Space Kook-- who are now rebooted as being members of the same family, so they're no longer even close to the original characters, meaning that there's no crossover potential here. The spoofy horror-film hostess Elvira-- naturally voiced by "herself"-- has two scenes, but her brand of spicy humor is neutered in the name of family entertainment.

THE TWO CRAZY SECRET AGENTS (1965)

 

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

The above title is the one attached to this spy comedy on the Tubi streaming service. I saw it on television long ago under the title in the image above, THE AMAZING DOCTOR G, which was a necessary legal substitute for the Italian title, TWO MAFIA GUYS AGAINST GOLDFINGER. That title was also a fake-out: while for all I know the Italian producers may have actually called their villain Goldfinger, the comedian-stars of the show, Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia, do not play Mafiosi. They're just two goofs with the same first names as the actors, bumbling from place to place like a low-rent Hope and Crosby.

I remember disliking both comedians, though Ciccio as "straight man" is a little easier to take than the endlessly mugging "Jerry Lewis type" Franco. However, the script is actually a half-decent spoof of the Bond film GOLDFINGER, though strangely the only thing missing from the zany fiend "Goldginger" is that he cares more about chess than gold (though he does have a traitorous female gilded anyway). Instead of robbing Fort Knox, Goldginger (Fernando Rey) has come up with technology that transforms people into obedient robots. The evildoer plans to robotize the delegates of the U.N. so as to foment an atomic war which will supposedly be to Goldginger's benefit, somehow. The British secret service gets wind of the plot and sends a virtual clone of James Bond (George Hilton) to investigate. 

Franco and Ciccio are bumbling nobodies who get mistakenly picked up by Goldginger's mute enforcer Molok (an inevitable counterpart to Oddjob)-- though within the first thirty minutes there's some confusing exposition about how Goldginger's henchwoman Marlene (Gloria Paul) hired the guys to take pictures of a delegate for some reason. The goofs are almost killed by "James Bond," who thinks they're Goldginger allies, but "Bond" is slain by one of the robotized pawns. Molok transports the dopes to Goldginger's hideout, where Goldginger and Marlene threaten them with a rotary buzzsaw (a device taken not from the movie but from the laser-less Fleming novel). Then the villain gets the idea that Franco can play chess and spares them for a game. This gives the goofs a respite and they're rescued by British forces.

The Brits don't have any good intentions for the Sicilian saps, planning to use them as decoys for some reason. (Why don't they just raid Goldginger's refuge rather than bothering with Franco and Ciccio at all?) For appearance's sake the secret service puts the clowns through spy school, with courses in weapons use, disguise artistry, and rugby (?) The goofballs manage to bumble their way into Goldginger's sanctum as he seeks to use his mind-control device to initiate war and to foil his scheme with their antics. This section features the movie's only funny joke, when Franco accidentally orders the robotized delegates to start brawling with each other.

AGENTS is surprisingly light on femmes fatales, even though Gloria Paul provides ample pulchritude when she's on screen. (Rosalba Neri has two short scenes as a secretary.) Paul's Marlene isn't exactly another Pussy Galore, though she does have a small crew of uniformed females that are probably dupes of Pussy's "Abro-Cat" lady pilots, and she does desert the path of villainy at the end as Pussy does. On top of the robotizing device there are various scientific gimmicks strewn about, but the "two crazy secret agents" despite their "training" are not fighters, and so the movie is subcombative. It was a surprise to me that this was actually the second of TWO spy-spoofs by the same comedy team.