BATGIRL: YEAR ONE (2009)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            This will be one of my shortest reviews, because, having reviewed this project's source material here, there's no need to repeat any of my observations for this "motion comic" DTV film. This YEAR ONE reproduces all of the major plot points of the nine-issue comics series, introducing DC's then current origin for the character of the Barbara Gordon Batgirl. It even repeats one development that should have been left on the trashheap in the original comic: a confusing side-plot about a crook with a flamethrower trying to bite the style of the "official" Firebug. Given that this Firebug has only been operating for a few weeks at most, the comics-writers threw in this development for no good reason-- but the motion comic reproduces that bad plotline accurately.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Since the techs behind this YEAR ONE are simply photographing the art of Marcos Martin, the visuals have the same basic appeal, though I can't imagine anyone preferring to watch this herky-jerky assemblage of five-minute segments, which can't duplicate the pace of the original comic. But as the old saying goes, for those who like this type of thing, this is the type of thing they'll like.     

JLA ADVENTURES: TRAPPED IN TIME (2014)

                                                                         

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological*                                                                                                                                             I've not been able to find any online references to the genesis of this project, though unlike most Warners Animation DTV films, it had an early release to Target stores. TRAPPED has, in addition to a different header than all other JUSTICE LEAGUE films, a more "all ages" feel than the rest of the films, and it's been speculated that the characters were re-designed to fit the costumes seen in the then-current "New 52" comics-line. TRAPPED is basically watchable superhero fare, and though its time-travel plotline has its share of plot-holes, it's not nearly as morally noxious as JUSTICE LEAGUE: THE FLASHPOINT PARADOX. The plot commences with Lex Luthor's Legion of Doom setting up a world-conquest scheme in the snowy arctic, and the League shows up to stop them. After a pretty good opening fight-scene, Luthor is inundated by an avalance and supposedly killed, after which the Legion members scatter. Immediately two plot-holes manifest: why aren't the super-competent heroes able to capture even one of the escaping villains, and why can't the hyper-powered Superman find a body covered in snow?

Of course, the reason is that mere consistency would interfere with the contrived plot. The viewer is then transported to the 30th century, where, as comics mavens know, the Legion of Super-Heroes resides. The script does a poor job of explaining what the Legion is, trusting only to a short conversation between two Legion candidates, Dawnstar and Karate Kid. That same conversation provides exposition as to the fate of Luthor: at some point in time, he was found encased in solid ice. So the advanced inhabitants of the 3oth century take the presumably dead body of a 21st century human-- and put it on display, rather than giving the corpse a decent burial? But the body has to be on display, because Luthor's just in suspended animation a la Captain America (albeit for centuries), and Karate Kid has to have the chance to screw up and release the villain. Luthor uses a conveniently placed weapon to knock out the aspirant heroes, and then, in the process of figuring out where and when he is, the bald evildoer reads up on the history of Superman-- including the story of his advent to Earth and his secret ID as Clark Kent.

Luthor also manages to release from captivity a Legion villain, The Time-Trapper, who makes it possible for both baddies to seek out the 21st century. Luthor re-assembles most of the Legion and sends them back in time to rewrite Superman's history by making sure he's not raised by the Kents. Meanwhile, Dawnstar and Karate Kid also travel back to 2014. They both get into a fight with Robin-- though I was never sure which Robin-- but other League members show up, and Wonder Woman interrogates the would-be Legionnaires with her magic lasso. Once the Leaguers are apprised of the situation, they too travel back in time to the period when the Kents found Baby Kal-El. All of these attempts to change or restore history are silly, but they lead to the film's most amusing scenes: when Solomon Grundy and Cheetah masquerade as Kal-El's parents to keep him out of the hand of the Kents. (In some of the darker comics of this era, the two villains probably would have just killed the prospective parents of Superman rather than bothering with a hoax.)   

After that moderately entertaining sequence, the rest of the film falls into a predictable series of aimless fights and paradoxes, none of which I found interesting. Naturally, things get reset to the original default so that Luthor no longer knows Superman's big secret and the two 30th-century heroes go back home. Most of the dialogue is forgettable too, though I liked some of the lines written for Michael Donovan's Bizarro. TRAPPED's worst aspect is that after the status quo has been restored, the script throws in a last-minute cliffhanger. Possibly the architects of this production were finagling to guarantee a sequel, but all they succeeded in doing was to leave the younger audiences in a state of perpetual puzzlement.                                                                           

TOO BEAUTIFUL TO DIE (1988)

                                  

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

                                                                                                               TOO BEAUTIFUL TO DIE, called a "sequel in name only" to the 1985 giallo NOTHING UNDERNEATH, picks up the earlier film's trope of "the world of modeling is empty of morals and/or intelligence."      

I gave the 1985 film a rating of "fair" because I thought the writers came up with a novel way to motivate an ordinary fellow (albeit one with an extraordinary talent) into finding the murderer of his sister. But this time, director/co-writer Dario Piana (in his only horror movie) shows a young woman being abused by the representatives of the modeling culture and then slain. Though there is a character investigating her death (apart from the usual dogged cop assigned to the case), that civilian investigator doesn't "come out" until near the movie's end. So the main thrust of the story is that of "ten little Indians," as each of the persons who participated in the abuse gets knocked off in turn. Since the abuse is heinous-- a rich man wants to rape a particular model, and her manager and three other women facilitate the crime-- the viewer certainly won't mind seeing each of the guilty parties die-- though ironically the rich guy is murdered offstage. But then, he's not "too beautiful to die," and so Piana concentrates on the lovely ladies falling victim to the mystery killer. 

Aside from the opening rape-scene, Piana doesn't deliver any memorable cinematic murders, and there's not a lot of nudity. However, the director, formerly involved in producing music videos, delivers a lot of footage of gorgeous females, such as Giola Scola (as the victim), Randi Ingerman and Florence Guerin. The script tosses out a couple of clues about the murderer's identity and his modus operandi but then doesn't really deliver a payoff for said clues. The killer is revealed in the end and is good enough to explain all of his motivations to his intended victim, but though the rant is diverting it's never compelling. In other words, it's just another giallo with a lot of murders and pretty women, which may be all a given viewer really expects for his entertainment.

                                                              

THE CHRISTMAS DRAGON (2014)

 

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

CHRISTMAS DRAGON is a slow-moving American kids' fantasy shot in the forests of Utah with assorted no-name actors. I think the location is supposed to be medieval England because of some of the names (Garrett, Roslyn) and one or two English accents, but no place-names are ever mentioned in the dialogue. I assigned DRAGON a fair mythicity mostly for the basic notion of putting a Santa Claus narrative in a vaguely Tolkienian world of elves and goblins-- Tolkienian mostly because in that universe, goblins/orcs are created as a mockery of elves. In this movie by director/co-writer Tom Lyde, elves are turning into goblins-- though the main threat to human welfare is the disappearance of "Father Christmas." Unfortunately, Lyde has little idea as to how to construct a world of magical fantasy, relying more on hijinks after the fashion of GOONIES.

There's some wasted potential drama in the initial set up, taking place six years before the main story. Ayden (Bailee Michele Johnson) is a teenaged girl living on a farm with her parents, first seen receiving a Christmas present from them (with a quick cut to the beaming face of Father Christmas, as if he had anything to do with the matter.) Then emissaries from the local lord, a pair of tax collectors named Gazared and Bomtail, visit the farm, accompanied by a quartet of hired thugs and a jail-wagon. A quarrel breaks out, making it evident that the tax collectors came with the intention of capturing the family and selling them as slaves. (The briefly mentioned lord they work for is never "on stage.") When the emissaries stick the two parents in the rolling cell, Ayden flees to avoid capture. She stumbles across a nest of dragon eggs that she's never seen there on her own land. The trespass brings a Mama Dragon swooping down, and she burns up all the guards, though the two collectors in charge escape. Sadly for Ayden, the ravening beast also firebombs Ayden's parents.  

                                                                                                               Cut to six years later. Ayden, rather than being embittered by her loss, seems to be a happy, level-headed teen who doesn't in the least hate dragons, even though one gratuitously killed her parents. Ayden lives in a vaguely religious orphanage with five other kids, mostly younger than Ayden, and most of whom sport American accents. She waxes rhapsodic about the custom of gift-giving, but the other orphans seem to think Christmas is some ancient custom no one celebrates any more. Then Ayden meets an elf in the woods. It's not clear if she's seen any elves before this, though the girl seems surprised that this one has super-long ears and fangs. The ugly elf gives her a magical "waystone" and tells Ayden she alone can save Father Christmas, who stands on the brink of death. He also speaks of some vague cosmic threat called "The Snarl" but does not explain further.                                                                                                                                                                                                             The glowing stone convinces the other kids to join Ayden on a quest to find Father Christmas's HQ, which is implicitly somewhere in their country and not at a certain North Pole. One kid gets left behind when the two slavers from earlier take him prisoner, and often these two minor evildoers seem the main villains over the abstraction of the Snarl, for the kids encounter Gazared and Bomtail in two separate scenes later. After a lot of pointless wandering in the forest, the waystone guides the kids into contact with a roguish adult named Airk, who joins them despite his having a deep dark secret.   

The kids and their adult friend wander some more and encounter a small handful of ogres and goblins, while someone makes the belated conclusion that the once beneficent elves are changing into malevolent goblins. The group also comes across a young dragon wounded by human hunters, and Ayden is first in line to play the role of Androcles to the hurt beast.

                                                                                                              We finally get all the exposition that should've come in the first hour when the kids are attacked by goblins but saved by a staff-wielding kung-fu lady elf, Saerwyn (Melanie Stone, the only performer who puts some spirit into her line-readings). After also punching out Airk, thus establishing their shared romantic history, Saerwyn explained that Airk stole a magical globe from his father-- none other than Father Christmas himself-- thus bringing about the crisis. The ersatz Santa Claus has for a thousand years used the magic globe both to suspend time on the night when he runs around delivering gifts, as well as suspending his own aging processes. Airk's mother died at some earlier point, but he stole the globe with some half-baked notion of turning back time to bring her back. He presumably failed but didn't just go back home to return the globe for "Reasons." Now that everyone finally knows everything-- except maybe what the Snarl is-- the kids can journey to Father Christmas's home and dope out what they can do to revive "the spirit of Christmas" with their childish imaginations. The aged Father gets all better and even drives a flying sleigh pulled by the young dragon rescued earlier.  

I suppose I'm being harsh with a project almost certainly aimed at very young, very undiscriminating children. But Lyde does such a bad job with some half-decent concepts that I think even most of those kids would be pretty bored and would start asking to play RUDOLF THE RED-NOSE REINDEER before even finishing this draggy dragon effort.     

                                                                                                                     

GOLIATH AT THE CONQUEST OF DAMASCUS (1965)

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

One or two online reviews tagged this late peplum movie as the reason the genre died off in the mid-sixties. Though it's a very minor example of its species, in terms of simple entertainment value DAMASCUS probably isn't much worse than a lot of lesser efforts, including the 1959 movie that initiated the often-inappropriate use of the name "Goliath" for various muscleman heroes. It's also no worse than the companion film writer-director Domenico Paolella made around the same time with many of the same cast-members, not least star "Rock Stevens" (Peter Lupus) as the hero. Some eagle-eyed reviewers spotted that DAMASCUS re-used some cavalry scenes from HERCULES AND THE TYRANTS OF BABYLON. 

The rightful ruler of Damascus (apparently "Bagdad" in the original script) has been deposed by a usurper with the unusual name of "Thor" (Piero Lulli). When the ruler sends his beautiful daughter to be married to the prince of another realm, possibly with an eye to making new military allies, a gang of bandits abduct Princess Meriem (Anna Maria Polani). These Bedouin-looking bandits, who sport another curious name (Kara-Ghitai, which sounds like Kara-Khitai, an archaic name for China), hold Meriem prisoner, and though her father summons the help of strongman Goliath (who has no backstory), the hero arrives too late.

Skipping over a lot of boring conspiracy conversations, Goliath begins the process of infiltrating the bandits so that he can liberate Meriem. The princess' father sends Goliath to Damascus to make contact with a couple of loyalist spies, Yassour (Mario Petri) and Fatma (Helga Line). For some reason, Yassour tests Goliath's loyalty by instructing Fatma to tempt him with pleasures of the flesh, and though Goliath seems to be more intrigued than most peplum-heroes, he refuses lovely Fatma's enticements and passes the test. In due time Goliath joins the Kara-Ghitai by the unusual strategy of getting into a fight with them to prove his mettle, and surprisingly, they accept this complete outsider. They almost brand Goliath with their insider facial mark, but they get interrupted, so that the star doesn't have to spend the rest of the film with an appliance on his face.

DAMASCUS doesn't have many spectacular battle-scenes, not counting those recycled from the earlier film, and the closest thing to a demonstration of uncanny strength comes near the end, when Goliath and another muscleman force open the gates of Damascus by sheer glute-power. Goliath by himself has a scene where he stabs an enemy with a stone thunderbolt taken from the statue of a local pagan deity, but the concluding sword-battle is between secondary hero Yassour and a traitorous Bedouin. Meriem is reunited with her groom and Damascus is saved. Lupus/Stevens projects a certain degree of charm in his stolid role, but the movie's main assets are the two Euro-babes, though they don't get to do much of anything. I've seen eight of Paolella's directorial efforts (dubbed of course), and the only one I found exceptional was an isophenomenal spaghetti western called HATE FOR HATE, which genre was probably a better fit for the raconteur than that of peplum.        

CHRISTMAS IN CARTOONTOWN (1996)

 

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

I'd never seen this 40-minute DTV cartoon until encountering it on streaming. The animation is mediocre at best, and the songs are utterly forgettable, so it's got no chance of rating with the best of the animated Xmas specials. However, even though the script's three writers don't have too many credits beyond other animated features by the company UAV, the story's reasonably original.

While Santa and his elves are gearing up production for the annual Christmas run, a mysterious conspirator causes Irv the Elf to get imprisoned in one of the toys and shipped out to a chain store. (Why does Santa even have contacts with any stores?) The conspirator knows that Irv the Elf is the only entity who can activate the flying power of the reindeer (they don't just fly on their own?), so without Irv, Saint Nick's operation is eighty-sixed.

Two good little children, brother Alex and sister Heidi, buy the snow globe toy in which Irv's imprisoned, and release him. He appeals to them to help him reach the North Pole, and they agree. Irv explains that mirrors are frozen magic the way ice is frozen water-- which is one of the script's more original thoughts-- and he uses a snowflake-amulet to pull all three of them through the nearest mirror, into Fairy Tale Land.

Well, that's what the place ought to be called. I don't think it's called "Cartoontown" in the narrative either, but maybe someone thought "toons" were more salable in the DTV market than fairy tales. In any event, Alex, Heidi and their height-challenged friend have to hoof it to the North Pole, asking for directions from such luminaries as Pinocchio, Jack (of Beanstalk fame) and his giant, Snow White, and Cinderella and her Prince Charming. (The Cinderella sequence provides one of the few jokes that works.) The trio also encounter the Witch from "Hansel and Gretel," who tries to cook them in a pot, and who is eventually revealed as a confederate of the anti-Christmas conspirator.

Once the kids reach the North Pole, Santa welcomes Irv, and Christmas goes forward. The villain reveals himself as an evil toy manufacturer, only seen before this on a billboard, but he's defeated in jig time. Alex and Heidi return home and enjoy a Santa-fied holiday. It's an odd little confection, but if it's not among the best of its kind, it's not among the worst either.      

FIVE RIDERS VS KING DARK/HANUMAN AND THE FIVE RIDERS (1974)

 

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

It's not often that a thief makes better use of his ill-gotten goods than the original owner. But such seems to be the case-- in an aesthetic though not moral sense-- regarding what the Thai company Chaiyo did with respect to the property of the Japanese Toei Studios.

Readers of this blog may recall my recent review of THE SIX ULTRA BROTHERS VS. THE MONSTER ARMY. This tokusatsu movie was a legitimate inter-company collaboration, in which the Japanese company Tsuburaya contracted to loan out its Ultraman franchise to Chaiyo, who crossed over the six brothers of the title with a Thai super-being, Hanuman, based upon the monkey-god of Asian mythology. As I noted in the review, Chaiyo eventually attempted to use that collaboration to make a legal claim upon the Ultraman property, but I believe that came some years later.

Apparently BROTHERS made money, so Chaiyo reached out to another Japanese company, Toei, and asked to do the same sort of project with the company's "Kamen Rider" franchise. But Toei turned the Thais down. Toei had enjoyed years of popularity with that property-- which, like Ultraman, brought in a new protagonist each season, keeping only a tenuous connection between each show through the overriding concept. In 1974, the current "Kamen Rider" show was titled KAMEN RIDER X, and Toei was confident enough in the franchise's moneymaking power that (from what I can glean) they released a half-hour special to movie theaters. This was FIVE RIDERS VS. KING DARK, which featured Kamen Rider X but also had the previous four Kamen Riders of other seasons as guest stars. 

I've watched an unsubtitled Japanese YouTube featurette that may or may not be the same release seen in theaters in 1974-- though I speculate that at most that show might be missing a few short scenes. King Dark, the regular opponent of Kamen Rider X, sends forth his "Myth Cyborgs" to capture ordinary Japanese citizens so that the King can drink their blood-- even though he's a giant robot who's usually seen lying on his side like a Buddha-statue. For reasons not clear to me, the other four Riders join Kamen Rider X to beat down the King's assorted monsters, including "Frankenbat," who looks like the Frankenstein Monster in a Man-Bat suit. In the end the King gets away, just as he would in a regular TV episode.

According to this review, Chaiyo decided to ignore Toei's refusal and made their crossover film anyway, in part by pilfering some of the footage from FIVE RIDERS. Most of this footage appears in the first thirty minutes of HANUMAN, and in later sections, the company used its own actors wearing replicas of the Kamen Rider costumes. The most one can say of the film's use of the Riders is that the heroes are pretty dull both in their original forms and in these unflattering imitations.

The writers for HANUMAN, however, interpolated scenes taken from ULTRA BROTHERS (solely scenes dealing with the Thai creation Hanuman) and devised new scenes in which King Dark also manifested in a human-sized form, garbed in armor and a big helmet. This version of King Dark rants like a maniac about feeding on virgin blood, and the viewers (some of whom were surely kids) see many victims, mostly female, being exsanguinated for the corpuscles. But the Riders begin cutting off the King's supply of blood-banks, so he demands a solution from one of his subordinates. Said flunky says that there's a scientist, Doctor Wisut, who can create new monster-pawns for the King. Yet the flunky asserts that for some vague reason, the only way to capture Wisut is to free a dead man from Hell.

This is where the recycled footage from ULTRA BROTHERS comes in. In that film, three bandits killed a young Thai boy. "Ultra Mother" brought the boy back to life by fusing him with the monkey-god Hanuman, who for whatever reason only appears a skyscraper-sized fighter. Flashbacks show how the giant hero avenged his murder by finding the three bandits, whom he slaughters mercilessly. These three men's souls end up in Thai Hell, and it's the head bandit, Kaan, whom King Dark's flunky claims to be the only one they can use to obtain Wisut.

There follows a brief tour of the tortures of the wicked in Hell-- very gory stuff for a kids' film-- and then we see the King of Hell railing at the three bandits, who I guess are new arrivals. One of King Dark's agents infiltrates Hell and rescues Kaan. The Hell-King's okay with that, because he knows Kaan will end up in his hands sooner or later.

Kaan is apparently given new powers by King Dark, for he spies on Doctor Wisut and his cute girlfriend Julie. Kaan then transforms himself into the image of Julie and lures Wisut into a trap. The continuity is jumbled-- we next see both Wisut and the real Julie in King Dark's realm. After Kaan fails to force Wisut to cooperate by tickling his feet (!), the evildoer threatens to drain Julie's blood. Wisut caves and creates Frankenbat, who, according to one line of dialogue, supposedly has powers superior to the Riders. Nevertheless, the heroes beat the monster. Wisut obligingly creates a bunch of less memorable monsters, leading to more fights between monsters and riders, with Hanuman eventually joining for his only new scenes. Kaan practically takes over as the main villain, chewing the scenery over and over until he's finally killed and sent back to Hell. There the Hell-King merrily cuts off the heads of all three bandits at once, maybe just for symmetry's sake, and King Dark escapes once again.

Though I'm not making any great claims for the HANUMAN film-- which I've heard only circulated in grey-market copies-- it is a lot more visually stimulating than the original RIDER featurette. That doesn't excuse the outright theft, of course. I can't speak to the overall quality of the Kamen Rider property, as I've barely seen any of the shows, but I'm sure there are a lot of Japanese tokusatsu that can equal the Thai movie for demented-seeming visuals. But the second (and probably last) appearance of Hanuman is still memorably bizarre, especially in comparison to the rather so-so first film.