THE AMAZING EXPLOITS OF THE CLUTCHING HAND (1936)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

According to Wikipedia, when "Wharton Studios" released a serial called THE EXPLOITS OF ELAINE in 1914-- simultaenously imitating the successful PERILS OF PAULINE and adapting one of the "Craig Kennedy" novels of the period-- its villain the Clutching Hand "was the first Mystery villain to appear in film serials. The concept was widely used for the remainder of the format's existence."

I haven't seen EXPLOITS or any other "Craig Kennedy" flm/TV adaptations, but none of the hero's previous encounters with the villain in any medium bear on the 1936 serial, which starts from zero, as this version of Kennedy encounters the version of The Hand with no reference to previous history. 

Like many serials this one turns on the attempts of heroes and villains to obtain a rare scientific secret, in this case a formula for making artificial gold (presumably one that's relatively inexpensive). Doctor Paul Gironda, father of Vera (no "Elaine" here), is kidnapped by the goons who serve the Clutching Hand, who appears only as a shadowy silhouette extending a hand ready to strangle his enemies. 

To be sure, though the silhouette's stalkings may seem somewhat risible today, director Albert Herman and his writers deserve credit for keeping on-theme, for there are quite a few moments in which someone gets throttled by a hand whose owner is off-camera.  It isn't always the Clutching Hand himself doing the choking, but it's nice to see a consistent leitmotif.

There isn't much other content to HAND.  The action-scenes are occasionally lively, but never in any memorable manner.  The Hand is a low-tech villain, and his best death-trap involves an electrical device set to fry the heroic Kennedy.  The same device spells the villain's doom in the last chapter; it's hard to say whether this was another leitmotif, or just a lack of inventiveness.

In my review of THE JADE MASK, I mentioned that I wouldn't consider minor advancements in modern technology to be "marvelous" in nature, and patently the same applies to this gold-making discovery.  Kennedy himself, though touted as a "scientific detective" in the original novels, is just a regular detective type here.

In some other serial-reviews, like THE WHISPERING SHADOW, I've noted that the villain often became "the narrative center" of the serial, while the hero came up second-best.  But while "the Clutching Hand" remains a minor name with which to conjure-- if only because of its place in the history of cinematic villains-- this serial's narrative is centered upon the endeavors of hero Craig Kennedy and his assorted aides.

HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS (1972), FINAL EXAM (1981)

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

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*


SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

The VHS illustration for the telefilm HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS makes it look like a 1980s slasher-film, but though there is a scene where a mysterious raincoated figure stabs a victim with a pitchfork, the killer's modus operandi doesn't have quite the same fetishistic emphasis seen in films like THE PROWLER.  Nevertheless, there's a good mysterioso atmosphere to HOLIDAYS, dealing as it does with a countrified version of an "old dark house" mystery.  The family patriarch (Walter Brennan) summons his four grown daughters (Sally Field, Eleanor Parker, Jill Haworth and Jessica Walter) to his country estate one rainy Christmas (rain being easier to manufacture than snow, one suspects).  The patriarch suspects that his young wife (Julie Harris) is out to kill him.  Instead it's the daughters who keep getting knocked off one by one, and Harris' character is the prime suspect, which naturally means she's as innocent as Sally Field, playing the 1970s version of the "Final Girl" here.

I give the killer away here because it's the only potential mythic aspect of this slight but reasonably effective potboiler (directed by long-time genre-specialist John Llewellyn Moxey).  It turns out the culprit is Parker, who was then old enough to have played mother to any of the other three.  Moxey's scripter doesn't manage to give an adequate explanation of her grudge against her sisters, but it apparently has something to do with having had to function as a "mother" to her sisters.  Her grudge might have been more understandable had there been some impropriety between her and her father, but perhaps the filmmakers didn't want to be that adventurous.  Strangely, Brennan's patriarch character simply perishes offscreen, and it's never clear whether or not Parker is responsible for his death.

FINAL EXAM appeared during the height of the original slasher craze.  The killer, stalking his victims on a college campus during Pledge Week, is extremely unprepossessing, but some of his murders pass my litmus test for passing the Threshhold of the Grotesque that can separate a Naturalistic Psycho from an Uncanny Psycho (concept referenced here).  The opening murder, in which a young couple is slaughtered while parking in a car, is the strongest from a "slasher" perspective, but it has to last the gore-hungry viewer for quite a while.  Reviewers of this film tend to complain a lot about the film's slow beginnings. I can't claim that the filmmakers use the gore-free time to develop the various student-characters particularly well-- all of them remain routine stereotypes-- but I found them a good deal more pleasant, naturalistically depicted stereotypes, as opposed to (for instance) those of HAPPY HELL NIGHT (reviewed in the above link).

If the filmmakers succeed at anything here, it's in depicting the chaotic spirits of the students, reined in by the routine of collegiate study but set free to some extent by the customs of Pledge Week.  As seen in the picture above, would-be pledges are subjected to demanding hazing rituals, which normally serve to allow the young people to blow off steam in harmless fashion. The stalker, however, plays the hazing game for keeps-- though to be sure, the title "Final Exam" doesn't apply to much of anything.  Perhaps it should have been titled simply "Finals," since the murderer does bring his victims to their final reward.  Because EXAM does associate its fatalities with the rituals of burgeoning youth, I give it a 'fair" rating for its mythicity.

BATMAN BEGINS (2005)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*

MYTHICITY: *fair*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological, psychological*

In 1986, Frank Miller's graphic novel THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS rewrote Batman's origin for the purposes of that story. 

The standard origin up to that point, hailing from 1939, asserted that after Bruce Wayne had trained for many years to become a crimefighter, he decided to pattern his crimefighting costume after a bat when one such creature flew into his open window.  This origin was a simple, elemental myth-notion, untrammeled by verisimilitude or probability. 

Miller's rewriting posited that Bruce Wayne's fascination with his totem animal hearkened back to a much younger age.  Gradeschool-age Wayne, chasing a rabbit on the Wayne Estate, falls into a shaft leading to the bat-caves underlying the manor.  Young Wayne is both horrified and fascinated by the bats, particularly one oversized beast-- given such a vivid description that the creature may arise from Young Wayne's imagination:

"Gliding with ancient grace. Eyes gleaming untouched by love or joy or sorrow. Breath hot with the taste of fallen foes, the stench of dead things, damned things. Surely the fiercest survivor, the purest warrior. Glaring, hating, claiming me as your own."

Miller's epic had mostly indirect influence on the 1989-1997 cycle of Bat-films, mostly in terms of the styling of the costume and the Caped Crusader's acquisition of a bigger and more ruthless arsenal of bat-weapons.  BATMAN BEGINS, however, adapts the broad outlines of Miller's revised origin of the Batman, though inverting the psychological value of the experience.

Even confining my argument to Miller's work purely within the scope of the origin-scenario, the artist's focus might best be styled "Adlerian," as seen in this Alfred Adler quote from his 1923 "Progress in Individual Psychology:"

The striving for significance, this sense of yearning, always points out to us that all psychological phenomena contain a movement that starts from a feeling of inferiority and reach upward. The theory of Individual Psychology of psychological compensation states that the stronger the feeling of inferiority, the higher the goal for personal power.

Though fear plays a strong role in Young Wayne's reaction to the bats, there's a strong element of admiration of its power and "ancient grace" as well, possibly even envy for the monster-bat's indifference to lesser, human emotions.

Nolan's Bruce Wayne, however, has his encounter not in competition with a fleet-footed animal, but following an act of petty thievery.  When Rachel, the same-age daughter of one of the manor's domestics, shows Young Wayne an arrowhead she's found, he swipes it and runs, and so ends up plunging into the shaft.  He's surrounded by a swarm of bats-- none of which are unusually sized-- and traumatized with a phobia that still touches him in adulthood. 

Could one also call Nolan's origin "Adlerian?"  In one sense, yes, for Adler speaks of "compensation" as being either positive or negative.  Miller's Batman, following the "can-do" model of the 1939 origin, unquestionably masters his early fears, and so he qualifies for Adler's "positive compensation."  Nolan's Batman, while impressive in some ways, never utterly transcends his early fears, and might be considered an example of "negative compensation."

The source of that negative self-image, it would seem, has its roots in psychology more Freudian than Adlerian, in that Wayne's character is primarily a response to parental images.  Freud's Oedipal theory doesn't come into play, for Wayne's mother is barely a presence in BEGINS, and the only female who plays a substantial role--  the girl Rachel, grown to adulthood (Katie Holmes)-- functions mostly as a Jiminy Cricket-like conscience and very mild romantic interest for Wayne.  But as for father-images, Wayne can't seem to turn around without running into some sort of paternal figure.  No less than five older men (older, that is, than star Christian Bale) contribute to the genesis of Batman, and that's leaving out the "grey eminence" of Sergeant (later "Commissioner") Gordon.

Nolan's take on the Batman mythos emphasizes that his Wayne acts more from weakness than from strength.  Taking the events of the Nolan-origin in chronological order-- rather than the order of their actual depiction on-screen-- we get the following:

*Because of his fear of bats, Young Wayne tells his parents that he has to leave the theatre where an opera uses bat-like imagery.  When they leave, mugger Joe Chill accosts the trio, resulting in the expected deaths of the Waynes.  Young Wayne thus lives not just with survivor-guilt but guilt that his weakness put his loved ones in harm's way.

*Chill, who escapes justice for many years in the Bat-comics until the crusader tracks him down, is immediately caught by the police and goes to jail for over a decade.  At no point does Young Wayne formulate any ideas of becoming a crimefighter.

*A crisis is fomented in the life of adult billionaire Bruce Wayne when the office of Gotham City's district attorney-- for which adult Rachel works-- makes a deal to give Joe Chill a parole in exchange for damaging info about Gotham's leading crime boss, Carmine Falcone.  Wayne plans to shoot Chill rather than let his parents' killer free.  He's saved from committing murder when Falcone's goons rub Chill out before Wayne can do so.  He confesses his desire to kill to Rachel, who upbraids him with a speech about the evils of personal vengeance.

*Wayne, apparently feeling his passion for vengeance unresolved by Falcone's execution, seeks out the crime-boss, though the billionaire doesn't seem to know what he wants to do to the gangster.  Falcone gives him a condescending speech, telling him that he's a rich boy who doesn't know how the world works, and has his thugs toss Wayne out.

*Whereas in the comics Joe Chill's murder motivates Wayne to become Batman, in BEGINS it seems that Falcone's little speech is the first impetus.  Wayne leaves his ritzy life behind for seven years-- during which butler Alfred declares him dead-- and mingles with the criminal underworld in various places without precisely becoming a criminal, though Wayne does sometimes steal food.  Wayne ends up in a prison in Bhutan, where he constantly gets into fights with the other prisoners, even though he's somehow picked up enough martial-arts skills to beat them every time.  If he has thoughts of returning to Gotham as a crimefighter of some sort, the film does not expressly say so.

*He's freed from prison by the mysterious Ducard (Liam Neeson).  Ducard represents a mysterious order of justice-seekers who call themselves the League of Shadows.  It's not clear whether or not Wayne has ever heard of them, but he dismisses them derisively as "vigilantes," which would suggest that at this point he doesn't intend to become one.  But even if he does, it's  Ducard, the second "strong-but-evil father," who molds Wayne's malleable mind as to what he will become.  While giving Wayne all manner of intensive martial-arts training, Ducard encourages Wayne to take on the aspect of "a legend," of "a terrible thought," which he can only do by confronting his deepest fears.

*Ducard hones Wayne to the peak of his powers, and because the billionaire's father died because of a "failure of will," Ducard insists that the aimless young man must also become a creature of pure will.  However, when the time comes for Wayne to be inducted into the League, Ducard insists that Wayne must execute a helpless criminal.  Though Ducard has read Wayne's heart in every regard up to this point, he makes a bizarre misjudgment here.  Wayne refuses, breaks with the League in a violent altercation (incidentally killing a sort of "grandfather figure" who calls himself "Ra's Al Ghul"), and escapes back to the real world.

*Once he's back in Gotham, Wayne nevertheless uses Ducard's inspirations to formulate the identity of Batman, aided this time by two "good fathers."  Alfred the Butler and research weapons-expert Lucius Fox are not perceived as weak like Thomas Wayne, but they are only able to act through Bruce Wayne for the most part.  Despite some early missteps-- Batman's first attempt to enlist the help of honest cop Sergeant Gordon almost gets the hero captured-- Wayne makes his crimefighting debut in spectacular fashion, busting the druglord Falcone with almost ridiculous ease.

This marks the end of Nolan's Bat-origin as such, though as one might expect, the League doesn't simply fade out of Wayne's life, and nor does Ducard, who eventually reveals that the old man slain was just a ringer; that Ducard is the real Ra's Al Ghul, leader of the Shadows.  Batman's bust of Falcone leads him to uncover an admirably complicated plot to destroy Gotham.  With the help of corrupt researcher Doctor Jonathan"Scarecrow" Crane, Ducard plans to pollute Gotham's water supply with fear-inducing toxins.  Thus Ducard, who tutored Wayne to become a fearful image in order to master others by terror, still plans to use the emotion of fear to destroy the city.

In one scene Ducard explains that he wanted to enlist Wayne into the Shadows so that he would help them destroy the city.  Is Scarecrow merely the backup plan of the master villain, once Wayne defected to become Batman?  It would seem a possibility, though Ducard's actions toward suborning Wayne don't make much sense unless one views him as having a desire to become Wayne's exclusive mentor/father-figure.  He even has a "Darth Vaderish" moment late in the film, in which he expresses a desire that he and Wayne should have presided over Gotham's destruction together.

Batman is forced to experience soul-shattering fear again when he's dosed with Scarecriow's toxin, but in time he conquers those fear-demons of fear from Ducard's "new son" by finding an antidote for Scarecrow's toxin.  Ironically, without his toxin this Scarecrow is such a minor threat that Rachel is the one who takes him out.  Ducard/Ra's plans to unleash the toxin in full force with the use of an elevated train built by Thomas Wayne to keep Gotham City prosperous.  Batman boards the train and fights Ducard, but the hero has also made advance arrangements to have Gordon destroy the tracks ahead of the train.  "I won't kill you," Batman tells his former mentor, "but I don't have to save you."  He leaves the evil, strong father to perish in the destruction of an instrument built for the improvement of men by the good, weak father.

There's no question that BATMAN BEGINS is an effective big-budget thrill-ride, well-acted and psychologically dense, even if it's at odds with the basic concept of the comic-book Batman.  BEGINS, the first of the "Nolan Bat-trilogy," is perhaps the best plotted despite some of the dubious motivations seen in the origin-sequence, and it certainly has the richest moments of comedy relief.  The tentative romance of Rachel and Bruce Wayne never occupies much narrative space, and even though Rachel gets to find out Batman's true identity, she has less influence on him than Alfred. (Her character will take on a more negative impact in the subsequent DARK KNIGHT.)  Just as Nolan seems very Freudian in analyzing Wayne's psychological hangups, he shows an almost Marxist leeriness of the idea of this billionaire using his vast resources to beat up low-class criminals, to the extent that the story is lumbered with many references to the philanthropy of the Waynes, and even involving their ancestors in slave-freeing undergrounds.  In the next two sequels, sociological and political motids will far dwarf those of psychology.

Naturally, given all of the high-tech Batman employs, the phenomenality here is "marvelous." 

ADDENDUM TO MYSELF:  In the original review I rated the film's mythicity as "good," but on reconsideration I've decided that it's no better than "fair," due to the ways in which the symbolic discourse is hemmed in by the pseudo-intellectual discourse.

YOR, THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE (1983), SPACEHUNTER (1983)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*

MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological, cosmological, psychological*


These two films, made in different countries and belonging to different genres, still resemble each other in featuring heroes who race around their planets, encountering all sorts of weird dangers, but never impeded by anything resembling a strong plot.

Of the two, YOR THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE -- based on an Italian comic book, and compiled from a 4-part Italian TV-miniseries-- remains popular with lovers of "bad movies" precisely because the flick is so unabashedly simple-minded. 

The film, directed by long-time genre-workhorse Antonio Margheriti, begins as if it were a caveman-and-dinosaurs film, since it starts out with the muscular Yor saving a girl named Kala and her father-like protector Pag from a big dino.  Yor, in addition to being the only blonde caveman in sight, wears a strange metal medallion.  He knows only that he had the necklace with him in infancy, when his tribe found and adopted him.  He's not exactly obsessed with trying to find out where he came from, but this mystery will be largely the only thing close to a coherent plotline in the film.

No sooner does Yor save Kala and Pag then he has to save two more times, from blue ape men and from diseased-looking desert-dwellers.  However, as if in imitation of the many "blonde goddesses" seen in jungle films, the desert-dwellers have a blonde goddess of their very own, name of Moa, who just happens to be wearing a medallion just like Yor's.  In addition, there's a big piece of ice in the desert-people's cave-- ice which has a humanoid figure inside.  In Margheriti's one concession to science-fiction verisimilitude, the script does mention that this isn't ordinary ice as it only melts very slowly, thus supplying the leprous-looking types with a motive to hang around the human icicle. 

Yor manages to fight off the desert-lepers and escape with Moa, Kala and Pag.  Moa doesn't get a chance to tell Yor much about her obscure origins, though, for when Yor's back in turned, jealous Kala tries to kill Moa.  But just so the audience doesn't feel Kala's a bad person, some more ape-men intrude, starting a fracas in which Moa is conveniently killed.

Eventually Yor and company arrive at a fishing-village, where Yor kills another man-eating dinosaur.  The village tries to reward him by giving him a hot young virgin-- who's more than a little eager to be the reward-- but Yor has learned from sad experience to value monogamy, and turns the little nymphet down.  Yor gets all the babes-- which is probably the main reason this cheesy trashfest is still popular.

A village elder explains that they also fear an attack by mysterious "gods," for one of their number accidentally killed a god who visited them.  Shortly thereafer, sky-ships blast the village to pieces.  Yor gets hold of a boat and with his buddies tries to travel to the island where the gods make their home.  He's separated from his friends but learns the Big Truth: their world was once more advanced, only to fall apart due to atomic chaos (which presumably explains the rebirth of the dinos).  The all-too-human gods comprise the last of the once-advanced civilization.  But there's a schism in the works: the culture is ruled by the extremely Darth Vader-ish "Overlord," who cast out Yor's parents, and Yor himself as an infant, for having threatened his reign.  Fortunately, for Yor and his friends, the forces of the, er, rebellion are still active, and with their help Perseus takes down his evil grandfather Acrisius-- oops, wrong myth.  Then Yor flees the island to go back to fighting dinosaurs.

The same year's SPACEHUNTER shows off better acting and better production values, but though it too has a hero and his aides running around a planet with a fuzzy goal, it's not as much fun.

Three beautiful survivors from a destroyed space cruiser are cast away upon a failed colony world plagued by disease.  They're promptly taken prisoner by the risibly named "Overdog," (Michael Ironside) who rules with an iron hand-- or rather, a pair of iron claws built into his cyborg body.  Overdog's act provides a reason for authorities to send a mercenary in quest of the women, though they themselves are never important characters.

Peter Strauss plays a raffish "lone wolf" hero, appropriately named "Wolff," a bargain-basement Han Solo type.  He and his robot partner (Andrea Marcovicci) descend to the planet and promptly get into a firefight with some scruffy locals.  The robot is destroyed, but Wolff stays on the trail.

He doesn't get to remain alone for long.  A packrat-looking young girl named Niki (Molly Ringwald, several years away from being a star) tries to steal his transportation, but despite this "meet-aggravating" he consents to let her be his guide on the hostile world.  Shortly after this encounter, Wolff is attacked by an old competitor, Washington (Ernie Hudson), who's also planning to liberate the women for a reward.  Wolff knocks his rival around and steals his transportation.

Niki doesn't prove to be much of a guide, as twice she fails to lead Wolff clear of dangers, including mutant baby-creatures and a race of lake-dwelling Amazons.  Finally the two of them encounter Washington again and Wolff is forced to make a deal to split the reward to get the other mercenary's help. 

The two mercs penetrate the fortress of Overdog, where the cyborg holds arena-contests to find the most spirited subjects-- whom he then subjects to a machine that drains their life force into him.  Niki also sneaks into the fortress without Wolff's knowledge and ends up running a gauntlet of dangers in the arena.  Her reward for this is to have her life-force tapped by Overdog, who explains that he needs her youth because "I'm very old."  That probably wasn't the first time she heard that line.

Wolff and Washington succeed in taking down Overdog with a big explosion, and the three heroes escape with their prizes.  The action is decent if a little predictable, though certainly better than one might expect from Lamont "LIPSTICK" Johnson.  I liked the designs of the weird alien vehicles, but the cyborg-costume of Overdog isn't much to speak of.

Possibly the best aspect of SPACEHUNTER is the ersatz "father-daughter" vibe that grows between Wolff and Niki, best illustrated by a scene in which he gives her a bath because he's sick of looking at a dirty urchin.  It sounds like the sort of scene that could become creepy, but Johnson does keep it clean, and even makes the scene faintly amusing.

YONGARY, MONSTER OF THE DEEP (1967)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*

MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological*

YONGARY, MONSTER OF THE DEEP was presumably South Korea's first contribution to Japan's *kaiju* ("giant monster") genre.  Though it doesn't touch the best of the Japanese works, YONGARY does have a few interesting quirks to it.

The film unquestionably borrows tricks from Godzilla's bag, in that it deals with a giant, fire-breathing reptillian monster awakened from subterranean hibernation by an atomic blast.  The lanky, horn-nosed reptile isn't visually impressive, and at times a metal tube is visible in his mouth when he breathes fire.  He has the peculiar quirk of feeding on modern-day petrochemicals such as gasoline, a trait that's never explained.  I thought maybe he used to feed on the sort of critters that got converted into petroleum due to eons of subterranean pressure, but Wikipedia helpfully tells me that most of the oil-critters were zooplankton, which doesn't seem to make for much of a diet for a tyrannosaurus-sized beastie.  Too bad Yongary didn't appear about twelve years later: a gasoline-devouring monster would've had greater resonance during 1979's energy crisis.

The plot begins on a odd note: the very night a handsome young scientist gets married, his father-in-law interrupts his honeymoon to send the fellow into space.  Granting that many fathers-in-law may evince similar feelings toward their sons-in-law at that juncture, the scientist's jaunt in a space capsule seems a little counterintuitive.  All he ends up doing at the behest of said father-in-law-- some sort of Korean military figure-- is to fly above the site of a burgeoning earthquake caused by atomic testing in "the Middle East."  He doesn't really do anything of consequence while in his little capsule-- he's not even the first to spot the recrudescent Yongary-- but maybe the scripter felt that there should be this much connection between Yongary and the human who will slay him.

Yongary arises; Yongary invades cities looking for gasoline to drink; Yongary smashes lots of real estate.  Most of Korea flees his approach, though one person-- Icho, the 9-year-old little brother of the scientist's bride-- sympathizes with the giant monster.  At one point in the film, Icho even manages to catch the giant creature's attention with a flashlight, which somehow inspires the beast with the desire to dance a little dance!

Based on his study of the creature, the scientist warns his pigheaded father-in-law that conventional weapons won't stop Yongary, but Big Daddy won't listen.  Off go the rockets, and Yongary appears to fall dead from the explosions.  Everyone congratulates everyone until Yongary gets up in a really bad mood.  Thus it falls to the scientist to figure out Yongary's Achilles heel, which he does, though not without a little mild opposition from Icho.

The one interesting "cosmological" aspect of YONGARY is that the title creature, while not exceptionally well conceived, is still at base a big animal.  From the first Godzilla seems less like a beast than like a living apocalypse.  Some giant critters have been infused with some protective attitude toward humans, like Mothra and Gamera, while yet others are the tools of alien masters, like Ghidrah.  But from start to finish, Yongary really does seem like nothing but a big animal with the misfortune to encounter a species of animal much meaner than he is.

ADDENDA, 10-31-16: Upon re-examining the end scenes of the film, I've determined that there is enough back-and-forth between Yongary and the Korean air force to justify calling the film a "combative drama." The FX are not as well-managed of those of either the mid-range Godzillas or any of the Gameras, but there is more combat here than I noted earlier.

REVOLT OF THE ZOMBIES (1936)

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


Having enjoyed a modest success with 1932's WHITE ZOMBIE. the producers of that film, the Halperin Brothers, eventually followed it with their only other zombie film, REVOLT OF THE ZOMBIES.

Unforunately, though WHITE ZOMBIE was not without problems, REVOLT-- set after WWI in Cambodia -- gets wrong everything that the earlier film got right.  In my essay on the earlier film, I said:

In terms of the film's psychological components, the central figure might be deemed not romantic leads Madeline and her fiancee Neil, nor even the powerful villain Legendre (Bela Lugosi), but the weak-willed plantation owner Beaumont. Beaumont, besotted by Madeline's beauty, is on one level a Faust who calls up a demon, yet also the summoner who cannot control that demon.
 

The "demon" of that film is the zombie-master Murder Legendre, often rated as one of Bela Lugosi's best film-roles, assumes the dominant role in the story, enslaving his patron Beaumont along with earlier victim Madeleine.  REVOLT has a mildly Legendre-esque villain-- the evil-looking Colonel Mazovia, who acquires the secret of making zombies from the Cambodian priest he kills-- but having served the purpose of making the secret available, he fades from the story.

The Beaumont role is assumed by Dean Jagger, playing Armand, an expert in dead languages.  He has a passion for Claire, the daughter of one General Duval, but though Claire actually loves another man, name of Clifford, she agrees to become engaged to Armand in order to force Clifford's hand.  Once Claire has what she wants, she throws Armand over, with some choice remarks about his passion for dead history.

Armand then encounters the lost secret of zombification, and before you can say "Bela Lugosi," he's transformed a contingent of Cambodian soldiers into his zombie slaves.  In the film's one impressive scene, the zombie soldiers attack Caucasian soldiers, the former proving themselves immune to gunfire. 

In WHITE ZOMBIE, Madeleine's fiancee has to show some gumption in order to defeat the sinister sorceries of Murder Legendre.  But neither Clifford nor General Duval do much of anything but stand around fretting that this abomination may end the "white race," or something like that.  In a masterpiece of an anti-climactic ending, Armand becomes so desperate to prove his love to the fickle Claire that he voluntarily gives up control over his zombies for her sake.  The soldiers, recovering their mortality and their independent will, proceed to take revenge on their erstwhile master.

Strangely, REVOLT has one thing going for it that WHITE ZOMBIE did not: the trope of zombies (or former zombies) turning against their master.  In my review of the earlier film I thought it odd that the Halperins used so many "white zombies," since a great part of the appeal of the Haitian-born zombie-concept in fiction is as a sociological metaphor for the enslavement of blacks by whites, both in Haiti and elsewhere.  But not only do all the zombies seen at the climax of WHITE ZOMBIE fail to turn on their master-- rather, they simply walk off a cliff when their master gets knocked out-- they're also all white zombies.

REVOLT, in contrast, may or may not have much in the way of sympathy for the native Cambodians dominated by the Western imperialists, but at least they do get to rebel against one particular white master.  Unfortunately, the setting of Cambodia doesn't have nearly as much romantic resonance as does Haiti, and so the rebellion comes off with only minimal impact.

A SAFE PLACE (1971)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *irony*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*

Given the arty ambivalence of Henry Jaglom's A SAFE PLACE, it's true that viewers can never know absolutely whether or not its metaphenomenal aspects have any reality beyond the mind of the film's erratic young focal character, Susan (Tuesday Weld).  However, as I noted in my essay on LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH, I tend to think that even when there's an ambivalence between one phenomenality and another, the work's creator(s) will tend to weigh the narrative toward one phenomenality than the other.  PLACE, like JESSICA, never furnishes any substantial evidence that its potential "marvelous" aspects have any reality.

PLACE's direction, acting and cinematography are above-average, but most viewers won't get much out of the free-flowing, anything-that-comes-to-mind storytelling. Jaglom focuses upon Susan, a young woman who seems to exist in a dreamlike world. though no one else in her circle shares her dreams.  The most fantastic figure in her world is a street conjurer known only as The Magician (Orson Welles).  He's occasionally seen performing feats of apparent magic, such as levitation, but he undercuts his own miracles-- perhaps even his own identity as a figure from her dreams-- by constantly claiming to be no more than a fake magician, incapable of working true magic.

There is no plot as such: by one interpretation, Susan is increasingly pulled out of her dream-world by the influence of two rivals: predictable Fred (Phil Proctor) and wild Mitch (Jack Nicholson).  The ending, as Jaglom says in his commentary, may indicate that Susan has somehow escaped our dull round of existence, but it may also mean that she has committed suicide.


I've occasionally enjoyed nonlinear cinema, but I enjoy it best when I feel that the author has some deep metaphysical theme that would be frustrated by linear storytelling and expectations.  The ramblings of Jaglom's characters aren't without interest, but when he devotes a long dialogue to Susan and Fred discussing the alienation Susan feels because current phone numbers don't use prefixes any more, it's evident that Jaglom's *raison d'etre* for this film is more confessional than universal.  He confirms in his commentary that Susan's alienation here is his own.

Worth seeing only if one happens to be in a venturesome mood.  I label this film an "irony" given that the focal character seems to have no chance of prospering or even surviving.