DEAD HEAT (1988), THE TUXEDO (2002)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy,*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological, psychological*


In this review I'm pairing two films that have absolutely nothing to do with one another, except that they're both incredibly bad action-films despite having "A" level money and/or stars behind them.

So-- which is worse?

I hadn't seen DEAD HEAT since the late eighties, and screening it again only made me more aware of its shortcomings. This is one of the many "buddy cop" films popular during that decade, though most such films start out by emphasizing some incompatibility between the two officers. In contrast, sole credited writer Terry Black-- whose other credits are a handful of TV episodes-- makes Doug Bigelow (Joe Piscopo) and the punnily-named Roger Mortis (Treat Williams) almost identical in being "rule-breaker" types who perpetually aggravate their frazzled captain. It's kind of like teaming Mel Gibson with another Mel Gibson (LETHAL WEAPON appeared the previous year), with the only real difference being that Roger dresses in a natty fashion while Doug wears sporty muscle-shirts. Oh, and nothing is said about Doug's romantic history, whereas Roger has apparently had a fling with a lady mortician working for the cops.

Doug and Roger have an altercation with robbers who seem invulnerable to gunfire, but the cops manage to take out the thieves-- at which point the coroner reveals that the men seem to have already died before being killed, in that they have a special preservative in their veins. This clue causes the buddy-cops to investigate the facility from which the chemical came. During the investigation Roger is attacked by another undead killer, and as a result Roger is slain. However, by that time Doug has learned that the company has a "back from death" machine, so he uses it to bring Roger back. However, the effect is not permanent, for as the investigation continues Roger's body begins to deteriorate. Eventually, the two cops-- whose belated incompatibility is that one's dead and one's alive-- find the people responsible for the reanimated robbers, one of whom is played by Vincent Price in a handful of unimpressive scenes.

By the end of the movie, even the "dead/alive" incompatibility is erased, when Doug too is zombified. But, lame though the zombie-humor is, I couldn't help feeling that the order of transformation was wrong, since Piscopo's persona in the film was edgier than that of Williams, so that the former might've been a little funnier doing dead-body jokes.

On a small psychological note, while I'm usually impatient with queer readings of films in this subgenre, I could actually see it applying here-- partly because of the cops' sartorial difference, and the fact that they end up as fellow zombies more or less stuck with one another (for all that the film's last line riffs on CASABLANCA: "I think this is the end of a beautiful friendship."

As bad as HEAT is, though, I would say THE TUXEDO is worse, perhaps because Jackie Chan has more talent in one foot than Joe Piscopo has in his whole body.

Chan plays Jimmy Tong, a Chinese-American who drives a taxi and longs after a pretty Chinese woman, though he can't work up the nerve to ask her out. He gets a job as a personal driver for a smooth fellow named Clark Devlin (Jason Isaacs). Devlin takes a fancy to Jimmy and lets Jimmy see his ritzy apartment, though he warns the driver not to touch a special case with a tuxedo inside. Their conversations suggest to Jimmy that Devlin is a James Bond-like superspy, and Jimmy asks his employer for advice on girls. Jimmy acts toward Devlin like a mentor, even though at the time Chan, pushing fifty, was almost ten years older than Isaacs.

Then Devlin appears to perish in an exploding car, and Jimmy, having only rudimentary knowledge of the spy's agenda, decides to seek out his killer. He dons the mysterious tuxedo and finds that it's a genie's lamp that can do almost anything: prompt him with the knowledge he needs in any situation, or force Jimmy's unskilled body to perform athletic wonders. By dumb luck Jimmy contacts a newbie spy from Devlin's agency, a young woman named Del (Jennifer Love Hewitt), and convinces her that he's the legendary Clark Devlin. Together they investigate a terrorist corporation out to pollute U.S. reservoirs with a fairly ingenious plot involving "water strider" insects.

As in many of his later films, Chan mugs through his part, while Hewitt tries to match his lunacy by playing her character as equally loopy. Chan's role seems like an idea that might've worked a little better for a younger actor, particularly with respect to his mooning over an unrequited love, but the actor's attempts to act cute at nearly fifty years of age are doomed from the word go. In some scenes Chan is aided by FX to accomplish his stunts, but there are enough real athletics to please the devoted Chan-fancier. But in my case, the lameness of the superspy routine and the paltry characterizations make THE TUXEDO inferior even to a dog like DEAD HEAT.

THE HANGED MAN (1974)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical, psychological*


Here's a "weird western" that bears a nodding resemblance to 1999's PURGATORY, in that both concern western protagonists with an ambivalent relationship to death.

Seasoned gunfighter James Devlin (Steve Forrest) has been sentenced to hang for vague reasons in a small western town (is there any other kind, in westerns?) Though the gunfighter has a cute young senorita (Barbara Luna) who wants him to live for her, Devlin seems philosophical about his impending doom. During a pre-execution conversation with a friar, Devlin makes three "lucky guesses" about the friar's state of mind, and then shows off his set of Tarot cards, a gift from a gypsy woman he once helped. Naturally, the card that interests the outlaw most is the Hanged Man, though Devlin mentions that the card doesn't signify death, but a major change in one's life.

The execution goes through as planned. Later, Devlin lies in state, with the friar and the senorita talking nearby-- and then he simply gets up. He can't immediately speak-- though that changes later-- and his first communication is a note to the friar, reading, "What did Lazarus do with the rest of his life?"

The local lawmen don't know what to do: since Devlin's been executed, technically he's outside the boundaries of the law. Once the gunfighter can speak again, he reflects on the need to make a change in his old, sinful life. Conveniently, two innocents--a young widow-woman and her cute son-- need help against a land baron/mine owner named Halleck (Cameron Mitchell). In addition, the young woman was specifically widowed because Devlin killed her husband, though this dramatic point is understated to the point that some may miss it entirely.

Some online reviews asserted that Devlin received mind-reading powers after his "resurrection," but I saw no indication of his possessing any special potency, except for his having unaccountably survived hanging. Still, at least one of Halleck's henchmen considers Devlin a supernatural being, and the hero' climactic battle with Halleck's forces takes place in a dingy mine where a smelting-furnace makes everything look the fiery hell to which the villains will eventually descend.

Since this was a pilot for a TV series, the film is quick to send Devlin off on a quest to save other people in a "Fugitive"-like pattern. Luna's character is pretty much forgotten, and the script promotes a cranky old man for comedy relief who adds nothing to the mix.  The story's main trope is closest to that of the phantasmal figuration, since one never knows whether or not Devlin's come back to life for purely natural reasons-- though the fact that he did so gives him an aura of special *potency* like those of the PURGATORY outlaws-- even though their resurrection is literal and thus marvelous in nature.

MIGHTY JOE YOUNG (1949)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological, psychological*


My one-sentence review of this film: I liked it better when they called it SON OF KONG.

Obviously I don't mean that MIGHTY JOE YOUNG is a remake of the 1933 sequel to the classic KING KONG. But just as SON was a less violent film with a more genial giant, so too is JOE. It's also the last time that KONG's three major prime movers-- Cooper, Schoedsack, and O'Brien-- returned to the icon of a colossal ape-- though to be sure, without any of the prehistoric trappings.

There's also no hint of transgressive sexuality anywhere in JOE. Whereas Kong's strange amour fou toward Ann Darrow always seems strange and inexplicable, Joe orients toward his human friend Jill Young (Terry Moore) rather after the fashion of infant to mother. SON doesn't venture into deep psychological waters either, but at least there's a sort of murky father-son dynamic between "Little Kong" and Carl Denham, the man indirectly responsible for Big Kong's death. Joe Young, who starts out looking like a commonplace baby gorilla, becomes Jill's pet on her father's African farm when she's only eight. But as they both grow to maturity, Joe is almost entirely under Jill's maternal thumb, despite the fact that, for no stated reason, he grows to the unusual height of twelve feet.

Joe also proves utterly obedient to Jill even when she's seduced by two representatives of modern civilzation-- also substitutes for Carl Denham and John Driscoll-- into taking Joe to Hollywood. The older
"seducer," impresario Max O'Hara (Robert Armstrong, also returning to the Kong-well along with the three prime movers), only wants Jill and Joe to perform stunts at his African-themed nightclub, but when the two of them aren't happy in the Big Time, he ends up helping them escape a dire fate. Gregg (Ben Johnson), the younger "Driscoll" analogue, has a less figurative romantic interest in Jill. Although Joe and Gregg get off to a bad start-- Gregg almost shoots the big ape when the latter attacks O'Hara-- Jill accepts Gregg's courtship later, and Joe never turns so much as a ruffled hair in Gregg's direction.

In my SON OF KONG review I complained that the film was too contrived for me, but at least it continued the Denham  character-arc in an interesting manner. JOE is even more contrived, and while not without some melodramatic appeal, SON starts looking better by comparison. Admittedly, JOE may score somewhat better in allowing audiences more empathetic interaction with the big anthropoid, allowing them to get a taste of what Kong's fate would've looked like had he been forced to perform monkeyshines for Denham.

Joe gets a couple of physical contests in the film, playing tug-of-war with ten human musclemen, and fending off some hostile lions, but MIGHTY JOE YOUNG is even less focused on the combative value than SON OF KONG.

THE EIGHTEEN JADE ARHATS (1979)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*


Understandably, no one's ever made a successful mashup of the kung-fu action-genre and that of the murder-mystery. EIGHTEEN JADE ARHATS provides a good example of why even chopsocky-filmmakers never attempted this very often.

The main heroes of this fight-fu extravaganza are a justice-seeking traveler, Kung Chi Ya (Lee Jan-Wa) and a woman looking for her family's killer, Sing Pei Pei (the more celebrated kung fu diva Polly Shang Kuan). In fact, Kung seems a bit of a rogue-- he challenges Sing to a fight when they first meet, apparently just because he thinks she's cute-- but devotes himself to her cause as if it's his own. For her part Sing is perpetually aggravated by Kung, but retaliates by trying to get him in trouble. Not that either of them needs any help with that; most of the film consists of Sing and Kung being attacked by various exotic assassins, presumably sent by the unknown murderer to shut them up. I didn't catch any killers using overtly marvelous powers, just weird outfits (some assassins dress up like ghosts) or peculiar weapons (a female tries to trap Kung in a bed with a spiked canopy). Finally the killer is lured out of hiding when Sing claims to possess nine of the lost Jade Arhats (Buddha-statues) that can confer great power on adepts, but this is just a bluff, the supposedly magical statues have no more existence than the Maltese Falcon of film-fame. There's one dubious moment when Kung appears to call upon the power of *chi,* but I don't think the kung-fu move he uses qualifies as marvelous.

The starring actors make a good duo, despite the fact that there's no romance apart from the two of them sniping at each other. As chopsockies go, this one is at least colorful and lively at all times.

JUSTICE LEAGUE VS. THE FATAL FIVE (2019), AQUAMAN: RAGE OF ATLANTIS (2018)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: (1) *poor,* (2) *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: (1) *adventure,* (2) *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological, psychological*


For Silver Age kids, the quintet of villains known as the Fatal Five were among the best villains introduced during that era. All five-- the half-human Tharok, the Emerald Empress, Mano of the disintegrating palm, the axe-wielding Persuader and the ultra-powerful Validus-- were badasses as few DC villains were. However, in addition to being badass, all five also had certain limited but evocative characterizations, and that's what is missing from this tedious new Justice League original video. Under the direction of Sam Liu, the five villains are badasses with no depth, existing just to be the story's villains-- and three of them are given very bad visual re-designs, on top of it.

The story begins in media res, with three of the Fatal Five using a time-travel device to leave the 30th century-- the era of their foes, the Legion of Super-Heroes-- and seek out the 21st century, in search of their two missing comrades. One Legionnaire, Star Boy, also travels in time to stop them. (It wasn't clear why he was the only one of the two dozen Legionnaires able to do so.) However, this version of Star Boy needs some 30th-century medications to stay sane, and he forgets to take them along with him. He goes a little nuts, gets captured by Batman, and spends a month or two in an asylum until he finally remembers who he is and why he's looking for the villains. When Batman finds out Star Boy's true nature, he brings the League into the matter, but by that time the three members of the Five have set in motion their plot to liberate their partners from the custody of the Green Lantern Corps, with the unwitting help of Earth's current Green Lantern, Jessica Cruz. (Some scripter thought it would be a brilliant touch to give Jessica the risible name of "Limelight," which does not appear to be a thing in the comic-book original.)

The plot collapses like a deck of cards when one looks at the paltry excuse given for the Legion to send the two villains back in time-- namely, that in all the myriad worlds of the 30th century, no one has the power to contain Validus and the Empress, so they must be imprisoned by the Green Lanterns, who no longer exist in the future era. This is a lame excuse to set up the many physical battles between the League and the Five, most of which are forgettable, except for a half-decent contest between Wonder Woman and the Persuader. There are two "B-stories:" teenaged superheroine Miss Martian trying to earn the respect of the older Leaguers, and "Limelight" suffering from a crippling anxiety that she only manages to overcome at the climax. Indeed, that climax is so focused upon letting the young female Lantern beat up the whole Fatal Five that the character is very nearly a "Mary Sue."

Star Boy, like various other Legion characters, functions as a guest-star in the story, despite getting more screen-time than the rest.

I have no great love for Lego versions of superheroes or anything else, and the spectacle of watching such characters devolve into broken-up bricks leaves me cold. Still, even though AQUAMAN: RAGE OF ATLANTIS also focuses upon a hero with a psychological crisis, the script handles the story with comic aplomb. (I pretty much have to designate RAGE a comedy, given that the end-threat is a gigantic device with the acronym SLURP.)

Despite the title, this is a Justice League adventure that just happens to place its emphasis on the importance of being Aquaman. The King of the Seven Seas gets humiliated in an encounter with Lobo, who's then driven away by the rest of the League.

Aquaman remains fairly chipper despite this setback and invites his crimefighting buddies to join him for a visit to Atlantis, where the heroes meet Aquaman's wife Mera for the first time. However, Aquaman's half-brother Ocean Master has conspired with the evil Red Lantern Atrocitus to brainwash the citizens of Atlantis, so that they (including Mera) turn on their former king.

The heroes escape via dimension transporter, accidentally ending up on a near-waterless world. This happens to be one of the worlds victimized by Atrocitus, thus illustrating his plans for Earth. The script's means of giving Aquaman the chance to prove himself on a desert-world is pretty clever, but a lot of the Aqua-morale boosting gets tedious. The heroes return to Atlantis and have it out with the many pawns of Atrocitus. There's also a B-story showing a couple of Batman's aides, the "Barbara Gordon" Batgirl and the "Damian Wayne" Robin, fighting off invading Atlanteans, and Lobo not only comes back but is given a credible reason to lend aid to the heroes. Despite their participation in the overall battle, Lobo, Mera, and the two Bat-spawn all rate as "guest stars" within this light-hearted outing for the JLL (Justice League of Legos).

GALAXIS (1995)

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


GALAXIS, a name that is referenced nowhere in the rest of the movie, went under a couple of other names in its rental days, but essentially it's a catchpenny amalgam of numerous tropes from STAR WARS, TERMINATOR, and a host of other SF-action films. It's only got two things going for it: the charms of the very tall Brigitte Nielsen as alien heroine Ladera (though, to be sure, those charms don't include good acting), and the fact that both writer and director make the film look fairly good despite its low budget, probably because both men were principally "visual effects guys" for the majority of their respective careers.

On a far-off space-opera planet named Sintara, a megalomaniacal fellow named Kyla (Richard Moll, foreshadowing Kylo Ren, perhaps?) attacks the planet's defenders in order to steal a mystical crystal. The crystal functions as a catch-all for just about everything the writer wants it to be, for while Kyla wants it to give himself great super-powers, the crystal is also integral to the heart and soul of the Sintaran people. As its guardian Lord Tarkin (a more derivative STAR WARS reference) hilariously explains, the crystal "is the antithesis of our ways." Hmm, maybe the writer was reading his Hegel and got his synthesis mixed up with his antithesis? Or maybe he just tossed in any old ten-dollar word he happened to think of? Either way, the rest of the script is depressingly humdrum after that howler.

Tarkin (no Moff) is killed by Kyla, who absconds with the crystal. Before Tarkin dies, he confides to his sister, warrior-woman Ladera, that there's a twin of the crystal on a world called Earth. Somehow this crystal's existence is supposed to be a stop-gap against its being snatched by an alien overlord, but when Kyla (somehow) finds out, he follows Ladera to Earth, believing that he can double his powers with the second stone.

Having got all the expository set-up out of the way, the rest of the film is just action, action, action, distinguished only by Ms. NIelsen's charms as a tough-girl heroine. (At one point she blocks a gunman's shot with her gauntlet, like she's Wonder Woman.) She fights Kyla and various Earth-thugs, has a little romance with a nice Earth-guy, secures the crystal and goes home.

Oddly, in a slightly later work called SURVIVOR, the same writer used the names "Tarkin" and "Kyla" again, even casting Richard Moll in the latter role, though the SF-scenario had nothing to do with the setup in GALAXIS.

THE DEVIL'S BRIDE (1968)

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



I've recently finished and reviewed the 1934 Dennis Wheatley occult thriller THE DEVIL RIDES OUT,  and, having done so, I gave another look at the British film adaptation, given the same title in Great Britain but renamed THE DEVIL'S BRIDE for American audiences.

I remembered liking BRIDE quite a bit, and so, once I'd read the book, I was cautious not to fault the movie simply because it didn't follow the book in some particulars. As it happens, BRIDE does follow the Wheatley novel pretty closely, thanks to a strong script from Richard Matheson. Most of what Matheson leaves out is the B-story in which the American Rex Van Rijn romances the neophyte Satanist Tanith and persuades her to join the forces of good.

And yet, even though Matheson and director Terence Fisher follow the same basic patterns of the novel-- reproducing most of the book's studious reproduction of occult lore-- I don't rate BRIDE as highly as DEVIL RIDES OUT.

I certainly can't fault Christopher Lee. He channels the stern but humane character of the occult expert Duc de Richleau perfectly. In the novel the Rex character serves as the Duc's strong right arm, and it's certainly not actor Leon Greene's fault that a lot of the material that firmed up Rex's character is omitted from the screenplay-- but those cuts still have the effect of making Rex a fairly inconsequential figure. The other "two musketeers" of the book, Simon and Richard, don't exactly glow with charisma in the book, and so their characters in the movie are no better than they have to be. Charles Gray plays the main villain Mocata with oily grace, and contributes the second best performance, and even Richard's wife Marie, though not a major character, gets a strong scene in which she has to fend off Mocata's insidious mind-control. The only actor who proves an actively bad choice is young Niki Arrighi, whose high-pitched voice makes her Tanith entirely insufferable.

I tend to think that Fisher's direction, coupled with Arthur Grant's cinematography, is more at fault, for BRIDE doesn't visually sustain the pulpy thrills of Wheatley's novel. Admittedly, even had Fisher had all the money in the world, I'm not sure how a film in 1968 could have rendered an apparition like the Goat of Mendes so that it seemed like more than a man in a costume. But even some of the scenes that could've popped-- like one in which Rex and the Duc storm a Satanic ritual ground in one of their 1929 automobiles-- are handled in routine fashion. Fisher only seems on solid ground when he's having Chris Lee dominate a scene with no more than his sonorous voice-- possibly because he'd worked with Lee so often prior to BRIDE. Without the needed visual emphasis-- something that does come across in Wheatley's prose-- Lee's voice isn't enough to translate the occult lore into a thing of mythic wonder.

Though in the novel-series the Duc's fellow musketeers may be as important as he is, in BRIDE "the Duc stands alone," being the primary hero of the story. BRIDE takes its place among many other adaptations-- the 1939 HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES film, for one-- that, despite being faithful to stories with deep mythic resonance, gets all the partss right but somehow miss out on bringing them into a whole greater than the sum of the parts.