PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological* As much as I admire the Marv Wolfman-Gene Colan epic that I've termed THE FALL OF DRACULA, I never would have thought anyone would have selected it as the first feature-length adaptation of a Marvel story. After all, one reason Marvel allowed Wolfman and Colan to devote the last three years of TOMB OF DRACULA to the vampire lord's tragic demise was that the comic's sales had declined. Many comics-fans esteemed the feature, but who in the early eighties cared what comics-fans thought? This ninety-minute feature (give or take a few minutes) premiered on Japanese television first and appeared in American venues like cable and video stores a couple of years later. I speculate that Toei Studios weren't so much engrossed with the TOMB OF DRACULA iteration as with the possibility of forging profitable working arrangements with Marvel Comics. To be sure, the name of Dracula certainly commanded its share of attention among Japanese audiences, just as had the name of King Kong back in 1966, when Toei produced a version of the great ape's adventures for American television. It's of passing interest that the very next year after SOVEREIGN, Toei produced a TV-film that freely adapted Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN, supposedly "licensed by Marvel Entertainment," though I saw no resemblance between the TV-film and Marvel's 1970s take on the Monster. Apparently around the same time, Toei had something to do with the rather charmless 1981 SPIDER-MAN cartoon, so a relationship did develop, even though SOVEREIGN probably didn't contribute anything more than a "trial run." So how does SOVEREIGN rate next to the excellent source material? Well, apparently some literal-minded studio boss instructed writer Tadaaki Yamazaki to boil down almost everything in the last three-year run into ninety minutes, possibly trying to impress Marvel with Toei Studio's fidelity. Given that impossible task, Yamazaki deserves credit for a yeoman effort. Naturally he doesn't keep such franchise-characters as the Silver Surfer, who made a brief appearance in the long comics-arc, and though Dracula's daughter Lilith makes an appearance, someone renamed her "Layla" even though she keeps the same comic-book attire, and she's not said to be Drac's progeny, at least in the English dub. Yamazaki radically simplified the vampire-lord's origins from the comic as well. Dracula still starts out as the 16th-century warlord Vlad Tepes, a man who commits extreme cruelties to defend his country. But in SOVEREIGN, Vlad dies and Satan himself raises the warlord from death to become his agent of evil. In the comics-story Satan played a much less active role in Dracula's travails.
In FALL, Dracula wants to build a base of power, in part to better deal with his vampire-hunting enemies: the wheelchair-bound Quincy Harker (renamed "Hans" in the anime), Rachel Van Helsing, and Drac's distant relation Frank Drake. To this power-gathering end, Dracula finds his way to a Satanist cult, one which is about sacrifice a virgin bride to the demon, and he impersonates Satan in order to control the worshippers. Yamazaki brings in new motives: Dracula resents Satan's manipulations and intends to kill the devil's bride, named Dolores in the anime, just for spite. But after abducting Dolores, the vampire and the aborted sacrifice fall in love within mere minutes. The script does not dwell on what passes between them, but somehow the undead count begets a son on Dolores. I suppose nine months pass until the boy is born, though I'm not sure why Satan, pissed at having his bride stolen, is willing to wait that long for vengeance.
However much time goes by, things come to a head when the three vampire hunters overtake Dracula, while Satan instructs his followers to slay the vampire and his bride. Before Dracula can kill all the Satanists, one of them unleashes gunfire that kills the newborn. The distraught parents bury the unnamed child, but this time Heaven apparently intervenes. The babe is brought back to life, becoming a golden skinned adult who calls himself Janus, and he fights with Dracula in the name of Heaven. (A later section implies that Dolores brought Janus to life with some hidden power, but this doesn't affect the plot at all.) In the comic Janus' conflicts with Dracula go on for a while, but the script races on to the next high point: Dracula contending with Satan himself.
Satan plays his trump card and removes Dracula's powers, making him into an ordinary mortal. In this form the vampire hunters won't attack him, but Dracula is desperate to recover his lost status. In New York he tries to get Layla to bite him and re-vampirize him, but she kicks him to the curb. Drac travels to Transylvania seeking help from the other vampires there, but a new lord has arisen in the meantime, and a mortal Dracula has to fight him. Drac gets his powers back, but the vampire-hunters show up, and Harker sacrifices himself to destroy the vampire-lord for all time, The End.
PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological* The Turkish film industry is renowned for producing knockoffs of Western franchises. the so-called "Turkish Star Wars" being a famous one, though not one I've seen. But the movie LION MAN-- currently on streaming under the blah title THE SWORD AND THE CLAW-- is a reasonably original take on Tarzan, but one where the future hero (Cuneyt Arkin) is raised from infanthood by a pride of lions. 
Meanwhile, Maria finally confesses to Antuan that Antar is not the Byzantine's son. (Antar also possesses the birthmark of the shah's line, but I guess none of the Byzantines knew what it meant.) Antuan hurls Maria into durance vile and begins counter-attacking the rebels and their new ally. After various martial encounters, Antuan tries to nullify Aslan's claw-powers by pouring acid on his hands. However, a rebel blacksmith makes metal claw-hands for the hero, so that he becomes more powerful than before. Eventually Antar learns his true heritage and the half-brothers unite to destroy the "false father." Surprisingly, aside from avenging the death of Suleiman, the movie's main plot-thread is about the two siblings finding one another. LION MAN has a delirious concept, but at most turns it's undermined by the poverty of the production, resulting in bad fight-choreography beside which even an Italian knockabout comedy looks good. Some battle-scenes are even scored with a peculiar jaunty tune, rather than something more suitably adventurous. Arkin's the only performer who projects a little personality, though I can't say he overshadows even Gordon Scott, much less Johnny Weismuller.
PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological* Had the makers of this routine sleaze-flick wanted to choose a title that didn't bite the style of the NIGHT STALKER TV-franchise, they might have called their movie "Maverick Cop vs. Maniac Cop." But although MANIAC COP's Robert Z'dar plays the evil "stalker" of the title, that series didn't start until 1988, and indeed STALKER's main distinction is that it led to the hulking performer being cast as the undead lawman.
The star of the show, in any case, is Charles Napier in a rare turn as the hero of the story, J.J. Stryker, in almost every way a maverick cop in the "Dirty Harry" tradition: arrogant, anti-social (he's on the outs with the department for drunken binges), and dedicated to bringing back perps dead on arrival. Stryker departs from some maverick cops in that he does have a steady girlfriend, ex-hooker Rene (Michelle Reese), but they quarrel a lot because he's insecure about her past profession. Yet the script isn't interested in their dramatic potential, only in using Rene to give Stryker a personal motive to go after the villain, a serial killer who targets prostitutes. Because Rene keeps in contact with her pro friends, she becomes another target-- though the story is so episodic that Stryker doesn't cross the killer's trail for half the film. That first half is filled with various episodes in Stryker's crimefighting exploits, which serve to kill time but aren't very memorable. Stryker and his partner Charlie butt heads once with Julius, a pimp who brutally forces his whores to endanger themselves to make more money for him. The titular stalker (Z'dar) is one of the few unusual elements here. Chuck Sommers seems at first a garden-variety psycho, killing hookers so that he can paint their faces for ritualistic purposes. But Sommers' rituals have genuine magical effects. Viewers don't know if the murders really give Sommers immortality, but at the very least he becomes immune to gunfire. Pimp Julius finds this out the hard way as he and his henchmen try to take down the Stalker and he slaughters them all, ignoring their bullets (another presentiment of the MANIAC COP series). Sommers also kills Charlie and abducts Rene, so Stryker ignores departmental procedure to take down the fiend. The climax, which isn't as violent as I remembered, has Stryker and other cops bombard Sommers with small-arms gunfire, which he laughs off. Then for no clear reason the killer is apparently defeated when Stryker launches an explosive flare (?) and causes Sommers to fall into a smelting-vat. Before the credits roll, there's a quick suggestion that the Stalker may have survived, but patently there were no further adventures of the monstrous killer or his opponent. Apart from STALKER's role in giving Robert Z'dar his most celebrated role, the flick is mainly notable for the curiosity values of a maverick cop combatting a supernatural being and of seeing Charles Napier in a lead role. The director and the two credited writers mostly produced amiable junk with not much historical value, except that co-writer Don Edmonds gained some fame by directing the first two Nazi-sploitation "Ilsa the She Wolf" movies.
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological* The first season of Netflix's THE SANDMAN became a critical and commercial success, while the second (and last) season is due to be released in 2025. The first season's eleven episodes, all adapting various stories and arcs from the first eighteen issues of the Neil Gaiman-scripted series, are far from a perfect adaptation, and on my philosophy-blog I'll be devoting far more attention to the season's greatest flaw, that of overweening political correctness. But for this review, I'm trying to say as little as possible about Netflix's DEI priorities, to focus on why I give the season a rating of high mythicity. One irony from my perhaps singular viewpoint is that the eleven episodes of the TV show score higher than the eighteen comic-book issues they take from. On the ARCHIVE I assigned mythic concrescence to one short story ("A Hope in Hell") and one long arc ("A Doll's House"), but I didn't think the symbolic discourse of all the comic-book stories was equally well executed. But I have argued, on a few other occasions like this one, that sometimes an adaptation manages to concentrate the myth-themes better than an ongoing work. Nevertheless, it's a credit to the excellence of Gaiman's original work that the deeper resonances of the stories are not overwhelmed by the politically oriented alterations. Essentially the first season concerns two long arcs and three short tales, though the tales are strongly entwined with other ongoing subplots. The first arc introduces the titular Sandman, an anthropomorphic personification of the capacity for sentient creatures to dream. Like his other symbolic brethren, he rules his own metaphysical domain, but Gaiman introduced the character as the captive of a black magician, who keeps the Sandman-- usually addressed by his Greek name "Morpheus"-- in thrall for one hundred years, after which the dream-lord escapes. (In the comic Morpheus re-appeared in the 1980s era when the comic was being published, though the TV show is a bit more erratic about its timeframe.) The dream-lord spends the first arc seeking out various talismans of power that will help him rebuild his domain, gone to seed in his absence. The second concerns a threat to both the dream-world and the waking world, when a mortal entity known as a "Vortex" manifests her power. The other stories concern a man being given everlasting life, another man gaining custody of an immortal Greek muse, and an animated tale that might be dubbed "The Secret Life of Cats." Because even the lesser stories are extremely layered, I won't dwell on plot specifics. The resonances common to all of the Gaiman originals involve the double-edged aspects of dreams: able to enthrall or to horrify, to bestow revelation or breed delusion. It was this insight into the dreaming life of human beings that made the SANDMAN comic an international success, and the first season of the teleseries took that success to heart. In contrast to many streaming serials, which may spend a lot of money but look dull and artless, the showrunners of SANDMAN spent roughly $15 million per episode, but they successfully use simple, stark design-work and limited CGI to give life to Morpheus and his dream-domain. Not everything is equally well-done, for the imagery of Lucifer's domain in "A Hope in Hell" proves mightily underwhelming.
Understandably, the teleseries elides most references to other DC franchise-characters that had appeared in the comic book stories, except for two denizens of the dream-world, the horror-story hosts Cain and Abel, and the aforementioned Lucifer, DC's version of the Lord of Hell-- who incidentally got his own comic and TV show following his appearances in SANDMAN. I'm not sure if the continuing character of John Constantine, who appeared in the first comics-arc, was changed to avoid some rights-payment issue, because this gender-bent version, "Johanna Constantine," could just as easily have been brought about to satisfy a political ideology. Morpheus gets some mild comedy-relief from Matthew the Raven (voiced by Patton Oswalt), who's also based on a DC character with a separate history, though in this case the elimination of previous connections has no negative consequences.
Finally, I'm tempted to theorize that a preponderance of excellent acting helps along my high opinion of the show's mythic resonances. Star Tom Sturridge is of course the linchpin of the show, selling the evocative Gaiman lines as if he was reading Shakespeare. Other standouts include Jenna Coleman (as the aforementioned female Constantine), Boyd Holbrook (as The Corinthian, one of Morpheus's nightmare-creations), Eddie Karanja (as Jed, young brother of the aforementioned "vortex" Rose Walker), and Ferdinand Kingsley (as Hob Gadling, the man given immortality). Others in the cast are decent but not exceptional: Vivienne Acheampong (as Lucienne, the dream-world's librarian), David Thewlis (as a madman named John Dee), and Razane Jamaal (as Lyta Hall, a possibly ill-advised adaptation of a character from a separate arc). The only outright disappointment is the actress chosen to play Rose Walker, the somnolent Kyo Ra, who underplays most of her scenes and thus sacrifices the feisty appeal of the comics-version. There was some early negative reaction to the casting of Black actress "Kirby" as Morpheus' sister Death, because the prevalent comics-image of Death was that of a White goth-girl. But Kirby's readings fall into the "decent but not exceptional" category, so I don't begrudge her the role. However, one of my problems is that Netflix, in its quest to increase the quantity of "people of color" in the show, relied almost exclusively upon Black actors, with just a couple of Asians to break the monotony. But that's a screed for another blog.
PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological* I've just finished a brief overview of the manga-installments of the FLAME OF RECCA series here, so I won't go into further details about the nature of this lively fighting-fantasy anime series, since there aren't any important differences between manga and anime.
What I most liked about the FLAME anime is that, unlike most TV-shows of the 21st century, it devotes a now-staggering quantity of FORTY-TWO episodes to the series and even manages to conclude on a decent finish. Compare this expansive production outlay to the piddling twelve episodes given to Tamaki's DANCE IN THE VAMPIRE BUND by the 2010 anime adaptation. There are assorted changes in the continuity that were surely made just to save time, but the animation's good and captures Nobuyuki Anzai's character designs quite well, while providing more excitement thanks to the animation. (I frankly find the fight-scenes in the manga underwhelming by comparison.) The tournament-arc has a different ending than the manga so as to give viewers the sense that a major villain is wiped off the map, thus giving them some closure that wasn't possible in the ongoing manga. In the domain of my "fighting females" category, this is mainly represented by the "cute tomboy" character Fuko, though there are also a handful of "bad girls" sprinkled throughout the episodes. ADDENDUM: I should mention one continuity-change from the manga that's amusing due to how it shows the anime-makers losing control of their own setup. In the first episode of the manga, after Recca befriends his classmate Yanagi and offers to become her ninja, a strange middle-aged woman, Kagero, appears to the two of them and challenges Recca to a fight. To make Recca fight, Kagero slashes his face with a knife, and once he starts to strike back, she disappears. Later, Kagero reveals that she's the mother Recca has never known, and that she attacked him to trigger his hidden powers. The first episode of the anime follows the manga's plot accurately, but the fight is longer, with Kagero hitting and kicking Recca as well as cutting him. This only becomes a continuity error later, in an episode that suddenly reveals (contrary to anything in the manga) that Kagero suffers a curse that prevents her from physically touching her son. But if she can't touch him in that episode, how in the debut episode was she able to physically hit him with hands or feet?
PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological* I read with interest that Kinji Fukasaku, who directed the 1981 adaptation of the novel "Reincarnation from Hell," also adapted the novel for the stage. Though I enjoyed the 1981 movie, I did find some sections rather "stagey" in their presentation. In contrast, this 2003 adaptation by one Hideyuki Hirayama is more purely cinematic in its orientations, with a lot more closeups and crane shots, and even a little bit of CGI.
Amakuza proceeds to recruit other angry spirits for his revenge, although the scripters exclude the character of Gracia Hokosowa and substitute some other evil female ghost who didn't seem to have much of an identity. The other legendary figures of Musashi and Inchun appear, as do their opponents in the Yagyu family, father Tajima and son Jubei (Koichi Sato). I thought the actors did well with the roles, but the characters aren't laid out as well as in the Fukasaku movie, so the intermixing of the various legendary figures has less effect. Oddly, though the timeframe is still the 1600s, there are three new female characters who are sword-mistresses, and I can't help wondering if the filmmakers injected these characters for some political end. Yet only one of the three, a ghost who turns against her kindred, has a moderately dramatic scene, so if those characters weren't in the novel and were included just for more female representation, it was extra effort for little effect.
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological* The Japanese book on which this film is based translates to "Reincarnation from Hell" in English, so I assume someone threw in the word "samurai" for marketing purposes. Yet the original title is just as fitting, since at base REINCARNATION is a horror film, in which the "monster" is the main character.
The film begins with the aftermath of the Shimabara Rebellion of 1637, following the slaughter of thousands of Japanese Christians by the reigning Tokugawa Shogunate. Dying, the Christians' leader Amakusa Shiro (Kenji Sawara) bemoans the failure of his god to succor the believers, and he swears allegiance to the powers of hell to gain vengeance. There's one subtitled line that suggests he may have sold his soul to some Christian devil, though it's more likely that Amakusa simply incarnates the native Japanese belief that ghosts, when they cannot move on from the regrets of their lives, will manifest as malignant spirits. To gain vengeance upon the Shogun Ietsuna and all those who served him, Amakusa recruits a veritable "Avengers" made up of Japanese historical figures who became legends. This group of evil spirits includes the swordsman Miyamoto Musashi-- probably the figure best known to non-Japanese audiences-- and the warrior-monk Hozoin Inshun, whose Buddhist outlook was challenged by his sadistic feelings toward women. Arguably the recruit who gets the most dramatic attention is Hosokowa Gracia, one of the Christian believers killed during Shimabara. Her own lord deserted Gracia for a mistress because her Christian beliefs interfered with her duties as a wife, so in her "angry ghost" persona, Gracia becomes a seductress who inserts herself into the bedroom of the Shogun.
As in many horror films where the monster methodically stalks several victims, much of the plot of REINCARNATION revolves around Amakusa and his minions setting up the lords of Tokugawa for annihilation. The ghosts aren't shy about involving the peasants either, for at one point they curse the farmers' crops, so that once more the lords are forced to cope with rebellion. The demons' main opposition stems from the Yagyu family. Patriarch Tajima Yagyu (Tomisaburo Wakayama of LONE WOLF AND CUB fame) uses an enchanted sword to destroy the monk Inshun. But then Tajima dies, and Amakusa beguiles him into reincarnating as an angry ghost despite Tajima's attempts to die without regrets. Amakusa's main foe is Tajima's son Yagyu Jubei (Sonny Chiba), another historical figure who has taken on legend-status via fictional elaborations. A swordsmith forges for Jubei a sword capable of "killing even God," and after a prolonged struggle Jubei brings Amakusa's reincarnation to a halt if not a permanent end.
Though REINCARNATION sports some bloody sword-work, the story emphasizes the dramatic conflicts more than the physical ones. I found the drama good though not great, perhaps somewhat hampered by reiterating the way the ghosts seek to hold on to negative aspects of their former lives just as an excuse not to die completely. Tajima, as mentioned, tries to expire with a clear mind, but he's tempted to reincarnate by wondering if he could beat his son Jubei in a sword-match. Even after Gracia has seduced the Shogun, she angers him by muttering in her sleep the name of the lord she once loved in life. Jubei manages to defeat Musashi, Tajima and Amakusa one after the other, and the reign of the angry ghosts is ended. As I am not an expert on Japanese history and legendry, I don't know how much real history appears in the interaction in these characters, but given the involvement of the supernatural here, I would tend to think the fiction predominates, as much as it would in a western where Jesse James teams up with Wild Bill Hickock and Billy the Kid.
