MANTIS FIST AND TIGER CLAWS OF SHAOLIN (1977)

 

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

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

I think I've found my new favorite "crazy-fu" film in this one.

First things first: though there are several characters who utilize kung fu-- the hero, the villains, and all the villains' minions-- there's no mention of anything to do with the Shaolin Temple. There's also no great focus on animal-styles of fighting. "Tiger claw" techniques are verbally referenced once during a battle, and there's no mention of "mantis fist." The film does begin with an odd little lecture in which a narrator talks about the carnivorous nature of the real bugs while two cartoon mantises copulate, and then the female bites off the male's head. Even more oddly, this ends up being relevant to what initially looks like just another quarrel between a noble hero and some rapacious (emphasis on the "rape") villains.

Pai (John Cheung) stops in a tavern for a drink. He sees waitress Shuang (Sarina Sai) getting harassed by the son of a powerful local family, the Hungs, who has a small gang of minions. Pai's superior skills drive off the Hung faction, but as Pai leaves, he mentions to the grateful Shuang that his next destination is the local "orchid house." Later Shuang learns that Pai's motives there are noble as well. At some point in the past, Pai's sister Yu was abducted and sold to a whorehouse (possibly by the Hung family), and Pai has gathered enough money to buy her contract and liberate Yu. 

However, things go from bad to worse for Shuang. Despite a local's warning that women often get abducted in these parts, she wanders into the forest, and the guys from the tavern assault her. They leave her behind afterward, but before they get home they're attacked by some unseen entity who hurls bamboo shoots at them, either impaling or killing them in other ways. In jig time, the Hung Patriarch (Dean Shek) learns of his son's death and decides that he must have been killed by this interloper Pai. Pai's efforts to free his sister are complicated when he's attacked by Hung and his other two sons at the whorehouse. One of the sons has a highly original weapon: a false hump on his back that can sprout metal spikes like a cartoon porcupine. 

Pai suffers some damage from the massed attack and takes refuge at Shuang's tavern. Once Shuang learns of Pai's true purpose, she masquerades as a male customer and spirits Yu away from the house of ill repute. The three of them leave town, but another of the Hung boys, along with some henchmen, attack the good guys in the forest. Yu is killed, and though Pai escapes, Hung-son #2 has Shuang taken to his place of residence, where he does unto her just as his dead brother did. Then he apparently leaves Shuang confined to a room, ventures into the forest with the minions, and most of them get killed by nooses that whip out of the trees.

This misfortune does nothing to deter Hung-son #3-- the one with the spiky hunchback-- from raping Shuang too. (This includes a really weird scene where he rotates on his spike-hump while having intercourse with Shuang.) However, the last son meets his fate at home, killed by an assailant seen only as two huge mantis-arms. 

None of these events keep the elder Hung from obsessively tracking down Pai. The two have a good long battle, which Hung loses. Pai recovers Shuang and marries her. However, a friend of Pai's belatedly learns of a skeleton in the Shuang family's closet. It seems that her mother was impregnated by a mantis (it's not even specified to be a mantis-god or anything), and as a result Shuang is half-mantis. When Pai attempts to celebrate his nuptials, Shuang turns into a mantis-monster, in this case a normal-sized woman with claws and an insect-head. Shuang is killed and spared from any further rampages, though Pai's not exactly a happy camper either.

Hong Kong kung fu films are not exactly anyone's first choice for examining sexual politics. Still, the writer-directors of MANTIS seem to be unusually preoccupied with the disposition of women due to the physical power differential. Women can be raped, abducted and sold to brothels, or even impregnated by mantises, and there's not a lot they can do about it. Pai brings about some retribution by fighting the Hungs. Still, his main concern is his sister, so he might not have ended up battling the Elder Hung had it not been for Shuang taking vengeance upon her rapists. She has to become a monster to accomplish this, though apparently her transformations are unconscious. There's no indication that she remembers her experiences as a mantis-creature, though the writers cheat a little, having her kill off some of her attackers with the use of unusual weapons. 

Shuang and Yu perish, though Pai doesn't exactly end up in a good place either. But I can't claim that the two creators-- most of whose works I've not seen-- intended to make any statement beyond grabbing the public with an arresting story.

BOUDICA: QUEEN OF WAR (2023)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological,sociological*

Given that Olga Kurylenko had garnered some fame for playing action-roles in films like MAX PAYNE and QUANTUM OF SOLACE, I'm surprised she didn't prove a good fit for this role. Here she essays the part of Boudica, a Celtic warrior queen of the first century CE, who battled the forces of the occupying Romans.

True, many of the failings of BOUDICA stem from its pedestrian, unimaginative script and its low budget (just a little over $53K USD). In this very fictionalized account of the historical personage, Boudica is the wife of a local king of the Iceni tribe, and the king's priority is to placate the Roman forces by being helpful and agreeable. Despite having had "barbarian" ancestors, Boudica is the very picture of a contented first-century housewife, entirely preoccupied with her two daughters and her husband. She has no interest in politics, though she experiences a weird moment when the barbarians of a neighboring tribe genuflect before her, acting as if Boudica is some sort of exalted presence.

But a villainous Roman counsel finds an excuse to murder Boudica's husband, while Roman laws, instituted by Emperor Nero, forbid women from holding queenship. (Yes, of course the worst thing about Roman rule was their marginalization of women.) Boudica's children are slain and she's whipped prior to being sold as a slave. However, some of those worshipful barbarians rescue her from her captors, and in no time Boudica finds herself elevated to the position of rebel queen. In addition, she imagines that her daughters are still alive, giving her advice-- though to her fellow Celts, this is merely another indicator of Boudica's special destiny. 

Another failing is that, aside from the villainous Roman, there are no interesting supporting characters. There's a chieftain who pushes back a little against being led by a woman, and he defies her by breaking her bronze sword and casting it into a lake. But he bows his head after Boudica fishes the blade out, and suddenly it's not only whole, it's as strong as any iron sword. A couple of times it even leaps to her hand when called. There's a brief mention that the blade was forged by druids, but aside from providing the film's only metaphenomenal content, the sword doesn't affect Boudica's anti-Roman campaign. She does get to exterminate the rotter who killed her husband, but eventually the Romans bring her and her rebellion down, though not quite the way history records the event. Frankly, this roadshow BRAVEHEART is a downer all the way.

But the biggest problem is Kurylenko. After portraying Boudica for almost half an hour as a mild-mannered housewife, the actress wasn't able to transition to Boudica, Warrior Queen. The battle-scenes are all right for the budget involved, but Kurylenko proves bland at best, unable to handle any of the more turbulent emotional states. The only praise I can muster is that the actress kept herself in good enough condition that I wasn't conscious of her being in her middle forties.

THE HUNTSMAN: WINTER'S WAR (2016)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

I remember being less impressed with this film-- henceforth abbreviated to WINTER'S-- than with its 2012 predecessor. However, when I got hold of a DVD that offered an extended version, I elected to view that, though as of this writing I don't know what scenes were added. 

The biggest hump one has to get over, to enjoy WINTER'S, is to accept that the villainess of the first film, Queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron), had a sister not mentioned in the 2012 movie. This sibling, Queen Freyja (Emily Blunt), had an experience that hardened her heart as much or more than had transpired with Ravenna. As a result, Freyja moved to a northern wasteland and became the Ice Queen. Her main act of tyranny was to abduct children and train them to be her peerless warriors, who were expected to renounce love, as Freyja had.

Clearly, though the title "Ice Queen" is not used often, the writers-- not the same as those on HUNTSMAN-- were patterning Freyja on Hans Christian Anderson's "Snow Queen." In that story, the titular royal abducted a male child and alienated him from his female playmate, but the female child remained true and managed to overcome the Snow Queen's ensorcelment. But in WINTER'S, two of Freyja's abductees, despite becoming her knights, break the princess's rule and join in the act of love. One of them is the female warrior Sara (Jessica Chastain), while the other is Eric the Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth). The first half-hour of WINTER'S comprises something of an origin-story for Eric, and then he's separated from Sara, thinking her dead due to the Queen's deceptive magic. This section also stands as a prequel to the action of HUNTSMAN, while the rest takes place after Ravenna is slain in the 2012 film.

Seven years after Eric escapes Freyja, and some time after he helped Snow White defeat Ravenna, he's living in the forest a la Robin Hood. He's summoned by knights serving Snow (who has no new footage in this film). The queen, fearing the influence of Ravenna's magic mirror, had a detachment of knights transport it to another cynosure. However, persons unknown-- possibly allied to Freyja-- slaughtered the knights and absconded with the mirror. Eric reluctantly accepts the task of finding the mirror to keep its power out of Freyja's hands. He gains the "help" of two comic-relief male dwarves, one of whom appeared in the 2012 film, and during the trek two other dwarves, this time females, also join the coterie.

The most important addition to the group, though, is Sara. Not only is she not dead, she was deceived by Freyja into believing Eric deserted her-- and she's not shy about expressing her extreme revulsion toward her common-law husband. These scenes do a lot to build up the character of Eric, whom I described as "the most thinly-drawn" of 2012's three major characters, with Hemsworth and Chastain putting across good chemistry in their interactions. The group soon learns that a gang of goblins stole the magic mirror. But after Eric's band trounces the goblins-- who, for once, are given a non-traditional design-- Freyja and her forces appear to seize the object of desire. It seems one among the merry band is a traitor-- one guess as to who. However, Eric survives an apparent execution, and he and the dwarves follow Freyja to her snowy lair. There he, Sara and the dwarves are able to usurp Freyja's control over her abducted knights.

WINTER'S clearly followed the template of HUNTSMAN, with two young heroes overcoming a tyrannical female ruler. That part of the film works by making its "Snow Queen" an embittered woman who has turned her back on love. One element that doesn't work quite as well comes about as a consequence of Freyja gaining the mirror: the Ice Queen chants the familiar "mirror mirror" refrain, and as a result Ravenna comes back to life, and starts taking control. This has the unfortunate effect of diluting Freyja's arc, even though the recrudescence of Ravenna is meant to reveal Ravenna's role in bringing about Freyja's trauma. I assume that the writers didn't think that Blunt's Freyja would prove as "hiss-worthy" as Theron's Ravenna. But I still think that it would have been better for Eric and Sara, who symbolized "deferred children" to Freyja, to have broken through the cold reserves of the Ice Queen. 

Nevertheless, this is better than average magical fantasy, and it's possible that the theatrical version skimped on some of the character-scenes that built up the relations of Eric, Sara and Freyja. Indeed, the Eric-Sara romance is improved by the funny male-female interactions of the four dwarves: a rare instance of comedy relief-characters contributing to the main plot. Emily Blunt is particularly memorable as the frosty tyrant, and even though I didn't want Ravenna to be a literal presence in the movie, the use of the mirror to reveal the truth that Freyja's hidden from herself provides a good blend of motifs from "Snow Queen" and "Snow White." Curiously, the last words of WINTER'S, spoken by an occasionally-heard narrator, asserts that even fairy tales never really end, despite the "happily ever after" assertion. But WINTER'S underperformed at the box office, so as of this writing this particular tale has had no further follow-ups.

SERIAL MOM (1993)

 

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

It's rare that I don't mention the function of "the psychological" to a movie with a "perilous psycho" in the story. But this is because SERIAL MOM has no real psychological content. The character of serial killer Beverly Suthpen (Kathleen Turner) is just an excuse for writer-director John Waters to take aim at what he deems the foibles of American society. And this is an entirely legitimate target for a satire. But as much now as when I saw the film in 1993, Waters blows any chance for genuine critique for a collection of smarmy knee-jerk "gotcha" routines.

For MOM to have worked, Waters would have had to figured out a way to render an absurdist vision of American middle-class life, and to make every word, every phrase, sound like something that makes sense within that absurd world. But Waters' tone is never consistent. For the first half-hour of MOM, we're introduced to the family of the Suthpens (possibly named for one of William Faulkner's creations). There's dentist-father Eugene (Sam Waterson), teenaged kids Chip and Misty (Matthew Lillard, Ricki Lake), all of whom start out speaking entirely naturalistic dialogue for a middle-class suburban family. Only Beverly says quirky things that indicate her status as a burgeoning psychotic. But by the end of this phony-baloney psycho-flick, the kids are practically cheering for the phenomenon of "Serial Mom," as she becomes a celebrity for having killed six people, while the husband is perpetually befogged.

I won't explicate the plot, which is irredeemably sloppy, consisting of Beverly continually picking off various people who offend either her or someone in her family, until the climax. At that point, she's prosecuted for her crimes and gets off, though with a very slight reversal in the final moments. Again, though the suburban society has seemed naturalistic in many scenes, the court-scenes shift to wack-a-doodle, as everyone in the suburbs gets obsessed with the celebrity of their knowing a serial killer.

There have been any number of psycho-films in which a man or woman becomes obsessed with enacting some rigid societal role, as per the STEPFATHER films. But there's no consistency in the persona of Beverly Suthpen. Though she's obsessed with punctilious observation of social niceties, like insisting that Chip's friend Scotty always wear his seat-belt, she secretly admires and even corresponds with serial killers. She hasn't killed or even injured anyone at the film's start, but her "gateway" is the incongruous habit of crank-calling a neighbor. Somehow this spirals into Beverly committing aimless murders. At least one killing, bludgeoning a victim with a leg of lamb, is almost surely a homage to a famous ALFRED HITCHCOCK TV episode. I suppose Waters had some notion that all this carnage revealed the Hyde beneath society's Jekyll-disguise, but his treatment of this trope is entirely meretricious. Even when Beverly sets Scotty on fire, he doesn't take his own impending death seriously, swearing he'll wear his seat-belt if she spares him. Turner's performance is all over the place, but I think she could have rendered a good psycho if she'd been given a decent script.

I've liked a lot of Waters' films, both from his edgy period and his more commercial work. But MOM is better signified by another three letters: DOG. It failed at the box office, and some attempts have been made to style it as a "cult classic." My response: check out Waters' CRY BABY, his homage to fifties' juvenile delinquent flicks, if you want to see pop-cultural irony done right.

STIGMA (1980)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Prior to watching STIGMA, I didn't have that much investment in the films of Jose Ramon Larraz, despite his current "cult" status. Of his 26 cinematic efforts, I had seen five, and the only one that stuck in my memory was his most famous work, 1974's VAMPYRES, which certainly garnered its popularity from its ample display of equally ample feminine charms. From some very slight biographical references, it sounds like he was a man frustrated with having got stuck doing lots of sexy-horror films, both in England and his native Spain. As STIGMA appeared about six years after his relative success with VAMPYRES, possibly this 1980 film, which Larraz both wrote and directed, was an attempt to upgrade his image with something more in the Hitchcock-Argento vein.

The main character is Sebastian (he, like everyone else in the movie, has no last name), and the "stigma" he bears relates, in part, to his possession of psychic powers, like a number of other horror-film menaces of the seventies. But Sebastian (Christian Borromeo) doesn't conform to either of the major two templates. He's not a pure innocent turned into a monster by society, like Carrie, nor is he a malignant murderer like the eponymous star of 1978's successful PATRICK. Furthermore, whatever psychic powers Sebastian holds are secondary to his journey to self-knowledge, even though the journey ends in destruction.

The first half-hour of STIGMA also suggests some indebtedness to PSYCHO in presenting a character with a mother-complex, but here too, Larraz does not stick to the Hitchcock template as closely as many imitators. Sebastian is of high school age and lives in a mansion with his older brother Joe and his unnamed mother (Helga Line), whom I'll simply refer to as Mother. The film starts with Joe getting the news that his unnamed father has died in an unspecified accident. Later Joe will tell his mother that when he went to tell his brother Sebastian of the news, Sebastian already knew. Mother claims that Sebastian was born with a caul, which in folklore grants precognitive powers.

Mother doesn't seem terribly broken up by her husband's death, for not long after the funeral she's being squired around by an older man, creating the strong impression that she may've been messing around before becoming a widow. In standard Freudian paradigms, the sexually aware male child begins desiring his mother and resenting his father, and Sebastian seems to conform to the paradigm, for he rants to Mother that he knows her husband died with a prostitute. Yet Sebastian doesn't entirely conform to the Norman Bates model, since he never demands to become "the man of the house," possibly because of his older brother's presence. But he is fixated on Mother's sexuality, sniffing her undergarments and listening to a recording he made of his mom's sexual congress with her lover. Following his rant, Sebastian displays what the script calls his "stigma," spontaneous bleeding-- though the blood comes from Sebastian's lip, not from the areas favored by religious Christian stigmatics. (Parenthetically, Sebastian's the name of a famous Christian saint who died after being impaled by numerous arrows.)

Yet at least one girl at Sebastian's school, Marta, likes Sebastian enough to accept his invitation to climb to the top of a lonely tower. Curiously, though Sebastian later says he fears heights, Marta is the one who tries to descend before reaching the top. Sebastian accosts and kisses her. She escapes, running down the stairs, but she falls to her death. Sebastian's lip bleeds, indicating that he may have caused her fall.

Yet Sebastian is not a "bad seed," as Joe later calls him. He consults a priest for advice, but gets no useful info. Then he and Joe are invited to dine at the apartment of Joe's girlfriend Angie (Alexandra Bastedo), which Angie shares with Olga, an older woman.

Parenthesis again: there's a slight suggestion that Angie and Olga may have had a lesbian interlude even though Angie's now hooked up with Joe. The sole evidence of such an interlude is that in the apartment Sebastian sees two photographs-- one of Olga alone, the other of both Olga and Angie-- and an erotic illustration whose two characters look somewhat like Olga and Angie. There are no direct allusions to lesbianism, but all of the scenes between the two women could be read as having either a lesbian or bisexual tonality-- more the latter since when Olga first meets Sebastian, she flirts with him a little. (Contemplating a foursome?)

During dinner conversation, Olga claims to be a psychic, and makes the odd remark that the apartment shared by the two women was built over a cemetery, a "necropolis" as the translation calls it. Joe expresses skepticism over psychic matters, and by coincidence, Olga mentions the phenomenon of stigmatic bleeding. Joe does not deny that the phenomenon takes place but attributes it to "faith." After the brothers leave, Olga makes minatory predictions about Sebastian.

At home Sebastian has an experience that suggests his being haunted, though he never mentions these experiences to anyone. After his lips bleeds-- possibly due to having encountered his brother's gorgeous girlfriend-- he has a vision of himself, hanged by the neck. He doesn't see that he's being watched by a female specter, whose name will later be revealed as "Julia."

Some time later, the second haunting occurs. Sebastian's at home, preparing to take a shower. But a trickle of blood comes out of the shower-head, and the nude form of Julia rises from the tub. In addition, a clothed female specter hangs upside-down outside the bathroom window. Sebastian can't get out at first, though presumably he does somehow. Though his lip does not bleed, the mise-en-scene imply that at the same time this happens, Angie and Joe are having sex.

Later still, Joe takes upon himself the role of head of the house, telling Sebastian that if his grades don't improve, Joe will sentence his brother to boarding school. That night, in what seems to be Sebastian's strongest act of telekinesis, Joe's driving his car when the brakes fail and he perishes. Mother is very broken up by Joe's death, and her boyfriend suggests they go away. She refuses, citing the need to care for the helpless Sebastian, who, curiously, she says is "more mine" than, one assumes, his father's. Later, while she sleeps, Sebastian intrudes upon her bedroom. Yet he doesn't evince sexual intentions, and his attitude seems to imply that he needs forgiveness.

He gets a "real mother" in Angie. Though she'd been hanging out with Sebastian in a friendly way despite Olga's warnings, now she completely believes that Sebastian caused Joe's death. Yet she seems less stricken by Joe's passing than offended that Sebastian wasn't honest with her about his problems. Later she'll signal that her erotic feelings as well as her maternal nature have shifted to favor Sebastian. But for now, she persuades Sebastian to let Olga perform a past-life regression on the young man-- though again, the script never mentions if he's come clean about his ghostly experiences. 

Sure enough, through hypnosis Sebastian experiences a previous life, where he becomes another young, wealthy swain, name of Miguel.  Miguel suffered from a tyrannical father and an aggressive sister, Julia (Virginie Blavier). Julia seduced Miguel and then deserted him to make a substantial, normal marriage. It appears at this point that Sebastian's stigma arose not from an "imitatio Christi," as with religious votaries, but from an "imitatio Miguel."

Sebastian never precisely confronts whatever ghosts are dogging his tracks, but he does seek out the house where Miguel lived and died. Yet this merely leads Sebastian to have more flashbacks. These experiences relate the rest of Miguel's story, of his slaughter of his entire family and his self-immolation by hanging. Just to leave one detail unreported, the flashback also discloses why the stigma centers on Sebastian's lip.

Back in real time, these revelations subsume whatever decency Sebastian possesses, and he succumbs to the demons in his soul. This descent into evil has fatal consequences for Angie, and possibly for Sebastian's mother, since he's last seen as having returned to his mansion. But the audience doesn't know exactly what happens after the movie ends, for Sebastian's last seen lying on a bed at his house, looking like a corpse-- appropriate, since he's become a resident of his own private "necropolis."

One last Freudian note: a lot of stories have been accused of using a brother's lust for a sister as a deferral of the primary "mother-love." But in the case of the Larraz film, it seems to be the other way around. If Sebastian's entire being is indeed just a reflection of his ancestor, then it's Miguel's sibling transgression that was primary. (Nothing at all is said about Miguel's mother, though the stepmother Miguel kills may be the second female specter Sebastian sees in the bathroom). Sebastian's real mother presents an ambiguous figure, but Angie, his prospective sister-in-law, ends up combining both maternal warmth and forbidden sexual heat.

THE GLADIATOR (1986)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

Here's another bit of TV-ephemera whose genesis would probably be more interesting than the work itself. In 1984, Abel Ferrara had directed FEAR CITY, a movie with a vigilante trope loosely like that of this 1986 TV-movie. But THE GLADIATOR is a dull outing, and it doesn't even have the excuse of being a setup for a TV series.

Ken Wahl, about ten years ahead of his success on TV's WISEGUY, plays a car repairman named Rick. He's the sole support of his high-schooler brother Jeff and insists that Jeff hit the books every night to keep his grades up. But one night, Jeff complains so much about the routine that Rick lets him practice driving Rick's truck on the street. Of course, the one night that Rick gets permissive is the wrong night. A car comes out of nowhere, slamming into the back of the truck Jeff's driving and propelling the vehicle into oncoming traffic. Rick survives the crash; Jeff does not.

Though the screenplay devotes a lot of time to Rick's grief, there's no insight into the protagonist's particular psychology. But when it's obvious that the cops (represented by Robert Culp) can do nothing about the mystery hit-and-run, eventually Rick armors his truck and outfits it with a grapnel-device that can snare other cars, and goes hunting the killer of his brother, using the radio-handle "The Gladiator."

FWIW, the story, originally by William (THE MIDNIGHT HOUR) Bleich, doesn't present the vigilante as incapable of error. In fact, the only potential romantic interest, a radio-journalist (Nancy Allen), certainly does not become the new hero's Lois Lane, for she,isn't one of the Gladiator's many fans. We see other innocents killed by the never-seen "Death Car Driver" (as he's billed in credits), and we also see that he's outfitted his vehicle with a drill-bit to attack tires. But only at the very end of GLADIATOR does Rick find his quarry-- by sheer luck, at that-- and he and his truck defeat the Death Car in a very underwhelming conclusion. I can't think that even enthusiasts of Ferrara would find much of significance here.

VENUS MEETS THE SON OF HERCULES (1962)

 

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

The VENUS title is less representative of the actual movie than the Italian one, which translates as "Mars, God of War," but I'm using the English-language "Son of Hercules" name this time because it's more amusing. VENUS seems to be the only peplum on the resume of director/co-writer Marcello Baldi, though his two billed co-writers had considerable experience on other such fantasy-adventures. Nevertheless, Baldi produced a story that had a fair amount of potential, but missed the mark, possibly because of his inexperience with or disinterest in this subgenre.

Of course, since I watched an English-subtitled version, it's possible that the movie's biggest failing, that of exposition, is the result of someone cutting vital scenes. But I doubt it. VENUS just seems incoherent in too many scenes, ergo my "disinterest" remark.

A Greek city, Telbia, is besieged by invaders from Black Africa and in danger of being overthrown despite the best efforts of the ruler Antarus (Massimo Serrato). Then, as if heaven hears the desperate please of the Telbians, a single man in golden armor descends to Earth and routs the enemy forces. This warrior proves to be none other than Mars, God of War (Roger Browne), but he doesn't explain himself to the local bigwigs. He beholds enemy soldiers threatening a beautiful young vestal virgin named Daphne (Jocelyn Lane), and rescues her. Mars and Daphne exchange a few sentences and he runs off.

Now, though a lot of peplum-films may be bad overall, usually they're pretty good about explication, about explaining who's laying evil schemes and who's presenting noble resistance. But though Baldi finds time to establish that Antarus wants to seduce Daphne despite her consecration to Venus, he never establishes just why Mars decided to come to Earth. The broad implication is that he saw Daphne from afar and saved the city just for her benefit, though no one actually says this.

Instead, after various time-wasting scenes in which Antarus' mistress shows her jealousy of Daphne (though this "bad girl" never does anything truly evil), Mars seeks out Daphne at the Temple of Venus. Mars appears to still have godly powers, for he approaches the temple as an invisible man. But when he enters the shrine and encounters Daphne, he makes a vague statement about having surrendered his immortality. The poor girl barely has time to process all this when the other vestals learn that a man has trespassed upon their sacred grounds. Mars and Daphne try to hide, but suddenly phantom versions of Daphne manifest, confusing the war-god. These turn out to be sendings from Venus herself, and she spirits Mars away to her celestial palace. This puts Daphne in dutch, for Antarus is happy to condemn her for violating her virgin status.

Venus finally confronts the "son of Hercules," though she continues to keep the image of Daphne. It's not clear what relationship Venus and Mars have in this story, though one presumes that they've had sex, as in at least one famous myth-tale. She tries to seduce Mars in that form, and at least one online reviewer thought she succeeded, though I did not. However, as long as he's in Venus' palace, the mortal-ized Mars doesn't seem to be able to do anything to get free. Eventually Venus sends Mars back to Earth, some time after Daphne's been tormented in a closing wall-trap with spikes, and then condemned to be devoured by a monster plant. Mars finally crosses swords with Antarus and his men, but Daphne is accidentally slain. However, the actual father of Mars in myth, Zeus/Jupiter, takes pity on his son. The high god sends a heavenly chariot to Earth, transporting both Mars and the spirit of Daphne to Olympus, where one presumes they will become Olympian deities.

The poor execution of the story doesn't keep me from rating the movie "fair" in mythicity, since the basic idea seems to be that of a goddess manifesting through her worshiper, a frequent trope in Greek myth. The sequence of Mars held captive in Venus' chamber is well-handled, with Venus claiming to be "all women." It's just a shame that this is the movie's sole effective scene.