SANTO VS. LAS LOBAS (1976)

 

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

Researchers better than me have speculated that this choppy film, boasting two directors, may have been started as early as 1972, abandoned for a while, and then finished up in 1976. This doesn't sound like the usual assembly-line production for other entries in the long-running Santo series. But then, LOBAS is barely like any other Santo film I've seen.

Of the two directors, Jaime Pons also has credits for both writing and executive production for the film. and one reviewer even speculates that Pons may have a minor acting role in the film's early sections. It seems axiomatic that someone decided to make a moody werewolf film with Santo in it, in contrast to the many more action-oriented movies in which the masked wrestler contended with less formidable fiends. I'd also say that the first half is the better organized of the two.

LOBAS begins with what proves to be its best scene. In a mundane car park, a young blonde woman (Erika Carlsson) is accosted by an older female. The old woman, name of Luba, says that her time is at an end and that the blonde must become the new Luba. Possibly using magical persuasion, Old Luba compels New Luba to stab her to death. Then, out of the shadows spring various shaggy women, who proceed to feast on Dead Luba. From then on, New Luba is totally a monster through and through, and she makes a beeline for Santo, the Silver Mask, to prevent his interference with the wolf-cult's plans.

  Luba approaches Santo in his dressing-room at a wrestling-ring, trying without success to seduce the hero. After she leaves, a werewolf-hunter tries to convince Santo to oppose the werewolf-cult. This version of Santo has apparently never met any monsters before, for he scoffs at the possibility of lycanthropes. However, while Luba later ambushes and kills the werewolf-hunter, in his room Santo is attacked by what is supposed to be a wolf (though it's clearly a dog). Santo's bitten and this convinces him to investigate further. He goes looking for another of the hunter's allies, but while they talk, a young woman in a swimming-pool signals that she's having trouble. The hunter-guy goes to her rescue, but it's another ambush, for she almost drowns the fellow, obliging the luchador to rescue him. Hunter-guy also informs Santo that if he doesn't kill off the leader of the werewolf cult by the time of the Red Moon, the wrestler will become a lycanthrope as well.

Everything in the first half suggests that Luba, repeatedly called the Queen of Werewolves, will bring about the coming apocalypse, in which werewolves destroy humanity. However, Luba is killed, so Santo needs a new Big Bad. He leaves the big city for a country town where the brother of the original hunter lives, and learns that there's a Werewolf King, name of Licar, who's going to bring about the chaos. After a lot of running battles with wolves and wolf-people, and a few scenes of werewolves trying to usurp regular mortals as Young Luba was possessed, Santo finally slays the King and wins his own freedom.

The makeup in LOBAS is the weakest element, but nevertheless both directors created a lot of forbidding scenes that feel more like a regular horror-flick than a masked wrestler movie. If the hero were just a strong guy without the charisma of Santo. I might have labeled LOBAS a horror-drama.       

THUNDERBOLTS: THE NEW AVENGERS (2025)

 

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

First off, this movie has nothing to do with the THUNDERBOLTS franchise introduced in the 1990s. The comics-title concerned a handful of long-term Marvel villains led by master evildoer Baron Zemo, who orders them to masquerade as a new team of heroes, in order to perpetrate a "long con" of some sort. However, over time the newly minted Thunderbolts began to respond to the public accolades they receive for their heroic acts, and some or all of them become heroes in truth. THUNDERBOLTS the comic was both a series steeped in the never-ending palimpsest of Marvel continuity, and also one that used the many colorful characters in new and interesting ways. (Note my mention of "color," it becomes important later.) 

I suppose these "New Avengers" could be said to follow a very loosely similar pathway. The members of the Movie Thunderbolts are also characters established in other films, though obviously not with nearly as much history as the Marvel villains in the comic. All five members-- Second Black Widow, Red Guardian, The US Agent (though he's not called that here), Ghost, and Winter Soldier-- are borderline MCU players who were not hardcore villains but were nevertheless morally compromised in one way or another. Like the original Thunderbolts, these ne-er-do-wells get gradually beguiled into taking on the role of heroes and are even called "Avengers" by some citizens, which is only possible because so many other "Big-Name Avengers" were killed or sidelined by earlier machinations of the MCU.   

Without dilating at length on the way these disparate characters get teamed up, it bears a very slight resemblance to the comic-book Avengers in their first issue, wherein Thor, the Hulk, Iron Man, Ant Man and the Wasp assemble to respond to the threat of villainous Loki. Here, previously established "real villain" Valentina de Fontaine (Julie Louis-Dreyfus) assembles three of the five (including a fourth character who's almost immediately killed off) in order to murder them all, as well as to cover her tracks. But Valentina's a clumsy Big Bad. The sometime SHIELD agent brings her pawns together at an installation that also hosts a mysterious fellow named Bob-- and Bob is the X-factor who unites the first three, as well as Red Guardian and Winter Soldier.             

Speaking of the character Winter Soldier, the THUNDERBOLTS creative with the longest track record in Marvel movies, Eric Pearson, often seems to have an eye to replaying the theme of CAPTAIN AMERICA THE WINTER SOLDIER here. SOLDIER was primarily a denouncement of the arms race, or at least the American part of that endeavor. As political critique, SOLDIER was lightweight, but it was a fast-paced, well-mounted adventure movie. In THUNDERBOLTS Valentina is trying to continue the arms race, but she wants to use transformed humans as her arsenal. Bob is one of her experiments, though she apparently lost track of him when she set up some of her agents to be destroyed in an explosion that will also eliminate evidence of Valentina's activities. Instead, US Agent, Ghost and Second Widow escape with Bob in tow, and in due time they learn that Bob is Valentina's attempt to breed her own Superman. But they also learn that Bob is psychologically erratic. Once Valentina guides the young man into becoming a dimestore Man of Steel named "Sentry," he ceases to be her puppet and becomes capable of wiping out the world with his super-powers, the same way the armed helicarriers of SOLDIER were capable of being turned against American citizens. 

    

Pearson's plot is nothing special, but it's at least a serviceable superhero concept, in contrast (say) to MADAME WEB. And THUNDERBOLTS is at least a watchable superhero film with some easy-to-follow action-scenes and even a few jokes that land pretty well. But it's far from being as good as it might have been.

One problem is that, for a superhero movie, it's almost as dispiriting to watch as Zach Snyder's MAN OF STEEL. All the characters are dressed in dark browns and blacks and blues, with little variation. I'm not going to say every superhero flick has to be filled with day-glo hues like the '66 BATMAN, but there should more visual variety than THUNDERBOLTS has. I can't be sure, but the dull palette of the movie may have meant to resonate with the "dark" histories of the Thunderbolts. Of the five of them, three have killed for one reason or another, one (Ghost) became a super-criminal to save her own life, and the other (Red Guardian) is a former Soviet spy who now subsists running an uber service. Pearson's script tries to make audiences like these characters by virtue of their having suffered, and their endgame involves managing to get through to the psychotic Sentry with their own human vulnerabilities. But the most amusing moment in the movie takes place during the credits, where assorted media pundits are making fun of the ramshackle nature of "The New Avengers." 

The basic notion of "putting old wine in new bottles" can work when it's done with real insight into how characters can bounce off one another. The AVENGERS comic book began as a tacit emulation of DC's JUSTICE LEAGUE, uniting three of Marvel's heavy hitters with the not-so-momentous Ant-Man and Wasp. Then in the middle sixties Stan Lee, who had added a recrudescent Captain America to the mix, decided to largely banish Thor, Hulk and Iron Man from the regular ranks, putting the Captain in charge of three newbie heroes. Some ruminations by Roy Thomas, Lee's successor on the title, suggest that if Thomas had had his way, he would have been bringing in Thor and Iron Man all the time. But focusing on characters who didn't have their own serials forced Thomas to come up with strong soap-operatic plots for any and all heroes unique to the AVENGERS feature. However, that's not going to be a consideration with any big-budget AVENGERS movies, since at most two can be made in the space of a year.

THUNDERBOLTS includes a post-credits scene heralding the future project AVENGERS DOOMSDAY, which sounds like it's going to be stuffed with more costumed crusaders than one can shake the proverbial stick at. That alone suggests to me that the ersatz Thunderbolts aren't going to get any more development in future than they did in their first outing.    

SWORDSMAN (1990)

 

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

I've seen reviews touting this 1990 Tsui Hark film as starting Hong Kong's wuxia craze of the 1990s. Historically, this may well be true; maybe it's the first expensive film of the period to focus on the battles of wuxia practitioners, who can wreak all sorts of magical phenomena with their kung fu. But for me SWORDSMAN is all but indistinguishable from a dozen other chopsockies in which martial masters show off incredible powers-- often in stories that throw far too many characters at the audience.

 In addition, SWORDSMAN is mostly about two or more clans fighting over a prized item: one of those tomes of martial lore with which the possessor can Take Over the Kung Fu World. This unoriginal plot-setup is not that much of a deficit, but to get past that predictability, a kung-fu film needs one or more likable protagonists, with whom to identify even when one can't keep track of all the rest of the cast.

Producer Hark chose to adapt a work by popular novelist Louis Cha, and his original director of choice was the celebrated King Hu, though Hu departed the project after some time and SWORDSMAN had to be finished up by other hands. The change in creative administrators may be responsible for the sponginess of the two main characters, though it might also be a factor stemming from the original novel. Though I'm unlikely to ever read a Cha novel even in translation, I can form some tentative conclusions based on my experience of his works in movies-- such as DRAGON CHRONICLES. Like SWORDSMAN, CHRONICLES offered a lot of wild FX, but barely any characters worth identifying with.

After the Big Book of Kung Fu is stolen from the emperor's library, two young kung-fu students of a particular school travel to meet with a noble named Lam, master of a divergent school. Ling (Sam Hui, apparently best known as a comedy actor) and Kiddo (Michelle Reis, a female masquerading as a young man) eventually find their emissary-duties compromised when Lam involves them in caring for the missing tome. Okay-- but why is Lam's theft of the volume justified, and why do Ling and Kiddo feel honor-bound to help him keep hold of stolen merchandise? Later the duo is attacked by two distinct killers, one sent by the emperor and one from their own school. What greater good do Ling and Kiddo serve by keeping hold of the book for the betterment of Lam's school?

A lot of Chinese kung-fu movies have come up with good takes on the schtick of a female masquerading as a male in the company of men, but SWORDSMAN seems routine at every pass. Even a scene in which Kiddo is bathing and Ling refuses to get out of the room seemed tedious. Later, another female, Blue Phoenix (Fennie Yuen) seems to be competing for Ling's interest, but this too doesn't seem to get started-- though Phoenix has the most noteworthy wuxia stunt, somehow projecting snakes out of her gown-sleeves. The various kung-fu magicks lacked panache, and I've frankly seen more interesting effects in much cheaper chopsockies. 

I saw this over 20 years ago and remembered nothing about it, but I must admit that the same is true of the purportedly superior sequel SWORDMAN II, which used the same characters but kept almost none of the actors from the original film.       

THE BLOODSTAINED SHADOW (1978)

 

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

For what it's worth, this is the first giallo I've come across in which the setting was that of a small/mid-size town with a rural atmosphere, as opposed to being either in a big city or at some ritzy manor out in the country. Despite the less intense setting, director/co-writer Antonio Bido-- who only helmed one other horror-movie, the slightly earlier WATCH ME WHEN I KILL-- generates ample tension despite the lack of extreme gore or artsy murder-methods.

Young Stefano (Lino Capolicchio) seeks a rest-cure in a small island-town near Venice, though the viewer is not told what he's resting up from. On his way there, he shares a train-ride with a pretty if enigmatic young woman, Sandra (Stefania Casini). Stefano, reaching his destination, is welcomed by his older brother Don Paolo (Craig Hill), the Catholic priest of the community. Though everything seems like a typical low-key rural town, Paolo makes mention of some of the covert scandals to which he, as a priest, has been made privy.

In contrast to convention, it's not the visitor to the town who witnesses a violent murder that night, but the resident priest, who looks out his window and sees a killer in black gloves and a black overcoat assaulting a woman. Paolo rouses Stefano, but by the time they get outside, neither figure is present. However, the next day the cops find the woman's dead body; that of a local medium already mentioned in Paolo's gossip. Some mention is made of an unsolved murder in the village from many years back, though no connection is offered. Later, Paolo receives a note threatening him if he doesn't keep his nose out of things.

Stefano's little problem is still not explained, though the audience sees him having a few weird flashbacks to some forbidding experience. He meets Sandra again and she invites him to dinner, where Stefano meets Sandra's stepmother. Meanwhile, one of the local mothers appeals to Paolo to speak to piano teacher Pedrazzi (Massimo Serato, the only name I recognized), accused of getting handsy with underage students, even though the grey-haired eminence already lives with a twenty-something young man. In what is almost certainly meant to be a clue, Pedrazzi calls the righteous priest a "hypocrite." 

Other victims are targeted, though the only connection may be that some or all victims may have sought the services of the lady medium--with the exception of Paolo, who's almost crushed by a falling statue. Stefano eventually sleeps with Sandra, though the sex is kept at a pleasant PG level. Sandra is also briefly menaced, though the killer isn't explicitly seen. It's arguable that Bido provides a few too many red herrings, as is seen with a local female abortionist with a demented adult son, who seem to be added for shock value. Still, I liked both the atmosphere and the score by Goblin, famed for working on various Argento movies. Considering that the killer doesn't use any exotic weapons, Bido provides a fair amount of variety in terms of the killings.

            

PHANTOM 2040, SEASON TWO (1995-6)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*

Since the wrapup of Season 2 seems a bit rushed, it's possible that the producers were hoping to get one more season for their unique concept. Still, at least some subplots, such as the disposition of the missing father of Kit, are fully realized.

RITE OF PASSAGE/THE WORLD IS MY JUNGLE-- Both of these episodes are just recap shows with some new voiceovers, so they have no impact on the ongoing stories or their mythicity.

SANCTUARY-- Guran plans to take Kit back to Bangalla in Africa in order to complete his training as the Phantom. However, Nia wants to kidnap the hero and take him back so that she can use him to restore her rulership. To that end, she teams up with a master hunter, Gunnar, to take Guran prisoner as a way of luring the Phantom into their clutches. Gunnar has a secret agenda though, for he plans to execute a "most dangerous game" with the Man Who Cannot Die, hunting the Phantom down in the Sector Zero jungle. But Guran happens to harbor a deep secret with respect to a mysterious creature known as "the Shadow Panther," and that secret, alluded to in Season One, gets fully exposed here. "Sanctuary" directly follows the events of the last new episode of Season One, "A Boy and His Cat," which ended with Max Jr having retreated from the real world into a cyberspace haven. Rebecca makes a long-shot attempt to revive her son.

THE TIES THAT BIND-- Rebecca ramps up her plans to launch Cyberville, which will include her project of decimating most of Earth's ecology, although Phantom and his allies don't yet know her specific plans. She does launch an assault on Sean One's orbiting cities, though. Graft, for his own reasons, joins Max Jr in cyberspace and manages to talk the eccentric genius-youth into returning to the real world. A small army of biots attacks Phantom and his allies at their clandestine meeting-place, and even after the androids are vanquished, this development raises the possibility of betrayal from within. Graft then confides to Vaingloria that he plans to take over Rebecca's Cyberville project, and he tries to use Doctor Jak to that end. At one point both Sagan and Kit's aunt are injured, enraging Phantom into destroying the Cyberville project, at least temporarily. The episode ends with Kit's self-doubts about his status as a hero.

THE WOMAN IN THE MOON-- Sean One survives Rebecca's attack, and he seeks to persuade all of the orbital colonies to declare independence from Earth. Max Jr and Graft, however, try to swing the vote to their benefit. Vaingloria and Doctor Jak get taken on board the satellite as part of the big scheme, so I guess Vaingloria is the titular "woman in the moon." (This was probably a reference to a famous film about space travel, directed by Fritz Lang, who also helmed the film METROPOLIS, to which PHANTOM 2040 owes more than a little). I confess I didn't follow why Graft and Max Jr were farting around with the voting process, though, since they end up attempting to blow up the satellite, which seems to have been Rebecca's preference as well.     

MATTER OVER MIND-- Thanks to Graft's uneasy partnership with Max Jr, the junior Madison decodes the formula for the super-poison Max Sr almost unleashed during the Sector Zero catastrophe. By chance hacker Sparks gains access to the formula as well, altering the Phantom to its existence. The cyber-entity Mister Cairo learns of the formula as well and his encounter with the intel triggers in him a vague idea to "go home," though he has no idea how he was created. Sparks' investigation reveals that Cairo is a computer-probe that was split off from Doctor Jak's mind, and thus Cairo earnestly desires to be reunited with his creator. The Phantom team seeks to prevent that unison to protect Kit's secrets, but Heisenberg and Pavlova intervene to liberate Cairo. When Phantom again seeks to keep Doctor Jak from downloading Cairo's information, the shock-jock reveals the humanity beneath his obstreperous facade. Jak was originally a crusading journalist married to a tabloid reporter named Pavlova (on whom he patterned his android helper). Human Pavlova sneaks on board the train carrying Max Sr's shipment of poison, but she's killed by exposure to the poison. To learn the reason behind her fate, Jak splits off a part of his own mind to become the cyber-entity Cairo, but this eradicates some of his own memories and apparently shifts him into emulating the persona of his dead wife, being preoccupied with meaningless entertainment. The Phantom team is also made privy to Rebecca's plan to test a new iteration of the super-poison, making it possible to destroy the Madisons' chemical factory. Cairo then gives Phantom a gift of information that will solve the mystery of the Sector Zero catastrophe. An earlier episode worked in a reference to Miles Archer in THE MALTESE FALCON by naming Kit's teacher after that character. Here, it's clarified that the cyber-entity Cairo is named after the gunsel of that novel, for the technician who creates Cairo is made to look like Sydney Greenstreet, the actor playing Cairo's boss in the 1941 FALCON movie. Also, the two Pavlovas bear a slight resemblance to the two Marias of METROPOLIS.

SINS OF THE FATHERS PARTS 1-2-- Rebecca assures Max Jr that she's always known about Graft's attempts to undermine her authority but claims that they cannot stop the Maximum Era. Phantom gets access to information that suggests that his father did indeed cause the catastrophe that slew Max Sr and many others, and this fills Kit with mammoth self-doubt. Meanwhile, Graft and Vaingloria team up with Cordwainer Bird and descend into cyberspace to hack into Rebecca's plans. Kit, despite his misgivings, agrees to travel to Bangalla as Guran wishes, to learn more about the Phantom Heritage. However. he's interrupted by Sagan and DVL, for Sagan has figured out Kit's double identity. Phantom sabotages Rebecca's next project, but it's a fake-out on her part, for she plans to unleash Cyberville and the poisoning scheme. 

In Bangalla Phantom meets the grandfather of Guran, who still maintains the original Skull Cave. Rebecca's life is now complicated in that Max Sr's memory engrams have once more been implanted in a robot body, and the demented automaton tries to take control of Maximum Inc. To the frustration of Max Sr 2.0, he learns that the shipment he originally put on the train-- a toxin designed to eliminate "ghostwood"-- was replaced by Scythe, a more extreme poison with which Rebecca hoped to eradicate the world, aside from the survivors in Cyberville-- meaning that, when the Phantom interfered with the train, Max Sr died because of his wife's meddling. Phantom learns the same information, which exculpates his father of responsibility for the Sector Zero deaths. Phantom returns to Metropia and tries to destroy Rebecca's new plans, only to be attacked by Graft, who's been promised a new organic body by Rebecca. During the struggle Graft almost falls from a great height and Phantom offers to rescue him if he surrenders. Graft feels a moment of remorse and allows himself to fall, but Max Sr 2.0 saves him. Max Jr blunders and seals all of Maximum Inc behind a force field. At the conclusion Kit finds evidence that his father didn't die in the train-crash, and there's a cliffhanger showing that the previous Phantom does still live.

THE SACRIFICE PARTS 1-2-- Thanks to the information provided by Cairo, Phantom locates his father, but the previous hero was indeed affected by the poison, and only recently emerged from a cryonic slumber after sixteen years. The team seeks to find the antidote to the poison to save his life. Meanwhile, Max Jr suspects that his robot-dad has some encrypted data that will make it possible for the Madisons to escape the force-field prison. Max Sr discloses a way that the field can be disrupted, but only by outside forces, so Rebecca reaches out to her sometime associate, the smuggler Gorda. The obese criminal invades the jungle and informs Phantom that said jungle, brought into existence by the mutation of ghostwood, extends to many other areas far from Metropia. Phantom tries to prevent Gorda from freeing the Madisons but fails, barely escaping with his life.

Phantom and Sagan seek to find the formula for the super-poison by covertly accessing the Madison data banks, and Mister Cairo shows up to provide assistance. However, the Madisons retaliate by shutting down the computer system, threatening Cairo's cyber-existence. Cairo succeeds in transmitting the antidote info to the Phantom team, and also meets an old cyber-memory of Max Sr, and the two exchange pleasantries before both are annihilated by the power shutdown. Rebecca then launches a plan to have her biots to the Enforcers, with the aim of usurping the control of the police over the city. With this takeover, Rebecca decides she doesn't need Cyberville as she'll control Metropia as her private kingdom. While Guran seeks to heal Kit's father, Phantom and Sagan disable the compromised biots. Kit's father is somewhat strengthened, though the antidote isn't enough to provide full recovery, and so he must be returned to cryonic status.

THE SECOND TIME AROUND-- Phantom and Guran encounter a relatively ordinary crime, that of hijacking. However, one of the crooks displays a gold coin bearing the traditional "Good Mark," signifying that at some past point in time, he received the protection of a previous Phantom. Guran advises Phantom to release the hijackers, and Phantom reluctantly agrees. The Madisons seek to find out the coin's significance, while the hero accesses VR to figure out how the Good Mark coin came to be in a criminal's possession. It's one of the few weak episodes but is worthwhile for at least showing how one of the earlier Phantoms operated.

ROGUE-- Though Doctor Jak doesn't remember his nobler self, due to his separation from Cairo, Pavlova, who does remember all the disclosures, returns to work as his assistant. Jak records what seems to be a revolt of the self-aware biots, led by Heisenberg, and shows the Phantom coming to the biots' aid against Enforcer robots. The Enforcers thus put out a warrant for Phantom, meaning that he can't be seen accepting aid from Sagan anymore. The greater threat, though, is that Max Jr, who invented Heisenberg, devises a new method to regain control of the android, briefly forcing Heisenberg to fight the hero. Though things get sorted out to the status quo by episode's end, the script makes a good case for the concept of biots becoming self-aware, though without overstating the political interpretation of this championing of diversity, as did so many bad movies of the 21st century.      

THE FURIES-- Phantom tries to figure out a cryptic re mark made by his father before he had to re-enter cryogenic stasis. While looking into the unique properties of ghostwood in the Ghost Jungle, Phantom and Guran spot Gorda setting up some infernal machine and they attack, only to be routed thanks to the secret presence of Max Sr 2.0. Graft and Max Jr attempt to hijack an outer-space shipment of iridium, but they have to tell Rebecca that Gorda got there first. Both "business partners" began considering ways to sever their relationship. Finally both women figure out that Max Sr is playing them, but all the disputants are arrested by Enforcers. Unfortunately, all are also released for lack of evidence 

MOMENTS OF TRUTH-- Phantom and Sparks seek to expose a smuggling operation by Rebecca, which strangely involves a shipment of "special roses." During the investigation, Phantom discovers that Sparks doesn't have much knowledge of many practical matters, so over the teen's protests he gets enrolled in school. An unknown party, later revealed to be Gorda, steals the rose shipment, but she can't initially figure out what's special about the flowers. Graft, in throwing down with Phantom, records the presence of Sparks, so the Madisons seek to learn his identity. The truth is eventually revealed, that the roses were capable of neutralizing the good effects of ghostwood. 

THE WHOLE TRUTH-- The final episode begins with Kit meditating on the presence of mysteries in his life, which may be the reason the scripters kept making references to THE MALTESE FALCON. Rebecca and Gorda, having made their peace, launch a biot attack on the Enforcers for the purpose of conquering the city at last, but Phantom suspects there's more to it than a simple assault. He breaks into Maximum Inc and encounters Max Sr 2.0, who persuades the hero to leave the compound so they can talk. Because the robot still possesses all of the living man's memories, he's able to let Phantom download those memories (using a passcode, "flowers of evil," derived from the title of a poetry-collection by the original Baudelaire). In keeping with many spotty references to a friendship between Kit's father and the original Max Sr, the robot discloses that the two of them were seeking to implement ghostwood to clean up the toxins in Metropia, but without allowing the special plant to crowd out all other plants. As mentioned in an earlier episode, Rebecca substituted tanks of poison in the ghostwood shipment and caused the train to crash in a failed attempt to poison the city. Thus she killed her husband and almost slew Kit's father. (We also see in these memories an image of Max Jr as a pure young child, who has a normal-looking cat named Shakespeare.) All of the villains track Phantom and the robot to the Ghost Jungle, but Phantom evades them, hoping he can use the automaton's data to completely cure the comatose father. However, the cure fails and Kit must resign himself to his father's passing, as well as terminating Max Sr 2.0 (at the latter's request, of course). In a hurry-up-and-finish resolution, the four villains, who have dodged the law over and over are somehow convicted this time, and Kit can finally think about living another life, until the Phantom is needed again.    

                      

  

IN THE NAME OF THE KING 2: TWO WORLDS (2011)

 

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

Michael Weldon of the long vanished PSYCHOTRONIC magazine coined a great phrase for review of films like this one: "Sequels No One Asked For." Probably one of the least likely sources for added installments was Uwe Boll's flop fantasy 2007 IN THE NAME OF THE KING. I can only assume that Boll crunched some numbers and realized he could make some degree of profit by churning out extensions of this dubious franchise on a tight budget, for sale to cable/streaming.

So in my review of the original film, I found it to be a patchwork of poorly realized concepts from Tolkien and its alleged video-game source. But KING 2 is surprisingly good-- for about the first third of the film, after which it plunges into incoherence.

Boll starts out with action, showing a cloaked woman. identified as a sorceress (Natalie Burn), running from guys in black garments. She turns on them, flinging medieval grenades at some of them and dispatching others with twin daggers. She escapes into a space-warp. Cut to a martial-arts dojo in Vancouver, and we see Granger (Dolph Lundgren) demonstrating to a gaggle of peewee students the fine art of beating up four other adult attackers. It's a little confusing as to whether or not the attackers are being paid for their labors-- it looks like they're paying Granger for the privilege of getting ass-kicked. Maybe they lost a bet? Soon we're out of the dojo, as Granger goes home to a lonely apartment. It's efficiently communicated that he's former Special Forces and that he suffers some survivor's guilt, wishing idly that he might've died with some of his buddies.

Then both the sorceress and her black-garbed adversaries swarm into Granger's apartment, forcing him to fight for his life. Sorceress manages to grab the ex-soldier and whisk him into her world, the quasi-medieval fantasy-world of Ehb. The sorceress is killed by a bunch of warriors (after which she's pretty much forgotten for the rest of the film), and those warriors take Granger prisoner.

In short order the dazed ex-soldier is introduced to the "King" (Lochlyn Munro) of the title (whose only proper name, weirdly, is "Raven"), a big lug named Allard who seems to be spoiling for a fight with Granger, and a doctor (Natassia Malthe) named-- wait for it-- Manhattan. Actually, I don't believe anyone in KING 2 ever speaks that risible name, so I guess it's an in-joke. Raven apologizes for how his men roughed up Granger and informs the Earthman that he's the savior of Ehb according to some prophecy. Granger alone can destroy the evil sorceress known as The Holy Mother, and the confused fellow attempts to roll with this notion, as well as with being in some faux-medieval world. After some blandishments from the King and some threats from Allard, Granger's given a private room with a hot and cold running chippie. Granger dispenses with the chippie's services, but shortly thereafter he has his various wounds tended by the local sexy female doctor, and small sparks ensue.

I note in passing that even though Raven is strongly suggested to be the story's villain, Munro's approach to villainy is the exact opposite of the over-ripe performance of Matthew Lillard in the first film. Raven is sort of smarmy, and yet not without humor and the appearance of humility. That's why I could buy it that Granger more or less welcomes the chance to take on another killing-mission, even if it's for some medieval dude he never met before. Lundgren's charisma sells this notion better than the script does, and I could even buy that Sexy Lady Doctor is so taken with Granger's charms that she quickly beds him, though not without some morning-after regrets.

Unfortunately, the last engaging moment in the movie is when Granger wants to go off and assassinate the Holy Mother with nothing but a knife, but Raven insists on sending him along with Allard, Manhattan and a cadre of men. After this, Granger's arc as a soldier seeking surcease of sorrow comes to an end, and he becomes a cog in the jumbled gears of the story's clockwork. The detachment is attacked by more black-garbed ninjas, but Granger notices that one of the killers refrains from attacking him, the guy who's supposed to kill the ninja's lady boss. Does the Holy Mother have some special plans for Granger?

Well, no big surprise, the Holy Mother is the good guy and Raven is the bad guy. The old broad also informs Granger that she saved the child-heir of the previous regime ("The King Before," presumably the "Farmer" character) and sent that kid to an adoption agency on Earth. Did we really have to get another "prince-raised-as-a-commoner" trope, since it didn't work that well the first time? Also, for some reason Raven wants to unleash a plague on Earth, though I never saw how that was going to help him cement his power. The latter half of the film devolves into a lot of expositional blather and dull fight-scenes. Granger returns to his own world and doesn't "take Manhattan" with him, but the end of their off-again, on-again romance carries no emotional impact.

So instead of being blah all the way through like the first movie, KING 2 is promising at the start and then unravels into incoherence. I'm not sure which is worse.

                           

ASSASSIN (1986)

 

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

I saw a lot of the journeyman-TV work of Sandor Stern, but not much of his writing and/or directing proved memorable, and his one big break into feature films, writing the screenplay for THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, is far from one of my fave horror flicks. That said, I did at least remember this mostly routine TV-movie better than a lot of others.

It's a mark of Stern's gimcrack scripting that when retired CIA agent Henry Stanton (Robert Conrad) is persuaded to help terminate a killer who's preying on other agents, nobody thinks it necessary to impart to Henry the information that the killer is a high-functioning robot. Even the woman Henry is partnered with, a female scientist named Mary (Karen Austin), doesn't bother to explain this little detail until after Henry has had his first run-in with the super-strong automaton. Since it's a TV-film, the ballyhoo surrounding the story would have ensured that anyone watching knew the subject matter, so who was Stern trying to surprise?

That said, once that clumsy set-up is done, ASSASSIN moves briskly enough from point A to B and so on. Mary explains that the robot (Richard Young), given the ironic name of Robert Golem, was designed to function as an assassin for the CIA, but for some reason it malfunctioned and started killing off its handlers-- one of whom is Mary. In contrast to the cinematic Terminators on whom this killer robot is partly modeled, Golem is supposed to function in society like a regular human, and to that end he's been given a good-looking face and build and even instructed in how to seduce a woman if it serves his mission.           

Yet for every element Stern provided that might hold some promise, he largely botches that potential. Golem does indeed seduce a young woman to give himself some cover, but nothing much comes of this. Late in the movie, because Golem can access all CIA files, he tries to persuade Henry to desert the agency boss because the guy betrayed Henry on a previous mission. Henry is clearly irritated by the revelation but he nevertheless doubles down his efforts and does end up terminating the terminator. It might have been more interesting had Henry had some real internal debate about which villain was the greater menace.

Since Young isn't on screen enough to build up his persona, Robert Conrad is pretty much the whole show here. As Mary, Karen Austin doesn't have much to do but to provide exposition. There's one odd moment where, despite being a non-combatant, she gutpunches some enemy agent. I like to think the actress complained about having too little to do, so Stern just cobbled together a scene where she hit someone.