LADY DEATH (2004)

 

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

I didn't follow Lady Death's comics-career in the nineties. The extent of my thought about her was that though she was one of the many "bad girl" protagonists of that decade, I thought her costume was sexy without being over-the-top.

Going only on a Wikipedia summary, the comic-book character sounds like she owes something to Marvel's 1970s character THE SON OF SATAN. Said character in turn owed much to the book ROSEMARY'S BABY, in which Satan had relations with a virtuous mortal woman and conceived a child-- but in the Marvel feature, the offspring grew up to battle his infernal progenitor. In the original comic book for Lady Death, the horrific heroine starts out as Hope, the adolescent daughter of a 15th-century Swedish nobleman, Matthias, and his virtuous but deceased wife. Unknown to the innocent girl, her father is a demonologist who intends to use her as a pawn in a war to oust Lucifer from Hell and take control. Eventually Hope is hurled down to perdition and becomes transformed into Lady Death, who battles both Lucifer and her evil father.

The movie keeps the broad outline of this origin but seeks to whittle down the number of characters. Now Matthias merely poses as a mortal ruler, but in truth he's Lucifer in disguise, and his imposture is part of some involved scheme to persuade Hope to rule in Hell as an ally. This contrivance never tracks very well. In his mortal ID the Devil arranges for Hope-- who only wants to marry her boyfriend Niccolo-- to be burned at the stake as a witch, knowing that only by resorting to appealing to the power of Hell can Hope save her mortal life. Hope ends up in Hell, but when her father's true nature is revealed, she rejects his patronage. He responds by tossing her out of a window and into a raging torrent, which doesn't exactly make Matthias/Lucifer sound like much of a master planner. Hope survives, and with the help of a Satanic rebel, she takes control of a contingent of Hell's zombie denizens. Transformed into the white-hued Lady Death, she eventually storms Lucifer's castle and battles him in a lively swordfight, to gain control of Hell.

The animation is merely competent, while the script by Carl Macek-- largely known for providing English scripts for dubbed anime productions-- is pedestrian, in that we never see even good basic melodrama in this daughter-father conflict, not even on the level of the aforementioned SON OF SATAN series. A few lines suggest that Hope, in her desperation to survive, has turned her back upon the world of the living, and that, in a sense, Lucifer has succeeded in convincing her to spend her life in Hell, even if it's as his opponent. But at no time does the character do anything but go through the motions of her "heroine's journey." The lack of humor, except for a few jocular lines from a jester-demon, adds to the general inertia of the narrative. DEATH was the only original release from now-defunct ADV Films, an early pioneer in releasing anime for American consumption. 

SHIRA THE VAMPIRE SAMURAI (2005)

 

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

And now, because no one at all asked for it, here's yet another micro-budgeted straight-to-video production with lousy locations (warehouses, forests) and about three actors with some name-value (James Lew, Adrian "T.J. Hooker" Zmed, and star Chona Jason).

The title is the only thing that provides some amusement value. It allows one to ask the metaphysical question, "Is it more absurd to imagine a young 16th-century Japanese woman being transformed into an immortal vampire, or to imagine that the same female somehow got special dispensation, in masculinist feudal Japan, to receive some sort of samurai training?" I'd say the latter, all the more so since the murky script could have dumped the whole samurai angle without losing much.

We begin with a few scenes explaining how young Shira became a half-vampire. Shamed by being vampire-bitten, she tried to commit seppuku, which somehow interrupted the normal vampire transformation. Unlike Blade, from whom Shira has patently been copied, Shira doesn't have a mad-on for the bloodsucker who changed her. We just get a swift transition to the 21st century, during which Shira has somehow hooked up with a bunch of vampire slayers (one of whom is a Van Helsing descendant). The group's activities come to the attention of king-vampire Kristof (Zmed), who thinks he can conquer the world if he masters the process of creating half-vampires.

That's about it for plot. There are a lot of pedestrian dialogue scenes, particularly between Shira and her mortal boyfriend, interspersed with routine fight-scenes. I had no expectations of good dialogue, of course. But I had seen Chona Jason do some decent fight-scenes in a couple of low-budget (but not THIS low-budget) productions, one of which was 1995's DRAGON FURY. But it seems that Jason was at her best providing support-roles, since even the modest potential of her lead role is undermined by her leaden performance. IMDB only lists one more movie credit for the actress, so she may have moved on what one hopes were greener pastures.

CUTIE HONEY (2004)

 

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

Storytellers of a particular nationality don't tend to admit any truth in the often-negative stereotypes that persons of other nationalities promulgate. Americans don't want to be seen as chauvinistic, the French don't like to be seen as artsy-fartsy, and Germans don't care to be seen as intrinsically warlike. After watching the 2004 CUTIE HONEY, though, I think some if not all Japanese storytellers may be the exception. From the many anime and manga I've consumed, though, I have the distinct impression that Japanese storytellers freely admit that their culture can be rigid and stratified. This admission allows them to fight back against this negative cultural tendency by expousing deeper human values of love and passionate ambition.

Thanks to its bright colors and hyperkinetic, deliberately artificial battle-scenes, some critics judged CUTIE HONEY to be a superficial confection. I can't judge how well the movie represents the manga source-material of popular artist Go Nagai, having only read a smattering of the original 1970s comics. But HONEY, directed and co-written by Hideaki Anno, obviates that problem by leaping over the original events of the heroine's introduction.

The original story concerned Honey, an android creation of one Doctor Kisaragi. Her creator was slain by the criminal organization Panther Claw, so Honey, drawing on her power to transform into a plethora of specialized fighting-forms, sought revenge upon the evildoers, eventually destroying them and their supernatural leader Sister Jill. HONEY takes place a year after those events, with the only salient difference being that Anno interpolates an ASTRO BOY-like trope about Dr. Kisaragi having modeled Honey on his real-life deceased daughter. Honey (Eriko Sata) earns her daily bread at a tedious clerical job but seems undauntedly cheerful nevertheless. However, Honey receives a call from her (purely figurative) uncle Utsugi, who is being pursued by the agents of a recrudescent Panther Claw. Honey responds to the assault by transforming into her most familiar form-- a pink-haired girl in hot-pink armor and carrying a katana-- and rushes to thwart the villainous Gold Claw and his goons. After a rousing battle Honey defeats Gold Claw, who then flees the scene. An uptight police inspector, Natsuko (Mikako Ichikawa), knows nothing of Honey's earlier deeds and tries to arrest her, but Honey also escapes.

Gold Claw returns to the hideout of Panther Claw, where he consults with three other claw-themed generals of the organization and with a Sister Jill, who for some unexplained reason (at least in the subtitled version I watched) has been reborn in a male form (and is played by Eisuke Sasai). Sister Jill sends another general, the spider-like Cobalt Claw, to assassinate the organization's nemesis.

Cobalt Claw attack Honey in her civilian ID at her office, and Natusko happens to be caught up in the assault as well. Honey slays the monstrous assassin, saving Natusko but draining herself of power. Natsuko, grateful for the rescue, doesn't seek to imprison Honey this time, but takes her to Natsuko's own apartment. Despite the inspector's rigidity, which makes her the opposite of Honey's relentless good spirits, the two women bond somewhat. 

During Honey's travails her uncle is captured, and a journalist who becomes friendly to Honey and Natsuko informs them that many nubile young women have also been kidnapped by the monsters of Panther Claw. (In truth both the uncle and the female prisoners are just the script's way of keeping the tension up; neither are very important to the main story.) Honey has no way of finding the fiends' hiding place, but Sister Jill needs a lot of energy to fully revivify, and she can get a lot more from a super-android than from a bunch of mortal women. Jill's butler lures Honey to the hideout, where she's attacked by the other two super-powered generals, Black Claw and Scarlet Claw. Honey destroys both of these assailants but is drained of her power again. She's still defiant until the butler reveals that he's also captured Natsuko. To save Natsuko and Utsugi, Honey surrenders and Sister Jill begins draining off the android's energy. However, thanks to having learned of Honey's systems and filled with passion to save the artificial woman, Natsuko uses her markmanship to re-activate Honey's power-- striking a button on Honey's choker with a bullet-- and Honey helps the innocents escape while Jill and her entire lair are annihilated. A coda establishes that a deep friendship has formed between Honey, Natsuko and the journalist, and they lay plans to form a detective agency.

Like all the best superhero works in all media, CUTIE HONEY excels in producing all sorts of outrageous imagery. Gold Claw's henchmen launch a fusillade of machine-gun bullets at the avenging "soldier of love," and she knocks all the projectiles aside by whipping her sword back and forth like an impenetrable shield. (Top that, Wonder Woman!) When Sister Jill attacks Tokyo, a giant drill erupts beneath the ground beneath Tokyo Tower, hoisting the building into the sky. (Later, when the drill is atomized, the tower simply falls back into place, neat as you please.) Such wild images would prejudice many critics to think HONEY to be dominantly silly.

However, the script holds a number of subtleties. It's no surprise when the main villain urges the heroine to "rise above common humanity," and the heroine nobly remains true to her ideals of love and empathy. But Natsuko is clearly a liminal figure between hero and villain. She suppresses her humanity for professional advancement in a clear parallel to Sister Jill-- even though the inspector's suppression takes the form of wearing fake glasses to harden her image-- but she's persuaded to be more human by her interaction with a heroine who is not a true human being, revised origin or not. (Honey mentions, in a rare doleful mood, that she doesn't remember her predecessor's existence, though she remains confident that she can "always make more memories.") 

There are also some very clever lines. When Honey is grappling with Cobalt Claw, the monstrous creature tries to bite the android. The irate heroine asks her enemy if she tried to do something like that to Honey's late father, and Cobalt responds, "Do you remember what you ate last year?"

The performers playing the generals deserve kudos for managing to act despite bulky, elaborate costumes (particularly Gold Claw, who has a long scorpion-tail protruding from her helmet). Mikako Ichikawa provides a strong evolution for her character's arc, but clearly the film depends on the high-energy of Eriko Sata, whom I regard as one of the five best actresses to play a superheroine.

As a small treat, the Gold Claw battle is preceded by some humorous inserts of scenes from the 1970s anime series.

ADDENDUM: I read three CUTIE HONEY manga series I had not previously gone through prior to writing this view. One never-completed storyline, CUTIE HONEY A GO GO (2003), was meant as a "lead-in" to the live-action film. Yet Anno takes very little from that series except the characters of Natsuko and the reporter, and the basic idea that Cutie and Natsuko have a feminine bonding session. The parallels between lack of affect in both Jill and Natsuko are not pursued, and Anno does a better dramatic job with the three viewpoint characters. He does not use GO GO's notion-- as far as I know, not seen before-- that Sister Jill is an android produced by the same research that gave rise to Cutie Honey, and he certainly doesn't utilize the extreme violence characteristic of many Go Nagai productions. Anno is credited as a creator of some sort on GO GO, but in the movie, he clearly built up the things he liked best in the collaboration and excised the other stuff-- which may be the reason I liked the movie better than any of the manga I've read so far.

KICK ASS 2 (2013)

 

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

In one of the commentaries for the KICK ASS 2 DVD, the film's writer-director Jeff Wadlow coincidentally mirrors some of the logic I used to dispute the graphic novels and films in this franchise as being "black comedies." There's a lot of swearing and ultraviolent imagery, just as there had been in the 2010 adaptation. But the emphasis is on fun-and-games in the same manner as tamer comedies, oriented around an ensemble of characters the viewer has come to care about. Black comedies, by contrast, tend to make the audience look down at everyone under the authorial microscope, rather than participating in their sufferings.

In fact, the Millar/Romita graphic novel on which this movie is based is actually less comedic than the previous entry in that series. There are jokes in the GN, but they get somewhat overwhelmed by many of the dramatic beats, like Dave "Kick-Ass" Lizewski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) losing his father. Further, the KICK ASS 2 GN ends with the title hero's partner Mindy "Hit-Girl" Macready (Chloe Grace Moretz) being captured by the police-- which would have been a terrible ending for a stand-alone film sequel. Whereas the first film's director/co-writer Matthew Vaughan (who served as producer here) didn't add much to the source material, Wadlow and his team added quite a few grossly funny sequences.

Largely unchanged is the arc with regard to Kick-Ass finding other vigilantes like himself and paying a heavy price for ticking off the underworld once more. In contrast, Kick-Ass's principal adversary, rich gangster's son Chris D'Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) -- now re-christened as "The Motherfucker"-- generally follows the graphic novel's pattern of his narrative, BUT Wadlow builds up the intrinsic absurdity of his character much more flamboyantly. For instance, while in the GN his super-villain monicker doesn't have any meaning beyond grossness, in the movie Chris actually commits accidental matricide (which admittedly is not the same as committing incest, but I don't think the change was a coincidence). He also briefly wears some of his dead mother's fetish-gear as a costume, before changing into a bizarre outfit with multiple zippers and buckles. (This may have been a comment on the overwrought costumes associated with Image Comics characters in the decade before the KICK-ASS franchise began.) 

Just as Mintz-Plasse gets a lot more comic beats here than he did in the GN, Moretz gets to exercise both her comic and dramatic muscles in this version. Since roughly three years passed between the shooting of the first and second movies respectively, the actress aged as the comics-character did not, so Hit-Girl is now about sixteen, like the performer. Wadlow borrows a plotline from a separate arc, in which the young Hit-Girl has to deal with a "mean girl" at school, and he builds on it to cope with the issue of the character's developing sexuality. Wadlow's script also introduces the most bizarre "weird weapon" in any of the comics or movies: the "sick-stick," a device that can electronically induce gut-heaving fits. This is a particularly effective weapon to apply to a band of mean girls, for whom image is so crucial to their social power.

The more minor characters largely follow closely in the tracks of their comics-predecessors, even "Colonel Stars and Stripes," though he's essayed by "Big Name Actor" Jim Carrey. A vigilante named "Night-Bitch" (Lindy Booth) gets a larger role in consequence of Wadlow playing down Dave's former high-school girlfriend. Real-life bodybuilder Olga Kurkulina impressively fills the very large shoes of the villainous "Mother Russia" character.

Though live-action superhero fights don't always trump those confined to the static comics-page, this time the movie KICK-ASS 2 takes top honors, particularly for the big battle between Mother Russia and Hit-Girl. Wadlow also works in a lot of incidental action for the minor-league vigilantes, though he does make one confusing misstep. Whereas in the GN Chris D'Amico already knows Kick-Ass's civilian identity of Dave Lizewki, Wadlow has Dave's friend Todd accidentally reveal it to the super-villain when he Todd is-- trying to join the gang for some reason? And yet in the big climactic fight Todd's a good guy again? What?

At any rate, KICK ASS 2 is a great improvement on its source material and on the previous film, and it made good enough money that a third franchise-movie is in the works, though Wadlow is not associated with it.  

BLACK FOX: AGE OFTHE NINJA (2019)

 

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

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

This live-action, Edo-period ninja-movie was made the same year as an anime titled BLACK FOX, and one of the non-animated movie's main characters is supposed to be the ancestor of the main anime character. I have not seen the anime.

While FOX is not any sort of gang-changer, it stands as an object lesson as to how a contemporary movie can be centered upon the relationship of two heroic women, without running all the male characters into the ground. And this is a signal accomplishment, given that one of the villains is the father to one of the heroines.

Young woman Miya (MamiYajima) is subjected to an arcane experiment by her father, one that fills her body with electrical energy. A marauding gang breaks into their home, and Miya flees, thinking they've slain her father. The woman wanders through a forest until she comes across a compound belonging to a ninja clan called Kitsune (fox). Miya encounters Rikka Isurugi (Chihiro Yamamoto), and though their meeting isn't entirely copacetic, Rikka becomes sympathetic to the frazzled young woman, despite witnessing her bizarre shock-powers. Rikka appears to her grandfather Hyoe (familiar face Yasuaki Kurata) to give Miya shelter from the gang, the Negoro. Hyoe does so briefly, but when the Negoro come calling, they launch a frontal attack against the Kitsune. Informed of the higher powers served by the gangsters, Hyoe backs down and turns Miya over to the Negoro and their masters. 

Rikka, having befriended the helpless fugitive, defies her grandfather's authority and swears to rescue Miya. To this end, Rikka dons a special costume far from the usual attire of the cinematic ninja, seen only briefly in the opening credits-- a fairly sporty outfit, crowned with a black fox-mask. She probably only wears the mask for about ten full minutes during the action-packed climax, but it looks good, and at least is a great improvement on the bizarre costumes worn by the so-called "ninjas" of the NARUTO manga.

The climax has a few too many irons in the fire, as we're quickly introduced to the bosses behind the Negoro, and the strange development that the Negoro, for reasons unclear to me, suddenly decide to throw in with Rikka against their former employers. Far less surprising is the revelation that Miya's father did not die in the raid, and that in truth he always planned to exploit his daughter as a living weapon. The shock of seeing her father alive again throws Miya into a fugue state, and he even manages to turn Miya against her own rescuer. However, in tried-and-true sentimental fashion, Rikka is able to appeal to female friendship to snap Miya back to normal.

Though few of the male characters are that important, only Miya's father is a flat-out villain. Hyoe compromises with the Negoro because he wants to save his clan, while one of the conspirators is openly disgusted at the father having turned his own daughter into a lab rat. Chihiro Yamamoto provides most of the physical action and the heavy emoting, but the script is noteworthy for including small bits of character-business that keep everything from seeming overly predictable.

  

THE BLACK KNIGHT RETURNS (2009)

 

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

In case my review of BATTLE SOLDIER wasn't clear, from now on that particular film will be my baseline for the worst possible superhero film of all time. That means, by default, that THE BLACK KNIGHT RETURNS is a little better than that.

But not by much.

One would think that even a rock-bottom-budgeted video would try to appeal to viewers with some decent action. The fight-choreography is a tiny bit better than that of BATTLE SOLDIER, but only barely. And the basic plotline is not dissimilar, in that a young potential hero must school himself in the ways of a crusading predecessor-- or predecessors, since the appropriately named "Evan Grail" (Adam Salandra) has to emulate the ways of an ancient order of crusading, costumed "Knights," most of whom have been wiped out in Evan's time. This loose ripoff of Lee Falk's "Phantom" comic strip has zero appeal.

Strangely, two romantic pairings generate more interest than any of the action. While Evan is hunting down the evil "Council," the group responsible for the deaths of the other Black Knights, he interacts with real estate agent Alex (Cheryl Texiera), and though Salandra acts like a block of wood, Texiera does a decent job of portraying an ordinary working woman drawn into superhero insanity.

But the most eyebrow-raising scene is one in which main villain Simon Darth (Rick Corbett) plots to take over the Council from its older administrators. Apparently, Simon's dad has died, for his mother Morana Darth (Jayne Clement) approaches him with the suggestion that when he outs the Old Guard, the two of them can rule the Council as "Prince and Queen." And just to underscore what she means, she tries to kiss him on the mouth. This is easily the closest RETURNS ever comes to dramatic interest, though in Morana's only other scene Simon simply kills her. He also kills off Alex, paving the way for a completely underwhelming climactic "fight," and my conclusion that this knight should never have seen the light of day.

BATTLE SOLDIER (2013)

 

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

Wow, in no more than two days of searching superhero movies on Tubi, and I already found one even worse than SHINOBI GIRL-- THE MOVIE.

SHINOBI, as I said, had bad fights and bad acting, and so does BATTLE SOLDIER, filmed under the more high-falutin' title CAPTAIN BATTLE: LEGACY WAR. But SHINOBI had more comely women in its cast than does BATTLE, and BATTLE doesn't even take much visual advantage of potential fanservice in that regard.

Rather, it's the utterly humdrum story of Sam Battle (Cuyle Carvin), a modern-day commando who gets wounded in what is supposedly the Middle East (it looked like California to me). Sam's friend Brandon just happens to have an untested super-soldier in his possession, so he tries it out on Sam. Not only does Sam not die, he eventually gains ill-defined Captain America-type abilities. The officer in authority over Sam and Brandon witnesses this miracle, but for some reason he keeps mum and the two soldiers are able to get regular discharges and to return to the States.

Back in the U.S., Brandon discloses another secret: Sam's grandfather was a bonafide superhero, Captain Battle, during WWII. One might expect that Sam might decide of his accord to take up the superhero mantle simply because his hometown is now overrun with Neo-Nazi gangbangers. However, Sam is spared any such weighty decisions. The Nazis-- maybe seven or eight in all-- are under the command of a Nazi sorceress, The Necromancer, who kidnaps Brandon and his sister so that she can use the secret formula in cloning the Nazi High Command, starting with Heinrich Himmler. This of course spurs Sam to don his ancestor's costume, complete with eye-patch (though there's nothing wrong with either of Sam's eyes), and he's off on a justice crusade.

Under the right circumstances I might overlook bad filmmaking and acting if a low budget superhero was at least lively. But BATTLE is thus far the absolute pit of all cinematic fight-choreography I've seen, and that's unforgivable in an alleged action movie.

This groaner's only distinction is that there actually was a comic-book character named Captain Battle, published by Lev Gleason Comics during the war years, and the visual emulation of the character (presumably in public domain these days) is at least accurate. But there's absolutely nothing else to recommend this turd of a film.