THE ICE PIRATES (1984)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

Would Stanford Sherman's original script, entitled THE WATER PLANET, have made a good film had it been given its original budget of $20 million? On the plus said, around the same time Sherman's script for the 1983 KRULL yielded at least a better-than-average expensive fantasy-film. On the minus side, if Sherman's original script had the same ending as the finished film, in which the fabled Water Planet turns out to be (gasp) Earth, then maybe that story didn't need to be told AGAIN.

Many others have praised the initiating conflict of ICE PIRATES in the film as we have it, allegedly rewritten by director Stewart Raffill once MGM downgraded the budget to a measly $5 million. In a space-opera cosmos, insidious evildoers called Templars (no, the name means nothing here) have cornered all water supplies in the quadrant, forcing people to pay their exorbitant prices. In reaction, a raffish band of ice pirates begins hijacking water-shipments for resale, presumably at a comparative bargain. The leader is Jason (Robert Urich), and he's most often accompanied by his sidekick Roscoe (Michael D. Roberts). All the others get less dialogue and screen time, including such luminaries as Anjelica Huston, Ron Perlman, and John Matuszak.

The water-stealing idea is largely dropped right away, though, which suggests to me that Raffill had zero interest in it. I suspect that the film's only strong myth-kernel came from Sherman, though. When Jason and his hardies raid a Templar ship, Jason spies a sleeping beauty, none other than Princess Karina (Mary Crosby), and decides that he wants her too. Waking, Karina doesn't immediately like being kidnapped, but subsequent events suggest that her brief time in Jason's manly arms leaves some favorable impression. Though the evil Templars capture Jason and Roscoe and sentence them to become castrated slaves, Karina intervenes to save their junk from the scrap heap.

But though she and Jason clearly have a thing for one another already, Karina ostensibly wants the Ice Pirates' help to find her lost father, who alone can guide a rebel faction to the Water Planet, so as to break the Templars' power. However, once Raffill gets all these pieces in place, he promptly upends the board to pursue every goofy space-joke he can think of. He even has a badguy character reveal that the father's already dead. Way to kill suspense, Raffill!

Somewhere Raffill claimed that he never saw STAR WARS, but a long and laborious cantina-scene belies this assertion. Some jokes work, some don't, but it helps that Urich and Crosby have good chemistry, since the only remaining plotline is the flirty romance of Jason and Karina. There's so little sustained fighting in the film that it's barely a combative comedy: Jason only has one desultory sword-fight atop a moving vehicle. In fact, the character played by Huston outdoes him, getting two sword-battles, one of which involves beheading a rowdy and forcing his friend to apologize. The lack of battle shows a weakness that might have been in the original script, for there's no strong villain involved, just a brief scene of John Carradine in an extended cameo. The whole megilla concludes with a labored trip through a time-warp, in which the characters age rapidly, until they exit the warp and return to normal, And then, of course-- "a planet called Earth!"

I liked a fair number of the jokes, but I can't guarantee anyone else would. PIRATES does seem to have generated a minor cult following, though.

THE MASK OF ZORRO (1998)

 

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

I only have one problem with MASK OF ZORRO: a statement on a DVD extra to the effect that this is the "definitive" Zorro movie. MASK, adroitly directed by Martin Campbell right after his success on GOLDENEYE, may well be one of the five best Zorro films ever made, though that's not exactly an elite class, given the paucity of really good efforts. But there's no way that the definitive Zorro could be about anything but the original career of Don Diego de la Vega.

One can certainly claim that MASK is the best rebranding, though. For some reason, even though some franchise characters keep the exact same identities no matter how much time passes-- I'm thinking here of The Phantom, who had a rationale by which New Coke versions of the hero could have continually replaced the old versions-- there actually have been a fair number of derivative Zorros, starting out with 1925's DON Q SON OF ZORRO and proceeding on through late entries like 1949's GHOST OF ZORRO.

So in 1821, Don Diego (Anthony Hopkins) attempts to retire from his costumed role, having so embarrassed the regime of Don Rafael (Stuart Wilson) that the latter has been recalled to Spain, at the same time that Spain has ceded California to Mexico. Rafael though manages to expose Diego as Zorro, and as a result of his actions, Diego is consigned to prison, his wife is accidentally slain, and his daughter Elena is kidnapped by Rafael, who for sheer spite raises the child to think she's Rafeal's offspring.

Twenty years later, Diego gets free but deems himself too old to seek vengeance. He encounters Alejandro Murrieta (Antonio Banderas), a bandit whose brother Joaquin was callously slain by Captain Love (Matt Letscher), who later becomes bonded to Don Rafael when the latter returns to California. Diego decides to mold the young, vengeance-motivated into a New Zorro. Yet Diego wants more than just revenge. He wants to find out Rafael's endgame, the reason he's returned to California to court the local dons. Further, the former governor brings with him the grown Elena (Catherine Zeta Jones), and naturally Diego hopes to acquaint his daughter with her true parentage.

New Zorro makes his first appearance, throwing throw the fear of The Fox into Rafael by outfighting twenty soldiers in a bravura action-scene. But Diego can only learn Rafael's plans by infiltrating the aristocratic world of the California dons, and so Former Zorro uses his knowledge of Spanish aristocracy to create a false persona for Alejandro, so that he can better spy on the main villain. This Alejandro accomplishes, though the main reason for the double identity is so that Elena can feel ambivalence toward both handsome but effete Alejandro and the dashing mystery-man Zorro. 

Elena is, to be sure, a Zorro-girlfriend for a post-feminist era. Instead of just mooning over both men, she catches Zorro stealing Rafael's secret plans and attempts to defend her "father" by swordfighting the masked bandit. Since she gives a good account of herself, there's no shame in Zorro's light-hearted victory, not least because the viewer knows they're made for each other. Oh, and yes, she eventually finds out her true parentage.

The secret plan, by the way, is pretty clever for an adventure-film designed as a summer blockbuster, and since it involves the rich exploiting the poor, it provides a fine sociological myth for New Zorro. Whereas the original prose hero was a young Spanish grandee seeking to bring other, more sinful aristocrats into line, Alejandro is a lower-class guy seeking to "fight the power." But by the time the movie's over, he's absorbed all the refined qualities of Diego, making him as close to the original as a rebranding can get.

Incidentally, I didn't initially know why the writers gave the hero's dead brother the same name as the legendary, maybe-not-purely-historical bandit Joaquin Murrieta. I subsequently learned that some pundits believe that the dime novel relating Murrieta's criminal career might have influenced Johnson McCulley's original pulp tale. This sounds like unsupported speculation to me, but I suppose the story lends an extra level to the mythology of the pre-eminent masked swashbuckler.

UNDISCOVERED TOMB (2002)

 

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

My first statement is that by its title alone, UNDISCOVERED TOMB-- which I viewed only in an English dub-- suggests that the movie spun out of nothing but an attempt to imitate the franchise LARA CROFT TOMB RAIDER. Since I've never played video games, my next statement could be out of line-- but I think TOMB may be the first movie to be based on a video game that's less complex than the average video game.

My impression is that even fighting-games have to weave a few threads of story together for the gamer to play off of. I guess TOMB does give a little setup with its non-fighting characters, archaeologist Ivy (Yoko Shimada) and philanthropist Michael (Ken Wong), who seek out hidden treasures to protect them from a greedy paramilitary group, the Wild Wolves.

However, the English dub gives us the main star (Marsha Yuen) and her comic sidekick (Miyuki Koinuma)-- saddled with the careless English names "Georgia" and "Mandy"-- and no one ever knows just what their motives are for trekking around, treasure-hunting. It isn't even established that they're looking for a Chinese tomb fitted with terracotta warriors, though that's the discovery they kinda-sorta stumble onto.

TOMB is also a film where nearly every name character knows kung fu, including the two girls' guide and a suspicious fellow who joins their party. Is he an ally of the Wild Wolves? Apparently, but though Georgia (the serious one) uncovers his duplicity, there's never a confrontation moment; just another set of fights. When Georgia and Mandy (the funny one) aren't battling gun-toting Wild Wolves, they're fighting sacrifice-minded natives, some of whom dress up in bush-camouflage. And for a finale, a near invulnerable terracotta warrior comes to life and fights everyone in sight, until Georgia comes up with a means to defeat the stone sentinel.

TOMB has nothing to recommend it but the fights, but not only are they plentiful, they're also well choreographed, and Marsha Yuen puts a lot of charisma into a nothing character. I'll have to keep a look out for a Yuen role in which she gets a role worthy of her non-fighting talents.

WITCH HUNT (1994)

 

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

Somewhere amidst some forgotten article in CINEFANTASTIQUE, someone associated with WITCH HUNT may have testified as to why this sequel to 1991's CAST A \DEADLY SPELL went so sour. 

It's not just that HUNT revises various details about the magic-using Los Angeles of this alternate Earth. Despite being written by the first film's sole credited author, one Joseph Dougherty, HUNT offers a confused storyline, bad dialogue, a listless performance from Dennis Hopper (replacing Fred Ward in the role of detective Howard Lovecraft), and extremely pedestrian visuals from big-time director Paul Schrader.

Absent any such testimony, though, I have my theory. Schrader, known for penning downbeat dramas like HARDCORE and TAXI DRIVER, took on HUNT just to fill a hole in his work schedule, and insisted that Doughtery rework the SPELL universe to Schrader's tastes.

One good thing about the badness of this HBO flick is that it means I don't have to spend any time on its inelegant plot. It boils down to this: Hollywood actress Kim Hudson (Penelope Ann Miller) hires Lovecraft to dig up dirt on her husband, studio exec Gotleib, because Kim suspects he's going to dump her for a younger actress, both personally and professionally. Lovecraft bums around, gets threatened by a weird magus (Julian Sands, projecting good creepiness), and ultimately uncovers a prostitution ring that uses magical spells to alter hookers to their clients' specifications. However, Gotlieb is killed, bringing in the question of a murder-plot.

And on top of this mediocrity, the script telegraphs its intent to work in a secondary plot about McCarthyism. The magic-Earth gets no more exposition here than it did in the previous film. However, this time such backstory is necessary, to establish just how long ago Earth-denizens begin regularly using spells. Without such context, there's no sense in positing that a newly formed conservative movement (loosely linked to fundamentalism) has arisen to condemn modern witchcraft as a tool of The Devil. This is the cumbersome double meaning of the title, but Dougherty (and possibly Schrader looking over his shoulder) can't sustain the metaphor. The villain behind all the evil stuff is played by Eric Bogosian, but he can't do anything with his inconsistent character, and so ends up simply resorting to braggadocio, just as Hopper confines himself to just saying the lines and moving on. (HUNT shows why Hopper was much better playing villains and societal outsiders than noble heroes.) Penelope Ann Miller gives the most affecting performance as a beauty queen alienated by Hollywood corruption, but her arc is badly defined and hugely compromised by the McCarthyism nonsense. There are one or two decent magical effects, but these probably came about in spite of Schrader's efforts to make this movie as tedious as possible.

THE NEW ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN, SEASON ONE (1966)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological*

Without Filmation's early success at producing Superman's first animated teleseries, we might never have had all those later great Filmation shows, like-- uh-- don't help me--

I joke, for even though the first season of SUPERMAN is largely pedestrian, it did give rise to better shows like AQUAMAN and  THE ADVENTURES OF BATMAN, as well as some later above-average efforts like TARZAN and BRAVESTARR. The DVD I'm reviewing includes all 36 episodes of the first season, all of which are about seven minutes long. The DVD does not include the SUPERBOY episodes, each of which was originally sandwiched between two SUPERMAN stories. 

The absence of the SUPERBOY tales is no great loss, for they lack the principal asset of the SUPERMANs-- that of adapting a handful of familiar figures from the DC Super-mythos. The radio show had utilized kryptonite and had guest-starred Batman and Robin, and the second Super-serial included Luthor as its main villain. But ADVENTURES was the first non-comics appearance for such four color creations as Mxyzptlk, Brainiac, Titano, Toyman, Prankster, and the Parasite-- though many of these, particularly Brainiac, were retooled for the simplistic cartoon format. Unfortunately a lot of the Filmation tales feature aliens and/or rampaging monsters, and as in the later AQUAMAN, Filmation coudn't design a good E.T. to save its corporate life. 

Indeed, both the scripts and the animation are extremely rocky, though all the episodes feature good voice-work, particularly by Bud Collyer, reprising his Superman/Clark Kent vocals from the radio program. Though the scripts are kept simple, they at least have the same feel as many comic-book scripts, not least because some contributors, such as Arnold Drake and editor Mort Weisinger, came from the comics. 

The comics of the time had given the Man of Steel a few other vulnerabilities other than the default of kryptonite, but things like red-sun radiation and magical spells are never invoked in the cartoon. Indeed, the scripts featuring an original super-villain, the mystic Warlock, claim that the evildoer's magic CAN'T harm the hero. But he can at least be rocked about a bit for a few super-powered monsters, like "The Force Phantom." Only one episode really overcomes its limitations: "The Pernicious Parasite," which adapts the first Parasite story from the comics. Writer Oscar Bensol put a new spin on the comics-original by renaming the villain "Icy Harris," which as I've argued elsewhere, is a pun on the Greek myth-name Icarus. I particularly like this one because Superman, who usually spares his enemies, practices good self-defense by letting Harris steal so much strength that the villain blows himself up.

Other tidbits: Bensol also penned "The Malevolent Mummy," in which an Egyptian sorcerer rises from the dead and creates havoc by inverting the Pyramid of Khufu and making it spin around like a top. This mummy, BTW, travels from place to place in a sandstorm, over thirty years before the 1999 MUMMY associated its mummy-magus with such elemental powers. Lastly, the story "The Men from APE"-- clearly a joke at 1964's THE MAN FROM UNCLE-- teams up Luthor, Toyman, Prankster and Warlock. This comes close to being the first super-villain teamup in American animated cartoons. However, SUPERMAN gets beaten out in that category by another famed strongman, given that ACP's 1963 MIGHTY HERCULES program sometimes had its small coterie of villains gang up to defeat their Olympian foeman.

SMALLVILLE 2:9: "DICHOTIC" (2002)

 

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

The villain this time, Ian Ranall (Jonathan Taylor Thomas), is so badly constructed that he could stand as an example for all the poorly thought out Clark-antagonists. His sole significance in the SMALLVILLE opus is that he's a mild parody of Clark Kent's tendency to keep not one but two beautiful babes on the string.

Of course, Clark avoids committing to either Lana or Chloe (who became room-mates in this season) because of his insecurities about his Big Secret. Ian is the poster child for high-schoolers desperate to get on the right college track (particularly to gain a "Luthor scholarship"), and he's been around long enough that he's built up a rep for academic excellence. However, when a shop teacher gives Ian a mediocre grade that might hurt the student's average, it's murder time. The script doesn't even bother to explicate how Ian gained the super-ability to spawn an identical duplicate from his spine, but this power enables him to commit homicide and have an alibi for his "other self." (Incidentally, "dichotic" is a real word, but it doesn't apply to Ian's nature in any way, and may have been selected only because it sounded like "psychotic"-- which Ian certainly is.)

Having killed the teacher for dubious reasons, Ian suddenly decides to up his rep even more by dating both Chloe and Lana without each other's knowledge of his double-dealing. This too is tied into his desire to get a big scholarship so he can blow the "hick town" of Smallville, in contrast to Clark, who at this point doesn't even contemplate deserting his home town. With the usual help from Pete Ross, Clark finds out about both the murder and Ian's courting of both the women in Clark's unofficial harem. Chloe provides Ian with an alibi for his double's activity, but when the two ladies have the chance to compare notes, Ian decides they've both outlived their usefulness. Clark manages to save both girls without exposing his secret, but the script is oddly reticent about what happens to Ian after his double apparently dies. A Season 3 episode clarifies that he was taken to Belle Reve, where he has one more shot at revenge on Clark before biting the big one. There's a denouement in which Clark and "his girls" complain about who kept secrets from whom, but it's rather unrewarding.

More intriguing are the Lex subplots. First, he gets irate with a petty meter-maid and smashes the headlights of the guy's car, emphasizing the anger issues beneath his benevolent attitude. Second, he encounters new character Doctor Helen Bryce (Emmanuelle Vaugier). At least she's new to the audience, for Lex learns that he met her once before when he was "drying out" in a hospital. Helen is framed as a new romantic interest for Lex, who shares some of his conflicts with a stifling parent, and who like Lex came to a small town to get away from the big-city bustle. She goes on to appear in eight other episodes and certainly proves to be of more consequence than Ian Randall.

CAST A DEADLY SPELL (1991)

 

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

CAST A DEADLY SPELL was one of two HBO original films. Both this one and the subsequent WITCH HUNT were written by Joseph Dougherty, though only SPELL was directed by Martin Campbell, just a few years away from his graduating to the big time with 1995's GOLDENEYE. 

Both movies take place in Los Angeles circa 1948-1950, but on an Earth where magic works, and is practiced openly. Thus the gangsters of L.A. are as likely to put a hit on their targets with curse-ruins as with tommy-guns, and many professionals on the police force learn to use magic defensively against such criminals. A noted exception is ex-cop P.I. Howard Phillips Lovecraft (Fred Ward). Though Lovecraft barely manages a living, operating out of a run-down office where his landlord constantly nags him for the rent, he's repeatedly asked why he won't practice magic, even in self-defense. His longest response on the subject is that he wants to be his own man, beholden to no gods or spirits. Clearly Lovecraft is meant to be the epitome of the lonely crusader who won't sell out to corrupt forces in the police force or the upper classes, though the script isn't really interested in making any serious critique of magic or even paganism. (A modern character remarks on her knowledge of the current worship of Diana.) The entire concept of SPELL is meant to be as playful, as seen by the in-jokey usage of the name of horror-author H.P. Lovecraft for the heroic protagonist.

Ironically, one of the main distinctions of Original Lovecraft's work was that he broke from the use of magical-themed menaces for his terror-tales, focusing for the most part on quasi-scientific concepts. He did borrow popular tropes from "magical horror," but the connotation was that human beings were using these tropes to contact extra-dimensional entities through some form of psychic operation. Doughtery's concept is closer to the model of the "rational magic" subgenre of horror-fantasy, often seen in the forties pulp magazine UNKNOWN, which generated such classics as Fritz Leiber's CONJURE WIFE and Robert Heinlein's MAGIC, INC. Thus the only truly Lovecraftian motif of SPELL is the villains' plans to unleash the demon-god Yog-Sothoth upon helpless humanity.

Detective Lovecraft is hired to find a missing grimoire, which his employer needs for a special ritual. The fine details of the "mystery" are not memorable, but the cast does a good job of polishing up all of the hoary hard-boiled tropes, with David Warner and Clancy Brown as two of the villains, Julianne Moore as a shady lady with whom Lovecraft has a checkered past, and Alexandra Powers as a "virgin sacrifice"-- a trope Original Lovecraft would never have touched with a pole the length of infinity.

The adventure verges on comedy, but there's enough straightforward menace (as when a hulking zombie drowns a man in a pool) that keeps things from being too jovial. Ward is the movie's main strength, maintaining the insouciant appeal of the noble P.I, who can never do things the easy way. He too did not return for the second and last film, but SPELL stands as one of the actor's best performances.