SCORCHED EARTH (2018)

 

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

The above poster for Gina Carano's post-apoc adventure is at least indirectly honest in emphasizing her heroine's dependence on a gun. Her futuristic bounty hunter Attica Gage shoots a lot, uses a knife once or twice, and gets into some free-form brawls. But if anyone came to this movie looking for the kind of hard hitting martial-arts fights for which Carano first became known, like her MMA competitions and films like 2011's HAYWIRE.

Though the opening narration provides more detail about this future-Earth than a lot of MAD MAX imitations-- including, to be sure, the original MAX-- it's still pretty dull detail, and none of it gives the world any particular resonance. 

Gage is no better. She's a ruthless bounty hunter motivated only by gain, though arguably she serves the cause of justice by corralling lowlifes for the remaining civil authorities. She has one sympathy-point in her backstory: that long ago her sister was killed by a raider, and she nurtures the desire to find the murderer.

She takes on the identity of a dead quarry in order to capture a high-dollar bounty, Jackson (Ryan Robbins), who's heavily protected by a gang of henchmen in a bandit-town in "New Montana." Gage successfully worms her way into Jackson's confidence, largely because he's smitten with her. However, mirabile dictu, Jackson turns out to be the man who murdered Gage's sister. Naturally, violence ensues, but it's all very pedestrian-- like the dialogue, the performances, and even the characters' attire, which is almost all grey. Gage makes a couple of minor efforts toward helping some of the downtrodden in the town, but she still never transcends the level of "accidental hero."

Director Peter Howitt previously helmed projects as distinct from one another as the 1998 SLIDING DOORS and the 2003 JOHNNY ENGLISH, but this material was entirely out of his wheelhouse.

CASPER MEETS WENDY (1998), SCOOB! (2020)

 

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

For some reason the box-office success of the 1995 CASPER only resulted in two DTV "prequels" and a TV cartoon show. I believe that I may have seen the first prequel, CASPER: A SPIRITED BEGINNING, but I don't remember it, and I would assume nothing about it impacts the second and last sequel, in which the friendly ghost meets his bosom friend from the funnybooks, Wendy the Good Little Witch (as essayed by an eleven-year-old Hilary Duff).

Casper, a creation of cartoon shorts, didn't start out having three mean "uncles," The Ghostly Trio, forever making his unlife miserable. However, when Wendy was created in a 1954 Harvey Comic, she was conspicuously modeled upon Casper's set-up. Thus Wendy was raised by three mean witch-sisters, whom she addresses as her "aunties," even though by one account they're no more related to the good little witch than Casper's uncles are to the Friendly Ghost.

Scripter Jymm Magon exploits the similarities between the two kid-protagonists and their naughty guardians for all it's worth here. First he supplies a simple but comically ruthless protagonist, Desmond Spellman (George Hamilton), a warlock who knows that Wendy is fated to out-witch him if she ever reaches her mature years. So Desmond creates two minions (played by Richard Moll and Vincent Schiavelli, who have pretty good chemistry) and sends them to snuff out Wendy and her family. Wendy and her aunts (Shelley Duvall, Teri Garr and Cathy Moriarty) escape, but the aunts decide that the only way to preserve their lives is to "get off the grid," taking up residence at a holiday resort and refraining from the use of magic, so that their adversary can't track them.

By the fiat of writerly coincidence, Casper's obstreperous uncles decide they want to take a vacation at the same resort, and they drag Casper along. Casper gets the best of the deal, for he meets and befriends Wendy, despite the long standing rule that ghosts and witches hate each other. The two youngsters get the bright idea to trick their respective guardians into liking each other, so that Casper and Wendy can hang out without complications.

I won't dwell on all the comical complications that ensue, but I for one thought this film funnier than the original CASPER. Inevitably the bad magician homes in on his quarry, and witches and ghosts must predictably bury the hatchet to take down a greater foe. For a DTV film the FX are pretty good, and the principal actors all get their moments to shine without slowing down the plot. But the flick's best quality is the way it's true to the psychological appeal of the originals. Both Casper and Wendy are placed in the position where their "being good" makes them superior to their unprincipled elders, and the humor grows out of their struggles to be true to themselves despite such bad parental examples.

SCOOB! is a strange beast-- even stranger than the talking Great Dane for which it's named. If not for Covid closures, the computer-animated project would have been the third film in the franchise released to theatrical venues, following the live-action films from 2002 and 2004. In addition, Wikipedia asserts that the movie was supposed to use the Scooby Gang as a springboard to introduce "a cinematic universe based on Hanna-Barbera properties."

Later studio heads cancelled that idea, and it's quite possible that the original idea would have been a train wreck. But the final version of SCOOB is more like a train that just runs out of steam and goes nowhere.

The main plotline kept from the early scripts is that the Scooby Gang are attacked by robot minions of an unknown mastermind, only to be succored by a benign government organization, the Falcon Force. Possibly in the original conception, the Falcon Force would have included numerous entities from the H-B cosmos, perhaps anyone from Atom Ant to Zandor of the Herculoids. But as things stand, the only three agents in the organization seem to be the original Dyno-Mutt, the son of the Blue Falcon (the original has retired and makes no appearances here), and Dee Dee Sykes, one of the three hip young girls from the CAPTAIN CAVEMAN TV show.

The Scoobies pitch in to track down their attacker, who is none other than long time schemer Dick Dastardly. This proves to be the film's best conceit, for Dastardly, as voiced by Jason Isaacs, steals every scene he's in, and he makes a nice contrast to the lame villains who occupy most Scooby-tales. Unfortunately, the writers also decided to play up a meaningless quarrel between Shaggy and Scooby, when Shaggy feels left out thanks to the bonding of Scooby and Dyno-Mutt, the two of them being talking dogs of a feather. The Wiki-page for the film includes a quote from director Tony Cervone, asserting that they intentionally focused on the Shaggy-Scooby relationship. But not only does this stratagem leave the other three Scoobies with little to do, it's a false conflict, since every viewer knows the two will become fast friends again by film's end. Additionally, Dee Dee, Dyno-Mutt and the new Falcon are all extremely dull, and a brief guest-appearance of Captain Caveman-- IMO, one of H-B's worst creations-- does not improve the situation.

Dastardly is more impressive, particularly because he perpetually grieves for the loss of his estranged partner-in-crime, Muttley. However, his master plan, which involves using Scooby's DNA to access the treasure vault of  Alexander the Great, leaves something to be desired, despite some nifty visuals of the vault itself. 

I don't doubt that the writers and producers may felt a strong regard for the well-liked Scooby franchise. But the story didn't even come up to the level of a better-than-average DTV like HAPPY HALLOWEEN, SCOOBY DOO, and so I doubt a theatrical release would have done anything to improve the film's reputation.

ON THE ROAD (1963)

 

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

"In a rut" would have been a better title for the fifth Zatoichi movie.

In keeping with the character's real-world popularity as a movie icon, the blind masseuse has become famed in his medieval time-frame. Many people know of his skills with the sword, even though he seeks only to defend himself. One result, as in ROAD, is that criminal gangs seek to use Zatoichi to their own ends.

This movie's problem, though, is that there are two gangs vying against each other, and it often becomes unclear as to what they're trying to do and how it involves Zatoichi. In the first thirty minutes of the film, the masseuse has two fatal encounters "on the road" where people try to kill him or innocent bystanders. As a consequence of one encounter, Zatoichi becomes the protector of a young woman, Mitsu (Shiho Fujimura). Some of the criminals also seek to use Mitsu against the swordsman, but again, I found the various complications hard to follow. It may be that I just got tired of all the talking-head scenes.

The script downplays the more spectacular swordfights in favor of Zatoichi taking down two or three opponents with one big slash. Like the previous entries in the series, this one stresses that Zatoichi, atypical samurai though he may be, lives by a strict code of chivalry toward women. This helps to sell his pattern of Good Samaritan conduct despite his often rough-hewn life. But by the fifth film in the series, his encounters with the female of the species have become rather monotonous.

WARLOCK III: THE END OF INNOCENCE (1999)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical*

I suppose I may be grading the mythicity of the third and last WARLOCK film a little high. But at least it's a relatively straightforward horror flick, and it does reference a little of the conflicts between "childhood innocence" and "adult experience" in the story of viewpoint character Kris Miller (Ashley Laurence).

Once again the idea of The Warlock starts from scratch, with no reference to any previous installment, and this time the titular fiend is played by Bruce Payne, though he's made up to resemble Julian Sands somewhat. This Warlock even uses a human alias, though it's likely to be a false one, given that like the original he's born in the 1600s. 

He's also not interested in the world-destroying schemes; he just fixates on making a Satanic sacrifice of a witch-child from his own time period. True, if he succeeds, he can place a demon in the girl's body, he can spawn a "race of evil" with that demon. But we don't really see his grand plan on the screen, and it doesn't entirely track. If he'd succeeded in sacrificing the little girl in the 1600s, wouldn't he, or his Satanic master, have to wait a while for her to be capable of mothering a new race? If the Warlock has a deeper contingency plan, it doesn't come to light.

However, the mother of the selected sacrifice is a skilled witch. She not only confines the Warlock to his own house, she somehow sends her daughter forward in time (a trope slightly borrowed from the first film), and the little girl forgets her past upon being adopted and given the modern name Kris Miller.

Director/co-writer Eric Fresier utilizes a couple of very hoary plot-devices. First is the "house inheritance," in which the future victim of spooky conspiracies checks out her supposed bequest. Closely related is the "bringing along friends to serve as expendable victims" trope. Thus Kris is accompanied by her boyfriend Michael and four friends, one of whom is a practicing follower of the contemporary wicca religion. The latter character comes in handy for explaining some of the mystical goings-on, though in the end she's as much a victim as the others.

However, while most victims in "old dark houses" are just slaughtered to keep up suspense, the Warlock not only kills the friends but forces them to forswear Kris before they die, in order to break Kris' will. However, though she doesn't have witchy powers, Kris learns enough about sorcery to turn the tables on The Warlock.

There are a handful of nice scary jolts, and principals Laurence and Payne play off each other well. It's at least an okay conclusion to the series, if not anywhere as good as the first or as bad as the second.

WARLOCK: THE ARMAGEDDON (1993)

 

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

A few years after WARLOCK enjoyed good profits, a new production team picked up the concept and entirely reworked it, with no connection to the 1989 film save that once more Julian Sands essayed the malevolent starring magician.

Anthony Hickox, fresh off his two crowd-pleasing WAXWORK movies and the second HELLRAISER sequel, brings a lot more visual elan to the project than did Steve Miner. However, the muddled script by Kevin Rock and Sam Bernard-- neither of whom can boast impressive IMDB resumes-- robs the story of any resonance.

The first film imperiled the world with the prospect of "uncreation," but this time the peril stems from a creation, the birth of Satan's son. It's never clear under what circumstances the Satanic offspring can be propagated, but we get a confusing scene back in Dark Ages Britain. We see a band of druids-- who, some will remember, shouldn't believe in Satan at all-- trying to exorcise a woman who's supposed to bring forth a Satan-spawn. I think they're successful, but a group of righteous Christians invade the druid camp. The Christians despoil the Druids of certain runestones they use to keep demons under control, and this means that, at some unspecified future time, Satan's son can be born again. (The dispersal of the gemstones is clearly Rock and Bernard's clumsy emulation of the first film's fragmenting of the Grand Grimoire.)

Whereas the first film actually did show the spell-book sections in different parts of the country, the runestones seem to be concentrated in one little area despite having been scattered back on another continent. From what I could make out, one such runestone happens to be in the possession of a young woman named Amanda, and Satan's demonic spirit somehow impregnates her through the stone, so that she gives magical birth to The Warlock. He immediately speeds off to different, unspecified locations in order to gather all the runestones. By so doing, he can free Satan from some otherworldly prison, leading to the world's "armageddon."

On top of all that, a modern-day cult of druid-descendants exists in America, though they should have no way of knowing that all the missing runestones will also be on American soil. Druid-leader Will also knows that his adolescent son Kenny (Chris Young) is destined to battle the Warlock at some point, so he shoots Kenny with what I assume is a spiritual shotgun. This doesn't kill Kenny (YOU BASTARDS!) but apparently wakes up his psychic talents, so that Will and his aged buddies can begin Kenny's Jedi training. Kenny, whose biggest problem up to this point was getting with his girlfriend Samantha (Paula Marshall), reluctantly accepts his new destiny.

While the hero is being groomed for his new duties, The Warlock gathers more stones and gratuitously kills the owners in various gory ways. And just to give Kenny's girlfriend something to do, she reveals to Kenny that she's having minatory dreams about a strange man, presumably the evil sorcerer. Kenny blows her mind by revealing his brand-new destiny, but some malign force causes a rain of blood to fall from the skies near them-- though there's no indication that the Warlock is anywhere around at the time.

But the writers aren't yet ready for the big confrontation, so they have one of the middle-aged druids, one Ethan, decide to abscond with the cult's special weapons and try to assassinate the Warlock. How does Ethan know where the Warlock is, and how does The Warlock know Ethan's coming, in order to slaughter the foolish fellow? No such details are important; only burning up more run-time and seeming to weaken the good guys.

More random crap happens. Will talks to Samantha, alluding to some strange circumstances surrounding her mother's death, and suddenly Samantha also displays Jedi powers. From the way Will talks about Samantha's mother and Kenny's, I think it's possible the writers might have toyed with the idea that the two young lovers were related in some way, which might've explained their shared destinies as "druid warriors." Samantha now buys into the whole rebirth thing so completely that she asks her priest-father to stick a butcher knife in her gut. When he can't do it, she immolates herself, and sure enough, she is immediately reborn amidst Kenny and the old druids.

After the two teen heroes bedevil the local bully with their powers, they proceed to have sex in the forest, so I guess any ideas of blood relations were scotched. 

Finally the Warlock shows up in Kenny's corner of the cosmos, and they start fighting with magic powers. Two aged druids show up, and just before they blast the villain with mundane shotguns (to no effect, of course), he asks, "Who is the second warrior?" This at least shows he's read the script attentively, so he knows Samantha will enter the lists at some point. Then he loses interest long enough to torture the helpless Kenny, so that he'll point the way to the last stone the villain needs. Samantha shows up with said final stone and lures the Warlock away from Kenny.

Samantha fares no better than Kenny in fighting the Satan-spawn, and so the Warlock acquires the final runestone. Despite the Warlock's having callously murdered numerous people just for looking at him, he doesn't kill Samantha, but just ties her up and launches into his Satan-liberation ritual. But Kenny shows up, and with Samantha's help they screw up the ritual, so that Satan stays in prison. The vengeful Warlock then tries to kill Kenny with the druid knife he got from Ethan, resulting in the movie's only fun sequence, when each of the magicians keep trying to psychically toss the knife at their opponent. The Warlock "dies," but a final sequence suggests that he's still not done. The writers might as well not have bothered, since it sounds like the third installment ignores the events of Number Two.

ARMAGEDDON is one of the stupidest sequels I've ever seen, even beating out HOWLING II. Even the one or two references to occult lore, like the shamanistic idea of "spirit-death," are handled so ineptly that they lack any symbolic content. All of the supernatural killings are equally lame, making the Warlock into a deadpan Freddy Kruger. This is particularly ironic, given a Wikipedia quote in which Sands said he did the role specifically because it wasn't a "slasher" type of horror film. He must not have read ARMAGEDDON's script too closely, but at least he knew better than to get burned again, for in the final chapter another actor took over the role of the mad magus.

WARLOCK (1989)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical*

I saw a few complaints about the FX used in this low budget thriller, but I didn't agree. I'd much rather have a lean, clever movie with dodgy effects than one in which the CGI wonders have been so inflated that the writers let them do all the work.

In some ways the first WARLOCK-- followed by two "sequels in name only"-- resembles a lot of the old serials. The mission of the heroes is to stop a fiendish villain from gaining access to a weapon capable of dominating (in this specific case, of destroying) the world, and most of the story is a cat-and-mouse game, with the good guys trying to stymie the villain's efforts.

This time both the evildoer and one of his opponents hail from Boston in the late 1600s. The otherwise unnamed Warlock (Julian Sands) has been captured, in part by the efforts of vengeful warlock-hunter Giles Redferne (Richard E. Grant). However, on the eve of his execution, the Warlock escapes with the help of a demon.

However, the demon sends the Satanic sorcerer to 1980s Los Angeles, where he lands in the apartment of Kassandra (Lori Singer) and her roommate. Instead of being grateful for their ministrations, the Warlock kills Kassandra's roommate and departs to find out why the demon diverted him to a future era. The Warlock is charged to find the Grand Grimoire, a master spell-book which pious Christians could not destroy, and so divided it into three sections in order to keep the tome out of the hands of evildoers. 

By some unexplained magic, Redferne is able to follow the Warlock to Kassandra's era, and despite her general reluctance he's able to enlist the young woman into joining his cause, to keep the Warlock from assembling the grimoire and using it to bring about the ultimate blasphemy; uncreating the created world.

WARLOCK's direction by Steve "FRIDAY THE 13TH" Miner is efficient but unremarkable. The real star of the show is the script by David Twohy, which shows great resourcefulness in providing a system of magic that seems like something out of seventeenth-century America. The idea of sympathetic magic, for example, underlies a counterspell in which involves removing the shoes from the Warlock's feet, so that when he flees, his opponents can slow him down by driving nails into his footprints. I can't say that all of Twohy's clever concepts cohere into a greater whole, though, which would have boosted the movie's metaphysical mythicity to a higher level. But I'm pleased to see that I found the movie just as entertaining the second time as the first. Since I barely remember anything about the sequels, which I plan to re-view, that may not bode well for either of them.

DRAGONBALL: CURSE OF THE BLOOD PEARLS (1986)

 

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

Though I understand why the creator of DRAGONBALL chose to devote most of his hero's adventures to his adult self, I must say that the stories featuring Goku Son in his little-kid incarnation have the greatest charm.

DRAGONBALL, very loosely based upon the "Monkey King" story of Chinese folklore and literature, is a deft combination of sci-fi and magical fantasy tropes that manage to reinforce one another, rather than conflicting. PEARLS recapitulates the first arc of both the manga and the anime teleseries, establishing that although all takes place in a distant sci-fi future full of aliens and colonized worlds, there also exist the seven Dragon Balls. When all seven are assembled, they summon the Dragon Shenron, who will grant any wish, no matter how extravagant.

The tyrant Gurumes rules future-Earth, or at least part of it, enslaving the bucolic inhabitants while searching for priceless gems known as Blood Rubies. However, the more rubies the ruler acquires, the more he begins mutating into an ugly monster. Thus Gurumes also wants to acquire the Dragon Balls, to wish himself healthy.

As it happens, Gurumes' quest for the Balls brings together many of the principal heroes of the series, all efficiently brought together within less than an hour's run-time. The monkey-tailed Goku, living alone in the wilds after the death of his "grandpa," is one of the first beings contacted by the tyrant's henchmen. Despite his young years, Goku is extraordinarily powerful, so he trounces the minions. Then treasure-hunter Bulma convinces Goku to help her find the other balls and keep them out of Gurumes' hands. This leads to swift introductions to such familiar cast-members as Yamcha, Oolong, and Master Roshi, all of whom are exploited for good humorous results.

The original arc focused on a blundering tyrant named Pilaf, but I prefer the more serious menace of Gurumes, who's shown causing harm to the downtrodden peasants in his quest for riches. The Blood Rubies are also a new creation, and the finale uses the gems to good visual effect at the climax, when a courageous little girl gets the chance to use the Dragon-wish before Gurumes can. The DRAGONBALL movies tend to be fairly pedestrian, but BLOOD RUBIES is a happy exception.