FANTASTIC FOUR (2005), FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER (2007)

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

I remarked in my review of the 2015 FANTASTIC FOUR that it was so bad that the films by director Tim Story and his scripters looked good by comparison. Therefore I decided that I should examine them once more.

Both films are, as I said, pedestrian affairs, particularly given the great strengths of the original Lee-Kirby comics. I have not read the ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR reboot on which the first film was originally based, but it may be the source of the adequate chemistry between the foursome. At the same time, UFF may be the source of the film's worst mistake: making Doctor Doom a modern financial wizard, to whom Reed Richards must come begging to facilitate his new project. One shouldn't expect total faithfulness to the original versions of the 1960s, but Story's Doom is nothing but an empty shell, in which all the elements-- his rivalry with Richards, his reason for donning his signature armor-- are stunningly tedious.

The early sections, in which the irradiated foursome became acquainted with their new capacities, and more or less luck out, becoming popular celebrities at the same time. At the same time, Doom's fortunes fall as the foursome's rise, and so he turns into a super-villain, with no real purpose beyond attacking his super-powered foes.

There are some decent character moments scattered throughout the meandering script, but even the strongest arc-- the romance of Reed and Sue-- fails to prove compelling, since it depends on a conception of Richards as a typical absent-minded professor-type. Ben Grimm, prior to becoming the Thing, is given a girlfriend named Debbie, who has no purpose in the story except to reject him instantly when he becomes monsterized, thus conveniently setting up the monster-hero's encounter with his prospective new girlfriend, the blind-- and black-- Alicia. The Human Torch, who tended to be somewhat negligible in the comics, becomes an egotistical "player," but although he gets many of the best lines, advocating the fun of being a superhero, his character too comes off as somewhat hollow.

RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER has the advantage of  not having to establish the primary heroes and their villain Doom (who makes a return appearance). However, its attempt to translate the mythic charms of Lee and Kirby's so-called Galactus Trilogy is almost a total wash. Again, I don't mind the judicious excision of elements that wouldn't have worked on the screen, such as the appearance of the Watcher and the visual conception of Galactus as a giant guy with a big helmet. But the fact that the world-devourer Galactus is given no compensating visual depiction speaks to the poverty of imagination here.

The Silver Surfer's arc is curiously inert and unimpressive. In the original Lee-Kirby story, the Surfer is an alien being who simply does not comprehend why organic beings should mind being devoured by his planet-eating master. (Later Stan Lee backed off on this depiction, depicting the Surfer as a more rational humanoid alien, transformed into his space-surfing form by his master, though he never actually guides Galactus to any worlds with life on them.) The movie's Surfer borrows from both origins: he tells Sue Storm that he became the Surfer so that his world would be spared by Galactus, but there seems to be no question that he has indeed sacrificed other living worlds to his master. The director and writers utterly fail to put across the alien's conversion to the importance of humanity, giving him a banal reason: that Sue reminds him of his lost love back on his homeworld.

Doom provides a secondary menace while the characters try to prepare for the advent of Galactus, and he's no more interesting this time around, except in one scene. The scripters evidently read a sequence from the comics in which Doom sought to steal the Surfer's power, and adapted this basic idea. This engenders the film's only mythic moment in terms of visuals: Doom approaches the Surfer and seeks to persuade the alien to serve his evil purposes. Because Story keeps Doom's familiar metallic visage hidden by his hood, he projects a more Satanic aura here, not least because the action is set upon a "high place," such as is suggested by Satan's final temptation of Jesus. However, after this one intriguing moment, Doom simply becomes a standard badguy once more, and the heroes' exploits are rendered ludicrous by a sitcom-like plot-line in which the characters start assuming one another's powers.

STAR TREK: 'WHO MOURNS FOR ADONAIS" (1967)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*


"Who Mourns for Adonais?" feels very much like a script by a writer who's aware of elements that helped sell other scripts to Gene Roddenberry. "Adonais" is certainly a better treatment of the Roddenberry-trope of the "irresponsible god" than "Squire of Gothos," but I wouldn't be surprised to find that authors Coon and Ralston modeled their would-be deity upon Trelane. Like Trelane, the episode's villain-- an alien who calls himself Apollo-- wants attention and adulation from modern humans, as represented by the Enterprise crew. Admittedly, Apollo's motivations are better than Trelane's. Since Apollo was one of several aliens who came to Earth in archaic times and inspired all of Greek culture, this gives him some affinity with Earth people. Trelane brings a female crew-member down from the Enterprise and dresses her in frilly court garb so that he can dance with her. Apollo does the same with Lt. Palamas, but he has a more compelling motive: he plans to mate with her, just as his father, Alien-Zeus, mated with a long-perished Earth-woman to beget Apollo himself.

There's also a likely influence from "Space Seed," a script on which Gene Coon collaborated, though he did not originate the first pitch. Apollo probably has mating on his mind to some extent when he waylays the Enterprise with a giant energy-hand, but he doesn't actually select the crew that descends to his planet (even if he does reject the possibility of Spock as a visitor, because of the Vulcan's resemblance to Pan). McCoy brings Lt. Palamas (note the Greek-sounding name) because she's an expert on Earth-archaeology-- just as in "Space Seed," the first landing-party to encounter Khan's ship includes Marla McGivers, an expert on history. Palamas will be temporarily overwhelmed and seduced by Apollo as McGivers was seduced by Khan, but there the resemblance ends. McGivers may be a retrograde female character in her desire to mate with a manly he-man, but her character is consistent even when she realizes that she's done wrong and seeks to make amends. Palamas is introduced as a love-interest for Scott, and it's strongly suggested that she will easily leave the service if she gets married, as most women do, even in the 23rd century. Palamas shows no passion for her profession, and her seduction by Apollo is under-characterized, almost as if she became willing to give it up to a guy who gave her a really fancy dress. Palamas also betrays Apollo as McGivers did Khan, but with a different tone: here Palamas is the Castrating Woman, confusing and ultimately defeating Apollo simply by scorning his male attentions.

The trope of "aliens who were once Earth-gods" has always been absurd, but Coon and Ralston strive to give it some gravitas. On one hand the future-men declare that they no longer need the parenting influence of gods-- though, perhaps to keep from sounding too atheistic, Kirk delivers a line about finding it adequate to have "one" god. On the other hand, the script attempts to capture the Glory That Was Greece in this science-fictional context, and to admit, however obliquely, that all human culture descends from early man's attempts to understand the universe through a multiplicity of deities.

On a closing note, I'll admit that Ralston and Coon get some of the details of Greek myth more or less right. When Apollo disses Pan, he mentions that he wants neither "sad faces" or "fear," while in Greek myth, Pan was an image of "panic" and had at least one contentious encounter with Apollo. The planet of Apollo is given the name "Pollux," another semi-divine son of Zeus. :Lastly, Apollo compares Kirk to both ":Agamemnon" and "Hercules," and the genuine Apollo of myth did indeed have some aggressive moments against those worthies.

STAR TREK: "AMOK TIME" (1967)

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

On re-viewing this episode, which opened TREK's second season, I noticed that its elaborate evocation of Vulcan mating-rituals recapitulates one of Gene Roddenberry's most-used tropes: one I like to call "Savage Masculinity." No single episode adequately glosses the trope. Yet despite the occasional predictions that humans will someday advance to a higher plane, some TREK episodes-- "The Enemy Within," "Shore Leave," "Return of the Archons," and "Space Seed"-- evince a sneaking admiration for the masculine gender's more, uh, forthright qualities. Malayan culture came up with a term for sudden, violent behavior, which term evolved into the English phrase "running amok." but in this story the process of going berserk is linked to a specific time, when the body of even a logical Vulcan feels compelled to be joined with that of a female, or else perish.

Theodore Stuigeon's script is a masterpiece of misdirection. For the first half-hour, "Amok Time" is a military drama, as Spock begins displaying violent, irrational behavior aboard the Enterprise. Kirk must walk a balance between interacting with his first officer both as a subordinate and as a friend. Eventually he and McCoy pry the truth out of the reluctant Vulcan: whether it contradicts Starfleet protocol or not, Spock must at a certain time return to Vulcan to "take a wife"-- a wife, one soon learns, to whom he's been engaged since childhood.

At the second half-hour, however, military concerns are left behind as Spock invites his boon friends Kirk and McCoy to attend his wedding ceremony on Vulcan. Up to this point the Enterprise has usually encountered alien cultures in states of aberrant behavior, thus allowing the representatives of the Federation to come in and straighten things out. However, Vulcan's archaic wedding-customs are, as the matriarch T'Pau says, a deep ritual that "comes down from the beginning." Kirk and McCoy are put in the position of guests seeking not to embarrass themselves in their friend's world. Their ignorance then comes in handy for a woman who wants to be married even less than Spock does.

Spock, it should be noted, does not want to be married: he speaks of having hoped that he would spared the mating-urge by his half-human heritage. However, because he defines himself first by his Vulcan heritage, he's willing to accede to that culture's demands-- which he can hardly sublimate, given that they have become incarnated in his own biology. It's broadly implied that it's functionally impossible for a male Vulcan to refuse the mating-urge, but that females can do so, which may speak to Roddenberry's personal beliefs about female sexuality. Further, females unwilling to be married to their planned consort-- as Spock's fiancee T'Pring is-- can only escape unwanted male attention by invoking another male as a protector. I suspect this trope would not play well with modern feminists.

T'Pring brings her new protector with her, but gets the brilliant idea to name Captain Kirk as her protector. Kirk, concerned only with helping his friend, agrees to meet Spock in combat with the fatuous idea of simply "knocking him out." In one sense, though, McCoy proves the most savvy of the trio, in that he finds a way to basically "cheat" the Vulcan ritual of its surrogate victim.

I've passed over commenting on the skillful interaction of the three leads, since this has received ample praise. I will say, though, that this is probably the only episode where Christine Chapel serves a useful purpose, even if it's as an object of pity. Kirk and McCoy see her making ready to bring the
now-tempestuous Vulcan a meal, at which point McCoy shows his faux-sympathetic contempt with the lines, "You never give up hoping, do you?" Chapel, as much a doormat as she was in "What Are Little Girls Made Of?," can't even manage a halfway clever response. Later, after Kirk agonizes about the conflict between friendship and duty, he finally decides to take Spock to Vulcan against Starfleet orders, and he sends Chapel to give Spock the news. When she braves Spock's den, the Vulcan broadly implies that he might finally be willing to mate with her, in a patent attempt to defuse the sexual torment he's experiencing. Chapel, trying to do the right thing, pointedly ignores Spock's overture and gives him the news he wants to hear. Spock, believing that release is right around the corner after all, endeavors to give Chapel some empathetic treatment by asking her to bring him some of her soup, in essence returning the two of them to their normal status. Chapel, though, is so gushingly happy for this minor acknowledgement that one can't help but find her inferior to the conniving but supremely logical T'Pring.

THE FROZEN GHOST, PILLOW OF DEATH (1945)

PHENOMENALITY: (1) *marvelous,* (2) *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological, psychological*

I've not seen the fifth entry in the "Inner Sanctum" series, but I've the impression that of the six only these two indicate the reality of psychic phenomena. FROZEN GHOST brings one character's mind-reading talents into focus only a couple of times in the narrative, while PILLOW OF DEATH allows the matter to remain ambiguous at the conclusion. As I've done elsewhere, I've included references to the uncanny tropes that both films use, even though the first film's claim to the domain of the uncanny is "cancelled out" by a mostly legitimate invocation of psychic powers.

Like the other "Sanctum" films I've seen, FROZEN GHOST is a tissue of overwrought performances and under-thought plot devices. Still, this time the script is a lot more lively than the previous three entries, though it doesn't really make much more sense. This was Harold Young's first turn in the "Sanctum" director's chair, displacing Reginald LeBorg-- and since I found Young's JUNGLE CAPTIVE much duller than LeBorg's JUNGLE WOMAN,  I have to credit the script for the improvement. 

At least something's always happening in GHOST, including the fact that one has to wait almost to film's end to figure out what the title means. Lon Chaney Jr., stuck in the perpetual "guilty suspect" persona he'd perfected in 1941's WOLF MAN, has a stage-act that he performs for a radio audience. (I suppose such acts did take place, though to modern ears it sounds like a contradiction in terms of innate appeal.) As "Gregor the Great," professional hypnotist, he's able to cause his girlfriend/ assistant Maura (Evelyn Ankers) to demonstrate psychic gifts to glean obscure facts from audience-members. By a piece of dumb luck that will later work to the benefit of other parties, a drunken audience-member challenges Gregor to put him under. The man acts offensively on stage, and Gregor tells Maura under his breath that he'd like to kill the fool. The moment that Gregor tries to hypnotize the lout, the man dies of a heart attack.

Later Gregor will again have cause to think he has deadly mesmeric talents, but at this opening point, the hypnotist's guilty reaction to the tragedy seems little more than absurd, He breaks up with Maura and goes looking for some other profession. His helpful business manager George sets him up with a new profession, lecturing at a wax museum run by Madame Monet. I don't know what a hypnotist, even a famous one, could possibly have to say to customers of a wax museum, but apparently the publicity gimmick works. Madame Monet is very pleased with Gregor, and becomes romantically interested in him, as does her assistant-niece Nina. Oh, and Maura comes back to pursue the reticent Romeo. Just as in WEIRD WOMAN, Chaney's character is one reluctant chick-magnet-- though he has no fan in the guy who makes the wax statues, former plastic surgeon Rudi (Martin Kosleck)

Madame Monet appears to perish under Gregor's gaze, but her body can't be found. Nina finds out the truth-- that there's a conspiracy between Rudi and the least likely suspect-- and that the conspirators are guilty of making Monet into one of her own statues, though she's kept alive with the use of a convenient "suspended animation drug." The bizarre crimes are then uncovered when Gregor hypnotizes Maura and gets her to reveal the least likely suspect.

FROZEN GHOST is nonsense, but it gives its cast meaty material to masticate. PILLOW OF DEATH, though, not only couldn't bother to come up with a decent title, the titular-- and far from impressive-- murder-weapon barely even appears on screen.

I saw the film a few weeks ago, and have almost forgotten all of it, except two things: (1) that the killer turns out to be a "perilous psycho" who knows himself but slenderly, and (2) the most interesting character is a medium who may or may not have real psychic gifts. He also works through a medium, just as Gregor the Great did, and Chaney's character Fletcher has a romantic conflict between wife and secretary, just as did his character in CALLING DOCTOR DEATH. Like the aforementioned "Paula the Ape Woman" series, it appears that in the doldrums of Universal's "B-unit," the creative agents thought little of blandly recycling elements of earlier films without making much distinction.

For anyone who might want an actual breakdown of the plot of this tacky item, this site offers a witty blow-by-blow.  

MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (1975)

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


HOLY GRAIL is an eminently quotable movie, but an uneven one as well. For all the jokes that work-- the Black Knight sequence, "I fart in your general direction," the riddle-game of the Bridge of Death-- there are as many jokes that fall flat, like the Castle of Aaaargh and "she weighs the same as a duck."

Though I've reviewed a lot of spoofs in the domain of the marvelous, GRAIL isn't one of them. The Python-script is more properly an irony-drenched satire than a comedy, and one that constantly interrupts its own diegesis by calling attention to its artificiality. For example:

(1) The film starts off with a clip from an unrelated British film, DENTIST ON THE JOB, and then begins the real credits, which include unsanctioned ads, for which the credit-makers are, we are told, "sacked."

(2) The Legendary Black Beast of Aaaarrrggghhh, who is represented by an animation of a multi-eyed critter, only misses killing all of Arthur's knights because his extra-diegetic animator drops dead of a heart attack.

(3) The big combat-scene at the film's end is interrupted by British bobbies, who cart off most of the knights to the pokey.

The helter-skelter Arthurianisms are constantly treated as "fallacious figments," thus aligning the film with works like the 2013 LONE RANGER and the 1968 HEAD.

SURVIVING THE GAME (1994)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*


SURVIVING THE GAME is a compelling, though not to say riveting, take on the classic "human hunted by other humans" trope. This Ernest Dickerson directorial effort infuses the original Richard Connell plot with racial content, in that this time the victim is Jack Mason (Ice-T), a homeless black man who's talked into coming along on a hunting-trip by several wealthy men. Most of the hunters are white guys, but one of them is black, as well as being the fellow who talks Mason into participating in the adventure. This effectively transforms the film's theme from one of racial opposition to one of class-opposition, implying the moral that black people can get sucked into the pit of upper-class privilege.

The action-sequences are nicely done, even if the viewer has to roll with the idea that city-guy Mason can learn, while on the run, how to evade and eventually kill off most of the men pursuing him. In addition, the flick displays a cornucopia of strong actors-- Rutger Hauer, Charles Dutton, Gary Busey, and F. Murray Abraham-- though the only strong dramatic arc is that of Abraham's character and his son (William McNamara), who gradually become alienated from the "dangerous game."

I confess that my main interest in viewing the film was to decide, as I did with two other films using this trope,  whether GAME's usage of the "bizarre crime" of human-hunting falls into the "uncanny" or "naturalistic" Though the later film lacks any of the Gothic touches of the original MOST DANGEROUS GAME, I find that the 1994 GAME displays the same "grandiosity" characteristic of bizarre crimes in the uncanny domain. The script by Eric Bernt-- his best work, in my opinion-- never allows the viewer to forget the enormity of the hunters' crime, and because of that, Mason's triumph over them also acquires the spectacular dimensions of the combative mode.

THE THREE STOOGES MEET HERCULES (1962)

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

For their third feature film, the Three Stooges have an encounter with an American version of the Italian muscleman epics. Since the film made more money than any other Stooges feature film, I gather that the *peplum* subgenre hadn't at that point worn out its welcome in American theaters.

Aside from that bit of sociological data, HERCULES feels like a bit of retread of HAVE ROCKET WILL TRAVEL, right down to the trope in which the trio of goof-ups make a scientific breakthrough via sheer dumb luck. In addition, once again the aging comics put themselves on the line for a younger romantic couple-- scientist Schuyler and girlfriend Diane-- and also have to deal with another bad-tempered boss. This time the boss (George Neise) is also putting the moves on Diane, and a large part of the story concerns timid Schuyler finding the courage to defend his girl against a competitor.

Schuyler has tried and failed to construct a time-machine. The Stooges work their magic on the device, and the machine whirls Schuyler, Diane, and the daffy trio back to Greece in 900 B.C. Their sudden manifestation interrupts a war in Ithaca, with the result that righteous king Ulysses loses a battle and is imprisoned by his enemy, the usurper Odius (also played by Neise). Odius is served by Hercules, who in this incarnation seems to be not a super-powered demigod but simply a really strong bully-boy. Odius takes the time-traveling quintet back to his palace to celebrate, though like his 20th-century descendant he really wants to 'celebrate" with Diane. Technically, though, Schuyler and the Stooges commit the first act of aggression: Schuyler insists that Ulysses is a "good guy," so the guys help the deposed king escape. Odius then condemns the four guys to the slave galleys, and makes plans to marry Diane.

During the time that the guys are exiled from Ithaca, Odius could have married Diane a dozen times over, The film never explains how Diane fends off her captor, though if the film had introduced Ulysses' wife, maybe Penelope could've given the 20th-century girl some pointers on discouraging male attention. Diane's fate is definitely secondary to the script's desire to send the four guys on various adventures. In line with the subplot about building up Schuyler's confidence, it just so happens that when he's sentenced to the galley, it builds up his whole body into Herculean proportions. Curiously, the same rigors have absolutely no effect on the Stooges.

Once Schuyler looks as powerful as Hercules, the Stooges escape the slave galleys by claiming that the hulking scientist is the real thing. This leads to the best sequence in the film, as the four adventurers are charged with overcoming a two-headed Cyclops. Later, in the travelers' quest to make enough money to return to Ithaca, the Stooges become fight-promoters for Schuyler-- initially arranging for "fake fights," in part to build up the scientist's confidence.

Eventually, though, Schuyler has enough real fights to build up his martial skills. When the foursome returns to Ithaca, Schuyler ends up having a wrestling-match with Hercules, who resents the impostor who's been using his name. Not only does Schuyler win the match, he informs the strongman that later centuries will believe Hercules to be a great fighter of justice. Hercules promptly turns on his own boss Odius and helps overthrow the usurper. The five time-travelers return to their time-machine with Odius in pursuit, and as they return to their own time, they manage to banish the villain to an inhospitable place in the time-stream.

One routine, in which the Stooges are mistaken for female slaves and forced to work in a women's bathhouse, simply comes off tired, partly because the material has been made blander for the juvenile audiences at whom the films were aimed. The comics' encounter with the mythic past makes for a pleasant stroll down a pop-cultural memory lane, but nothing more.