WHITE-HAIRED DEVIL LADY (2020)

 

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

Whatever the credits of this 2020 film might aver, WHITE HAIRED DEVIL LADY certainly seems to be dwelling under the long shadow of the celebrated 1990s BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR films. 

Whereas those films were broad and operatic, though, writer-director Tianyu Zhou turns out a somewhat fast-paced rendition of the earlier films' favorite tropes: a dastardly plot by royal conspirators, a doomed romance between a loyal Chinese soldier and a mysterious female fighter, and the female's alienation from romantic love, culminating in her transformation into a white-haired witch-woman.

There's not much question that the BRIDE films explored all of these tropes with greater dramatic power than LADY. Nevertheless, director Zhou-- who may be a young guy, since he's only directed one other movie-- displays a fine power to stage enchanting scenes in a fantasy-China that never was. The actors don't really have a chance to shine because the complicated plot races from point to point, but they and their costumes all look very good, particularly the titular "devil lady" Lian Nishang (Weina Zhang). While I can't say that the action-sequences are as evocative as the quieter, more lyrical moments, Nishang has a bravura sequence in which she takes out about ten men with nothing but a dagger.

I really love the look of this film and wish the plot was the equal of the visuals. Incidentally, though IMDB lists a separate film on Zhou's resume. "White-Haired Princess," I watched twenty minutes of a film with that title online, and I believe this is the same film as DEVIL LADY.

KIM POSSIBLE (2019)

 

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

The KIM POSSIBLE series was one of the better Disney Channel offerings of the early 2000s. Like most teleserials, the show had its moments of repetitiveness or lame humor. But its simple mission-- to portray a female super-agent as an indicator of "possibilities" for young girls-- was handled with a light touch, in contradistinction to the "toxic femininity" movies of Marvel's Phase Four and onward.

The script for the 2019 movie, co-written by the cartoon's creators and one other writer, zeros in on the fantasy behind Kim Possible, that of "the overachieving high school student." With her goofy partner Ron Stoppable, non-animated Kim (Sadie Stanley) starts out the film by saving a captive scientist from the evil Professor Dementor, and still having plenty of energy to go out for cheerleading the next day. Kim and Ron even find time to take pity on a poor, friendless student named Athena (Ciara Riley Wilson). They show Athena how to come out of her shell and be more assertive, like Kim. The only trouble is, Athena learns her lessons too well. Soon she's eclipsed Kim as the Alpha Female at the high school, and even faithful Ron remarks that she's "out-Kimmed Kim."

It's a devious plot, of course. Possible's favorite fiends, the goofy Doctor Drakken and his acerbic henchwoman Shego (Todd Stashwick, Taylor Ortega) created Athena, a robot able to duplicate Kim's feats so as to undermine the super-agent's confidence. The diabolical duo lure Kim, Ron, and their helpers (Kim's mom and grandmom, both of whom are also ass-kickers) to their sanctuary, where they reveal Athena's nature. With customary nonsense-science, Drakken plans to use a machine to drain off Kim's confidence to make himself a superman, or something. Further, the process of transferring this emotional state from Athena, his go-between, will destroy the young girl robot-- unless Kim, Ron, and Kim's toughgirl relatives can stop the evildoers.

For a Disney TV movie, production values are very good, and the fight-scenes are well-handled both in terms of action and comic timing. I could have done without Ron Stoppable coming across his wacky pet from the cartoon show. Why does the comedy relief need another comedy relief? But the histrionics that result when Kim gets depressed at not being the Number One Worldsaver, and then critiques herself for her unseemly ego, are much better than I would have expected. Stashwick and Ortega get across the same constant backbiting relationship seen in the animated versions of Drakken and Shego, and I give the flick extra points for casting BUFFY's Alyson Hannigan as Kim Possible's live-action mother.    

Though Dementor doesn't share any scenes with Drakken and Shego, I rate the movie as a crossover just for having two independent "villainy-generators" in the narrative.

LEGENDS OF THE SUPERHEROES (1979)

 

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

The seventies were an ambivalent time for costumed superhero movies. Even the plethora of low-budget superhero films seen in the sixties dwindled in the following decade, with DOC SAVAGE-- THE MAN OF BRONZE the standout failure of the decade's first half, while the second half was distinguished for the 1978 SUPERMAN, the first costumed hero film with a substantial budget. However, on the small screen, live-action superheroes like Wonder Woman and the Hulk, as well as "adjacent" types like the Bionic Duo, became moderately popular, though even the most successful shows were less successful in their aim than '66 BATMAN. 

Saturday morning cartoons also paled next to their sixties predecessors, but Hanna-Barbera's SUPER FRIENDS found a comfortable niche that lasted (in one form or another) from 1973 to 1985. The third SUPER FRIENDS series, CHALLENGE OF THE SUPER FRIENDS, was the first to closely follow the format of the various DC comics vis-a-vis having the Justice League square off against various established super-villains, most of whom got their first incarnation in another medium in the H-B cartoon.

I know that a lot of superhero fans liked CHALLENGE, but it may not have been particularly successful ratings-wise, since the next SUPER FRIENDS show, debuting in September 1979, went back to a format of simpler anthology-stories, not dominantly indebted to DC Comics continuity. But it's still odd that Hanna-Barbera decided to produce a sort of vaudeville-roadshow version of CHALLENGE. shot on videotape and on a paucity of sets. The two hour-long episodes, airing in prime time a week apart in January 1979, weren't in a position to court a regular kid-audience, and their silly approach to the subject matter wouldn't have pleased comics-fans-- not that comics-fans were even a demographic anyone in prime time cared to pursue. My best guess is that the producers had some idea of duplicating the success of '66 BATMAN-- "ha, ha; aren't costumed heroes and villains absurd to right-thinking adults"-- without understanding what made that show work for sixties adults, at least for a short period of time.  

The first special, titled THE CHALLENGE in emulation of the 1978 cartoon show, loosely follows the format as well, albeit with a more openly absurd premise. First a montage introduces the eight heroes, who are never called either "Justice League" or "Super Friends," consisting of The Flash, Captain Marvel, The Huntress, Black Canary, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Batman and Robin. The only significant performers here are the iconic performers of '66 BATMAN, with Adam West and Burt Ward reprising their costumed roles for the last time in a full live-action production. Then, as in the cartoon, the viewer sees the seven villains, never called "Legion of Doom"-- and here too, the one alumnus from '66 BATMAN, Frank Gorshin's Riddler, is the only actor I'm going to cite here. Riddler, Solomon Grundy, Sinestro and Giganta were the only characters who had appeared in CHALLENGE, while Doctor Sivana was almost certainly brought in as a shout-out to the Captain Marvel mythology, and Weather Wizard to that of The Flash. The seventh choice, the sorcerer Mordru, was the oddest choice, given that the character ordinarily operated in the pages of DC's LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES comic. It's possible that the writers just wanted a magician who could bring about various cheapjack effects, and so chose Mordru at random.

The writers' choice of plotlines also indicates a contempt for the superhero genre. The villains plot to blow up the world with a doomsday device-- without making the slightest comment about how they're going to avoid being destroyed as well, since they're physically located on the Earth. But they all agree that destroying the world's no fun unless they can rub it in the heroes' faces. Therefore, they send the heroes vague clues about the bomb, and when the champions run around looking for the device, the villains seek to undermine their efforts. At no time do the villains seek to kill their antagonists; they just seem to want to humiliate them. Most of the encounters play like comical blackout-skits-- Riddler poses as a psychiatrist and talks Captain Marvel into having a couch-session-- though the hulking Solomon Grundy does have some very short fights with Batman, Hawkman and Black Canary. Finally, the villains manage to cause the heroes to lose their super-powers-- but then the bumbling Grundy exposes himself and the rest of the Faux-Legion to the same depowering influence. This leads to a climactic but poorly choreographed brawl, which of course the heroes win, saving the world and ensuring that the first special, at least, falls into the combative mode. 

Certain moments of silliness in CHALLENGE might be funny to some viewers in the right mood, maybe mostly the material written for West and Ward, playing slightly more dopey versions of the '66 TV-heroes. But I don't need to spend much time on the second and last special, THE ROAST, because it's almost humor-free. It's just one roast-style skit after another, and the only bit that had some potential was an interview asking the newly married Giganta about her connubial relations with her spouse, the six-inch-tall Atom (making his live-action debut here). Even then, the punchline is basically a variation on the old, "Hey, if she dies, she dies" schtick. Again, there may be some nostalgia value thanks to the participation of West and Ward (though not Gorshin this time). Ruth Buzzi pops up playing the CAPTAIN MARVEL villain Aunt Minerva, and Mordru (Gabriel Dell of the "Dead End Kids" film-series) sings a song. Oh, and both specials guest William Schallert as "Retired Man," wherein Schallert largely reprises the "doddering old fool" type of character he'd done for the sixties GET SMART series.

A few of the costumes, like Mordru's, are decently executed. But aside from that, and the nostalgia-value of the Bat-alumni, both specials were largely worthless-- though I must admit that "so bad it's good" is in the eyes of the beholder.

DREDD (2012)

 

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

Though like many viewers I didn't care for the sentimentality ladled into the 1995 JUDGE DREDD, the 2012 DREDD seemed to make the opposite errors: too much unstinting violence, without any of the comic book's penchant for over-the-top absurdity.

Because the 2012 movie had only a third of the operating budget of the 1995 film, the viewer only sees a handful of establishing scenes of the hero's stomping-grounds, the vastly overpopulated Mega-City One, while there's only passing reference to the irradiated wasteland surrounding the super-burg. The majority of the film's action takes place in one location, a titanic, deteriorated high-rise whose rooms and corridors all look pretty much the same.

The main thrust of Alex Garland's script follows the trope of "experienced cop trains rookie." The old hand is of course Dredd (Karl Urban), while the rookie is the character of Judge Anderson (Olivia Thirlby). In the British comics, Anderson got her start as a support-character in JUDGE DREDD stories and was spun off into her own solo comics-series. Anderson's first live-action outing thus constitutes a crossover between two icons with their own respective serials.

One of Dredd's superiors wants Dredd to test Anderson in the field because she's a mutant affected at birth by radiation exposure, with the consequence that she has the power to invade the minds of other individuals. Despite the possibility that such talents might benefit the Judges' operations in Mega-City, Dredd takes a hard line with his student, warning her that any infraction of Judge standards will ruin her chances at full admission.

For Anderson's baptism of fire, she joins Dredd in his investigation of a flagrant murder at a high-rise, Peach Trees, ruled by a major drug-lord, "Ma-Ma" (Lena Headey). When the two Judges enter the high-rise, Anderson's powers easily target the drug-lord as the culprit. Ma-Ma seeks to exterminate the two law-officers by closing the high-rise's nuclear blast doors, so that Ma-Ma's gang can overwhelm and slay the Judges. Even if this action had succeeded, though, it's not clear as to what Ma-Ma would have done about follow-up investigations by the Judge community.

Once the setup is complete, DREDD becomes just one attack after another, until the future-cops eventually face down Ma-Ma with the expected results. Urban's Dredd may be more of an uncompromising rock of a man than the Stallone version, but his lack of affect doesn't  encourage viewer identification. Thirlby's Anderson holds one's interest a lot more, since she has the dramatic arc of wanting a Judgeship to justify her status as a mutated human. Additionally, like the comics-character she almost never wears her Judge-helmet, ostensibly because it interferes with her psychic abilities, though the cinematic effect is that the performer is better able to convey emotional states. Thirlby does a good job of conveying both vulnerability and toughness when necessary, while Urban's characterization is compromised by the over-softness of his voice.

DREDD was a box office failure, and as yet no one has taken a shot at the third shot at the franchise. Ideally, a new iteration ought to find a way to take the best aspects of the two adaptations while leaving out all the proven flaws.  

THE SPIRIT (1987)

 

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

THE SPIRIT telefilm falls into the category I call "the return of the low-budget superheroes." The unquestioned box-office success of the high-budgeted SUPERMAN films (at least the first three) encouraged a few other superhero-like films with relatively substantial money behind them, such as the early 1980s takes on FLASH GORDON and POPEYE. However, during the late 1980s most superhero projects returned to Cheapville, as had been the case with the majority of such projects from the 1930s through the 1960s. THE SPIRIT, written by the famous (and sometimes infamous) Steven E. DeSouza, was one of these, certainly better than the 1990 CAPTAIN AMERICA film (which had a limited theatrical release) but not as appealing as the more obscure DARK AVENGER telefilm.

The creator of THE SPIRIT comic book, Will Eisner, decried this TV-movie, though I don't know the specifics for his disdain. But one of the biggest problems of DeSouza's script is that he decides to follow the "new guy in town" trope for the debut of Denny Colt (Sam J. Jones), the man who becomes the titular masked hero. In the comic, Colt is a private investigator who decides to take on his crimefighting ID to protect his native burg, Central City. But in the movie, Colt is a cop from Oregon, working a case that involved the unexplained death of a good friend of his. Thus, the young hero-to-be meets in rapid succession the members of his destined support-cast-- his police contact Commissioner Dolan, Dolan's fetching daughter Ellen (Nana Visitor), and a street-smart kid named Eubie (Bumper Robinson). Colt does not initially encounter P'Gell Roxton (MacKinlay Robinson), but the viewer sees her as some sort of society-woman known to Ellen Dolan. 

Within mere hours of Colt asking some unproductive questions about a crime that hasn't even happened, Colt is shot and dumped over a wharf into the sea. However, he survives and adopts his masked identity-- apparently deciding to take up general crimefighting while still investigating the original murder. Given that there really aren't any other suspects for the secret criminal mastermind, even the average viewer probably knew that P'Gell would turn out to be the main villain, since there was no other reason for her to be in the story.

DeSouza and director Michael Schulz (CAR WASH, TARZAN IN MANHATTAN) weren't capable of pulling of the stylistic flair of Eisner's comics-feature. However, they did make an effort to duplicate some of the visual tropes seen in the Eisner books, like the way the Spirit's clothes not infrequently get ripped during his many brawls. Though there only two comely young women in the film, the Spirit is automatically as catnip to both kittens, which is the one Eisner-trope the TV-film shares with the 2008 theatrical movie. Sam J. Jones, in addition to placing his ripped physique on display, successfully captures the "aw shucks" persona of the comics-hero, but DeSouza's script isn't more than occasionally amusing. And why bother introducing "Eubie"-- DeSouza's stand-in for the comic's "Ebony White," whose caricatured depiction was verboten by 1987-- if you're not going to give the hero's assistant anything fun to do? Robinson also doesn't get much help from DeSouza in portraying one of Eisner's classic "femmes fatales," but that too reflects not on the actress's talent but on the writer's decision to make her a "stealth villain" for no good reason.

THE MUTATIONS (1974)

 

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

Someone has said that artists are like sorcerers who can be bound by their own spells. Certainly this is true of those creators who become so enraptured by certain themes that they repeat them obsessively. That said, obviously there are also creators to whom spell-casting is just a job, and they use magic after the fashion of Mickey Mouse’s junior magician in FANTASIA. -- my review of THE CURSE OF THE MUMMY'S TOMB

THE MUTATIONS, which I'd only watched once long ago, seemed at second glance to have some deeper mythic content-- at least, more than one finds in the majority of "mad scientist" movies that don't have the names of either "Jekyll" or "Frankenstein" in the title. But on further reconsideration I decided that I was seeing more potential in the script than its creators had managed to execute.

MUTATIONS was directed by the famed cinematographer Jack Cardiff, but the credited writers were Edward Mann and Robert D. Weinbach. I don't know how the two became associated, but the earliest IMDB credits they hold in common appear for 1966's THE HALLUCINATION GENERATION, which both men co-wrote, with Weinbach producing and Mann directing. Most of their credits, whether together or separate from one another, seem to indicate just basic journeyman proclivities-- nothing all that bad, but nothing all that good either.

MUTATIONS was circulated with the alternate title of THE FREAKMAKER, and in one respect, the latter name indicates how much the writers were invested in providing a shout-out to Tod Browning's 1932 FREAKS. Given the way their script includes a quote of the signature line, "One of us, we accept him," there's not much question that the writers made some sort of connection. Since they hadn't made a lot of horror films before this one, perhaps they hoped to appeal to the readers of FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND, who might be the only movie-goers who were hip to the joys of the Browning film in 1974. 

MUTATIONS's starring mad scientist is Doctor Nolder (Donald Pleasance), sort of a botanical version of Doctor Moreau. Just like most of the demented researchers from B-films of the 30s and 40s, Nolder has a noble goal in mind, which for him justifies preying on random individuals to become his test subjects. Similarly, Nolder also requires a henchman to help him with the heavy lifting-- which is where the story veers off into the terrain of the freakshow.

In most mad science movies, the experimenter's failures simply die, after which the henchman dumps the bodies. Someone then finds the bodies and figures out the nature of these heinous crimes-for-science. But MUTATIONS builds up the role of the henchman in the form of Lynch (Tom Baker). Lynch himself is a freak, a victim of extreme acromegalic deformation, and when any of Nolder's freaky mutations survive, Lynch attempts to profit by placing these anatomical horrors in a freakshow, which he more or less co-owns with his midget partner Burns (Michael Dunn). Neither Burns nor any of the "natural freaks" at the show are aware of what Lynch is doing, but they know that he treats them cruelly and with contempt. Lynch feels free to do so because Nolder has promised to cure his acromegaly and make him normal, so that he feels as if he's going to be liberated from freak-status at some future point. To be sure, there's an odd scene in which Lynch successfully buying sex from a prostitute, but this incident is most likely meant to underscore his inability to empathize with the similar sufferings of other "freak-kind." Indeed, in the scene where the freaks rather sarcastically invite him to join their ranks for a birthday party, he smashes up the celebration, showing his utter indifference to them.

Nolder, though, is the source of what could have been a strong mythic discourse. When not mutating innocents, Nolder lectures a college class on his theories of creating spontaneous mutations of fully matured organisms, which he believes can make possible the survival of humankind. But in his lectures, he admits that some mutations can be maladaptive, which lead to what the general public call "freaks." At the same time, he refers to his students as "freaks" because they're part of the evolutionary scheme. In more inventive hands, this could have been a clever meditation on the nature of evolution. But though Mann and Weinbach come up with fairly insightful lines at times, there's no cohesive vision here, and so the movie devolves into just another rampaging monster flick-- more nonsensical than many, since the final monster is sort of a "Venus fly trap man." 

Nolder talks the right talk for a misguided idealist, but his character is never convincing in the least, and Donald Pleasance underplays so much as to seem somnambulistic. Baker, given a stronger character, is able to render a better performance, but he's still not a compelling presence, any more than are the freak-performers who turn on him in the end. Both, though, are still better than the barely sketched college students on whom Nolder preys. The support-cast includes a number of well-traveled actors-- Brad Harris, Jill Haworth, Julie Ege-- but they too don't get to do anything interesting. There is a little bit of upper-body nudity here, which secured MUTATIONS an "R' rating back in the day-- but the best visuals are the ones Cardiff provides at the beginning, to illustrate one of Nolder's biology lectures.   

STAR PILOT (1966)

 

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

In the sixties director Pietro Francisci wasn't getting big important assignments like 1952's QUEEN OF SHEBA, and STAR PILOT was probably his career low point, even though PILOT reunited him once more with SHEBA star Leonora Ruffo.

PILOT roughly resembles one of those captivity-narratives by Jules Verne, like MASTER OF THE WORLD, but with a lot more sex and violence. A UFO lands in the wilds of Sardinia. An Italian professor, accompanied by two hunky assistants and his dippy actress-daughter Luisa (Leontine May), sets up a small expedition to investigate the supposed landing. 

The explorers enter a deep cavern and find an alien construct, but don't know what to make of it. Leaving, the Italian quartet get ambushed by three gun-toting "men in black," who are Asian spies of some sort. (In the movie's only memorable bad line, the spies are very careful to specify that they are "Oriental" but "not Chinese.") The two assistants get into a brawl with the spies, in which the smaller Asians hold their own pretty well, However, the occupants of the alien spaceship-- the buried construct in the cavern-- choose this moment to emerge and capture everyone with their ray-guns. 

Kaena (Ruffo) is the captain of the ETs, consisting of just two hunky males, one of whom is played by former peplum-hero Kirk Morris. She tells the Earth-people that her ship came to the planet to monitor the humans' usage of nuclear power, lest they threaten Kaena's people. But the ship had mechanical difficulties, and Kaena needs the professor's help to repair the craft. She and her men hold Luisa hostage while the prof and his assistants do whatever they need to do. 

Francisci, one of the credited scripters, was clearly not interested in making up fake science to put across the sci-fi illusion. His main interest is in "the sexy," for Kaena is somewhat attracted to one of the assistants while Luisa has the hots for the Morris-alien (whose name is rendered both as "Belsy" and "Balsy.") The version of PILOT I watched fortunately interpolated some Italian subtitled dialogue left out of the American dub. Otherwise, I would not have known that Balsy tells Luisa that in his culture, the rulers' procreation is strictly monitored to keep their breed strong, while only the lower classes mate as they please. Luisa does not find this proposition romantic.

After repairs are completed, Kaena decides to abduct all of the explorers and to take them back to her world. During the trip, the Earthmen fight the hunky aliens and gain control of the spaceship. However, when they return the ship to Earth, they learn that in their absence nuclear war has decimated the planet. Having nowhere else to go, the whole troupe goes to Kaena's world. Surprise, surprise: nuclear radiation has compromised that globe too, though not as badly. The elitist rulers have deserted the world, leaving the hoi polloi to breed as they please, and the two groups of travelers realize that joining with this savage but egalitarian race is now their destiny.

Clearly Francisci didn't know how to properly build up to the sort of "philosophical reveal" that characterizes many of the best sci-fi films, and so his cross-mating scenario seems less than profound. I suppose Leontide May is the only performer who comes off well, but only because she's playing a sexy clown. However, if I had to decide what character occupies the centric role of Francisci's dull space-ride, I suppose it's Kaena, who represents her people and the "wrong turning" they took vis-a-vis eugenics.