THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ADAM AND EVE (1960)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

In my review of producer-director Albert Zugsmith's SEX KITTENS GO TO COLLEGE, I compared analyzing that film to sussing out an ancient building that had been badly constructed. For the same creator's PRIVATE LIVES OF ADAM AND EVE-- which Zugsmith did not write, though it seems of a piece with all the movies he did write-- a better metaphor would be the time-tested notion of finding diamonds amid the rubbish. PRIVATE, though surrounded by a metric ton of junky, wink-wink nudge-nudge sex-humor, actually contains the hard skeleton of a plot that goes like this:

First woman Eve, frustrated because God talks to Adam but not her, submits to the blandishments of the Devil and talks Adam into eating the forbidden fruit. This places her relationship with Adam in danger, because the Devil keeps trying to break up the First Couple. When Adam seems to have betrayed Eve, she apologizes to God, but not without complaining about his silence toward her. At last God does (apparently) speak to Eve, but only to herald the birth of her first child, which immediately ends the conflict. All of this is an accurate statement of things that happen in PRIVATE's plot, but it's hard to see for all the junk around it-- though in the case, it was the junk that was meant to sell the movie, and thus it's peculiar that there's anything gem-like in the film at all. (Note the peculiar poster-art above, in which the viewer is placed in the same position as the pitchfork-toting Devil, peeking in at the sexual congress of mankind's Daddy and Mommy.)

PRIVATE's actual plot, a contrarian yet still reactionary take on Genesis, takes the form of a "delirious dream" experienced by the film's two main characters, who exist in a generally naturalistic cosmos. Evie (Mamie Van Doren) boards a bus to "divorce capital" Reno, Nevada in order to sever ties with husband Ad (Martin Milner), apparently because marriage isn't what it was cracked up to be. Ad pursues her by joining her on the bus with six other individuals, which struck at least one IMDB reviewer as an imitation of Steinbeck's book THE WAYWARD BUS. However, of the six, four are just bare stereotypes not involved in the central plot, who add little beyond extra local color, played by Cecil Kellaway, Paul Anka, Mel Torme, and a not-yet-famous Tuesday Weld. The final two are Nick (Mickey Rooney) and Lil (Fay Spain), also on the way to be divorced in Reno. The trip is sidelined when a Nevada flash floods breaks, and the travelers must take refuge in an empty church. After a little discussion of Adam and Eve by the religious bus-driver, Evie and Ad fall asleep and share a dream in which they cast themselves as Adam and Eve in the Garden. For good measure, they cast Nick as the temptation-happy "Old Nick," and Lil as Lilith.

I'm not sure if any reference to the story of Lilith had ever appeared in an American film before PRIVATE. The name appears in the Christian Bible just once, where it's in the nature of a generic demonic presence. The first conception of Lilith as "Adam's first wife" appears in a Jewish story collection dated (at latest) from the tenth century AD, though second wife Eve is not explicitly mentioned there. The modern interpretation is that Adam and Lilith were both created by God to be the First Couple, but Lilith rebelled on grounds of sexual incompatiblity and became a demon, after which Eve was created as a more compliant mate for the Father of Humanity.

Now, the highly unusual plot-skeleton of PRIVATE doesn't strictly follow this narrative any more than it follows Genesis. The Lilith here is one of several sexy demons serving Rooney-Satan, but she is in Eden before Eve gets created from Adam's rib (though Eve first appears amid the waters of a lake, slightly like the birth of  Aphrodite). Lilith tries to tempt Adam into sexual congress but he's too much of an amiable doofus to figure out what she's talking about. When Eve comes along, Satan sees his chance to mess up God's design by urging her to eat the forbidden fruit, which of course leads to the First Couple's expulsion from the Garden. Satan continues his plot to break the couple up by sending Lilith after Adam again, thus proving that the Devil's a big fan of divorce. Rooney-Satan and his demonesses also anticipate the comic strategy of Disney's genie from ALADDIN, in that they're constantly indulging in anachronisms like this one...

...except that generally PRIVATE's humor isn't funny. Or at least it didn't work on me. I don't know how much putative co-director Mickey Rooney might have been responsible for this, but it does seem to match a lot of his comic antics in his other works of the period. 

I'm not necessarily saying that PRIVATE would have been a good film if the makers had excised the goofy jokes. Based on the other productions with which the three credited writers were associated, I see a certain level of competence, but no excellence. And as I said, Zugsmith wanted a smutty comedy, and that's what the writers gave him. 

Anyway, Lilith introduces Adam to an item he's never seen, a bed, but still can't get across the idea of him bedding her. But when Eve comes looking for her husband, the demoness (who's probably been watching sex-romps on Devil-Vision) tells Adam to hide under the bed. Eve, despite also having never seen this piece of furniture before, instantly knows what "hiding under the bed" signifies, and she storms off in a huff. But the dream's used up its running time, so she has her Job-like moment complaining to God, who seems to answer her plaint by quickening her womb. The dream ends, Ad and Evie reconcile, and she confesses a sudden urge to eat pickles. The flood waters recede, letting everyone survive, and the forces of devilish divorce are defeated-- because, as we all know, a couple having a child makes ALL their problems just go away.

DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES (2023)

 

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

The most positive thing I can say about this new iteration of the famous D&D franchise is that it's a much better mindless adventure than either the wretched 2000 theatrical release or either of the DTV sequels.

As the subtitle suggests, despite the titular thieves' overt intention to steal for their own benefit, they end up Doing the Honorable Thing and saving the denizens of their fantasy-world from catastrophe. Said thieves are Edgin (master planner for the gang and a former member of a knight-like clique called "bards"), Holga (warrior woman), Simon (noob sorcerer), and Doric (shapechanging elf)-- respectively portrayed by Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Justice Smith and Sophia Lillis. 

I'm not going to dwell on the specific plot-devices that bring the four together, except that it all hinges on the A-plot of Edgin's attempts to be reunited with his estranged daughter Kira, who's been adopted by former thief Forge (Hugh Grant). Forge, not content with keeping Edgin away with Kira, is also party to an insidious conspiracy with a malefic guild of sorcerers. Edgin, in addition to wanting his daughter back, is also focused on obtaining from Forge a "tablet of resurrection," with which he hopes to bring his slain wife back to life.

By now, any time a viewer sees a character get a chance to "do over" reality for his own benefit, said viewer should expect that "you can't always get what you want" to be the theme song of the day. The other three characters all have very minor arcs, none of which are memorable. But one can generally ignore the pedestrian characterizations of the heroes, because the filmmakers manage to harry them from pillar to post as they go around questing in this or that dungeon and fighting this or that dragon. Forge's sorcerer-allies are the true villains of the movie, and though there are some slow moments here and there, HONOR delivers a slam-bang finish, with the noble thieves fighting gladiatorial menaces and various CGI monsters.

I'd probably spend more time recounting plot-points if the writers had spent any time building their fantasy-world, but I understand why they would not, given that the very name of the franchise doesn't suggest Tolkienesque complexity. (For instance, why are Edgin's order of "bards" associated with musical instruments? Is there some reason that they combine aspects of knights and troubadours?) My biggest complaint is that even though Holga's fight-scenes are very good, Holga herself is made up to look rather grotty. Since the actress herself has shown her ability to clean up well, I half suspect that her grungy appearance was some misguided attempt to avert PC condemnation for, god forbid, sexualizing a lady barbarian in a fantasy-film.

SEVEN DWARVES TO THE RESCUE (1951/1965)

 

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

This black-and-white fairy-tale film was released in Italy in 1951, but managed to get a U.S. release in 1965-- which was the last period in which any American distributor was willing to take a chance on any film in black-and-white (except for movies with some "arty" intent).

I was hoping for something that was seriously daffy, like Mexico's TOM THUMB AND LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD. Unfortunately, what I got was almost an hour and a half of seven "little people" running around having comic misadventures until they finally got around to the "rescue" part of the story.

The basic idea isn't without appeal. Following the standard story of Snow White, the heroine (gorgeous Rosanna Podesta) is married to Prince Charming. However, Charming's kingdom is menaced by a foreign conqueror, the Prince of Darkness (George Marchal). Charming and his soldiers ride out to quell the threat, but the soldiers are defeated and Charming is captured. Courageous Snow, over the protests of her comical fat nanny, rides alone to the Prince's kingdom in order to arrange her husband's ransom. However, once she's in that kingdom, the Prince announces that he intends to force Snow to marry him. 

I'm not sure what keeps this powerful overlord from forcing the marriage on the spot, or why the only heroes who can oppose the evildoers' will are the Seven Dwarves. Worse, the little schmucks take their sweet time getting to the Land of Darkness, having some irrelevant interactions with a tribe of mermaids and with the fat nanny, who insists on assisting in the rescue. The only way the dwarves manage to succeed in their mission is that when they reach the Prince's castle, they blunder into his secret laboratory, where they find all of his machines. (What do the machines have to do with anything? Weapons that help the Prince win wars? Who knows?) The dwarves' destruction of the machines distracts the Prince from finalizing his marriage to Snow, and eventually leads to his humiliating defeat. (Despite his normal size, he gets wrestled to the ground by the seven.)

The sad thing is that the director and writers did succeed on one level, for even though the Prince is just a mortal who dresses in a devil-like outfit, his determination to keep Snow in his realm puts across a vibe akin to the myth of Hades and Persephone. Though Podesta's character is underwritten, Marchal projects good villainy, and I can imagine a dwarf-less version in which Snow White helps free her captive prince to overcome the tyrant.

A minor coincidence is that both actors played major roles in movies about the adventurer Odysseus under his Roman name Ulysses, for Podesta played Nausicaa in the 1954 ULYSSES, while Marchal played a version of said adventurer in ULYSSES AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES.

THE MASK (1994)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*

Though I vaguely remember reading the original "Mask" character published in the nineties by Dark Horse Comics, that iteration made very little impression on me. I remember thinking that the original humor was fairly dark and violent, so it's probably all to the better (particularly for the career of Jim Carrey) that the movie-MASK is much more family-friendly. Indeed, the film practically seems like a love letter to the wild slapstick tone of Tex Avery, whose cartoons had undergone a renaissance of sorts, partly due to 1988's ROGER RABBIT. LIke ROGER, MASK depends on the jarring interaction of live-action and animation, though this time, all the animated effects stem from one entity, who has near infinite power to overwrite the restrictions of reality. 

Downtrodden bank clerk Stanley Ipkiss (Carrey) lives a life of quiet desperation. The one bright spot in his dull life hinges on a meeting with Tina (Cameron Diaz), a glamorous nightclub singer who seems to reciprocate he feelings for her. Then Stanley finds an archaic wooden face-mask. When he finally dons it, it molds itself to his face, and he transforms into a green-skinned, zoot-suited mischief-maker with the power to alter reality. I don't think he's ever called "The Mask" in this film, though later on this becomes his de facto "superhero name." He immediately uses his abilities to humiliate some of the people who tormented him, though with a cheery elan that keeps his deeds from seeming mean-spirited. Eventually Stanley is exposed to the theory that the mask may be a creation of Loki, Norse god of mischief, though this is never decisively confirmed.

The Mask becomes a crimefighter (of sorts) by accident: he witnesses a gang of robbers escaping a bank with their haul, and he simply rips off their loot so he can purchase tickets to see Tina's next performance. (Not sure why a magical being needs to buy tickets to anything.) This action earns the enmity of the gang-boss behind the robbery, one Tyrell, while a police detective, Kellaway, becomes suspicious of Stanley's involvement with the weird green trickster.

The Mask intrudes on the nightclub where Tina sings, which happens to be owned by Tyrell, who also happens to be Tina's domineering boyfriend. The Mask makes fools of Tyrell's goons and sweeps Tina off her feet, despite the fact that she's never seen him before. (She and everyone else seem to take the presence of a metamorphic being pretty much in stride.) Stanley, however, begins to fear that his own humanity may get subsumed by the Mask's influence.

Betrayed by a confidante, Stanley's jailed by the police (though I don't know how they would prove he could transform into a green-skinned cartoon) and Tyrell gets hold of the mask. The gangster takes on the artifact's powers and immediately becomes a super-being, but he's still a small-time thinker. He puts the snatch on Tina for her alienated affections and plans to blow up the night club for some reason I didn't follow. Stanley has to call upon his inner hero in order to battle for Tina's safety, recover the mask's power and defeat Tyrell's gang. Stanley is reunited with Tina and casts away the magical artifact, though it returns in the box-office flop SON OF THE MASK.

The movie's a fairly formulaic comedy, but most of its jokes and stunts land fairly well, so director Chuck Russell was right to push for a light-hearted approach to the material. Though the franchise was never became a success in any other iterations, the movie's main significance is its status as one of the many films of the 1990s to prove that films in the superhero idiom could appeal to a general audience once given a budget that allowed for expensive FX.

WEREWOLF (1995)

 

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

(ADMISSION: I did watch the MST3K version of this item, but while sometimes their sendups interfere with my estimation of a movie, I don't think that happened here. In addition, I tend to doubt that anyone ever watches this garbage-heap any other way.)

I can't remember where I saw someone call Tony Zarindast "the Iranian Ed Wood," but whoever said it, it's wrong on two counts.

First, thanks to the nomination of Ed Wood as the world's worst director, the seven or eight movies on which his reputation rests are generally easy to seek out. Zarindast directed (and usually co-wrote) about twenty films, but of those twenty, only two are somewhat available in American markets. One is of course WEREWOLF, while the other, a 1978 sex/crime thriller called CAT IN THE CAGE, probably got a VHS release in the U.S. thanks to its casting of Sybil Danning.

Second, Wood was incredibly sloppy in laying out his preposterous concepts, but his plots were usually serviceable and reasonably linear. I've seen CAT IN THE CAGE and I found it semi-incoherent, though nowhere near as muddled as WEREWOLF. 

Though there are a lot of "WTF" moments in Zarindast's crappy drama, it's distinguished by a bizarre inability to tell a story. One knows from the opening that a group of archaeologists, including Joe Estevez, Jorge Rivero, and a hot young girl, unearth a human skeleton with a beast's head from the Southwestern desert. After two of the guys get into a fistfight about some damn thing, we eventually find out that local Indians think it's the bones of a "skinwalker," an Indian magician able to shift into various animal forms. So right away, it's not exactly a werewolf, but an entity that can turn into various creatures, including wolf-men.

But it's not some ancient Indian wonder-worker who's the menace, but the digger named Yuri (Rivero). Yuri sees another digger cut himself on the skeleton and transform instantly into a were-beast (who's then shot down like, well, a dog). After that, Yuri somehow conceives a mad-scientist passion to test the bones on other victims, just to see if they too will transform. Oh, and he has the hots for Hot Lady Archaeologist, so he uses the infection to try to get rid of her boyfriend. 

So there's no attempt to organize a legend of Indian shapechangers, or to focus on a particular victim of lycanthropy, as most werewolf films have advocated. Apparently Zarindast just wanted to have various actors in bad were-makeup run around an Arizona city causing random havoc, with occasional regular folks getting into more fistfights to punctuate the wolf-action. It's been observed that many performers have their hairstyles change in short periods of film-time, which probably means that Zarindast had to film different sections of the movie at different times when he had enough money to do so.

I've rarely seen a movie with well-known pro actors (including Richard Lynch, who mostly sits around reading his lines very seriously) that evokes so little interest in what happens to the characters. I'd have to look at it again to remember what happened to Yuri or any of his victims, About the only positive aspect of WEREWOLF is the nonsensical scene I reproduced above: that of one of the afflicted wolf-guys Driving While Lycanthropic. But even a nutty scene like this one lacks Wood's naive charm.

Now I may have to review CAT IN THE CAGE, just to see if it matches WEREWOLF for sheer inertia...

PLANET HULK (2010)

 

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

PLANET HULK has a distinct advantage over the comics-story it adapts: it's way shorter. 

Aside from that, it's pretty much the same as the story on which it was based...

Sorry, private joke. I have to get my jollies where I can, given that, for the sake of this review, I wasted a hour or so slogging through writer Greg Pak's tedious 2006 "epic," which like the WHAT IF story above, comes down to nothing but sticking the Green Goliath into the context of a barbarian adventure.

So PLANET HULK THE VIDEO follows Pak's basic storyline. Other heroes on Planet Earth get sick of the Hulk's dangerous rampages, so they trap him in a spaceship and program the craft to take the heroic monster to another world, one where he can live out his days in peace. Instead, Hulk ends up on Sakaar, a savage sphere whose ruler, the evil Red King, likes to shanghai warriors of other worlds and force them to fight in his gladiatorial games. There's no political analysis of the monarch's reasons for providing all these "bread and circuses;" the story's moral, like a million other gladiator-movies, comes down to, "Making slaves fight each other is bad."

Like the other gladiators, Hulk gets fitted with a device that zaps him painfully if he doesn't get with the program-- so he does, waiting for a chance to escape. (There are no inconvenient transformations into Bruce Banner, by the way, but I don't remember any reason being given.) As in the source-material, the audience is quickly introduced to Greenskin's teammates in the arena, and all are just flat and uninteresting in the video as they are in the comic. A gladiator named Korg is given, both in comic and in film, a tie-in to the Mighty Thor, since Korg belongs to the race of the Stone Men, who were the Asgardian's first opponents in his comic. PLANET dicks around with this early continuity a little to claim that for some reason Thor-in-1960s-flashbacks is accompanied by his 1980s counterpart Beta Ray Bill. This was so that the video's writers could insert the horse-headed alien into the story in place of the comic's use of the Silver Surfer in a parallel role. (Parenthetically, in the comics-series Hulk's encounter with the Surfer was one of the few things I liked.)

The only character with a tiny bit of complexity is Caiera, a female warrior who serves the Red King out of the mistaken belief that he deserves her loyalty. But her eventual heel-turn to help the slaves is underwritten, so her only real contribution is a big one-on-one fight with the Incredible One, the DTV's best fight. She and Hulk are married at film's end, so at least there's more closure than one finds in the comics-series. Though the battle between Hulk and Beta Ray Bill is just so-so, like the video's animation and voice-work, it possibly influenced the decision of MCU filmmakers to work the "Planet Hulk" continuity into THOR: RAGNAROK. As I said in that review, the resulting Thor-Hulk battle stands as one of RAGNAROK's few good points, so I guess Greg Pak can take a little indirect credit for that.

REVENGE IN THE HOUSE OF USHER (1982)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

"I know the day I collapse, so will these walls"-- Eric Usher.

This prediction, validated by the end of REVENGE IN THE HOUSE OF USHER, is almost the only trope writer-director Jess Franco borrows from his ostensible source, Poe's short story FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. But for once, Franco's deviations don't bother me, because REVENGE is the first Franco film I've seen that seemed to click on all cylinders.

To be sure, there are a fair number of Franco films that are interesting near-misses, like 1962's AWFUL DOCTOR ORLOFF, to which REVENGE is a rough conceptual sequel, and others that are just dumb fun, like ATTACK OF THE ROBOTS. Up to this point I might have rated 1969's VENUS IN FURS as the director's best film, but I have not re-watched VENUS in some time. But as I opined in the ORLOFF review, most of Franco's output has been either shoddy or pretentious. I'd even seen an English-language version of REVENGE that I remembered with no better opinion. However, the English-subtitled French version I streamed, entitled NEUROSIS, proved a House of a Different Usher.

Technically some of REVENGE may have been altered from Franco's original version by the producers of Eurocine after a disastrous first screening. Nevertheless, whatever others added, the film always feels like Franco bringing together a host of his favorite (however eccentric) tropes and character-types. REVENGE includes flashback-scenes taken from ORLOFF, in which the actions of the earlier mad scientist, who was seeking to cure his disfigured daughter, are coterminous with the current actions of Eric Usher (Howard Vernon), who's kidnapping local women in order to transfuse their blood into the comatose body of his daughter Melissa. Both mad scientists are served by a mute slave named Morpho, who like Usher has aged since his 1962 adventure, though now his eyes have become even more grotesque. How much time has passed? There's no telling, particularly since both ORLOFF and REVENGE seem to take place in the early 20th century. (One REVENGE character comments on the "new" science of psychiatry.)

Unlike ORLOFF, though, Usher's castle plays host to a real "family romance." Like Orloff, Usher has something going with his housekeeper Marie (Lina Romay), but Usher unlike Orloff has a wife hanging around, Edmunda (Fata Morgana). But is Edmunda really alive? She spends most of the movie flitting around the castle in a white gown, and at one point she appears to summon up the specters of Usher's past victims, so I'm going to say she's not really all there. Additionally, Marie does have something going with young hunk Adrien, so this adds to the soap-operatic complications.

Outsider Alan Harker (Antonio Mayans), an analogue of the Mark Damon character from Corman's HOUSE OF USHER, arrives at Usher Castle in response from a letter from his former mentor. Harker finds Usher acting crazy, raving about his dead daughter and about the medical board that failed to recognize Usher's genius. Harker summons Usher's doctor, whose name is Seward (yes, that's right; both names borrowed from Stoker's DRACULA, though with no other parallels). Usher raves at his medical man too, accusing him of being a petit-bourgeois in love with routine.

Harker spends the night, but awakens and wanders the corridors. He promptly finds evidence of all Usher's depredations-- caged women, the dead-alive Melissa, and flitting Edmunda-- but he collapses. He awakens in his bed once more, and is quick to prove Usher's Frankensteinian complaints about mediocrity by deciding he dreamed it all.

So does Usher take advantage of Harker's conventionality? No, he freely admits having kidnapped and murdered countless women, and shows unusual self-knowledge by calling himself a "sadist." Yet Harker, like Seward, still believes that Usher is merely deluded. Meanwhile, Edmunda flits around Usher, claiming that she plans to take him to hell with her. Usher raves about his injured hands, which is a new element, but fitting if one considers that because of his age, he's an "Eric" without his "Rod." At one point he rants that he thinks that either Adrien or Harker are threats to his personal harem, including Marie, Melissa, and Edmunda. Edmunda brings about the downfall of both Usher and Usher Castle, and the pathetic Melissa only comes to life long enough to be buried alongside faithful Morpho, who cares about the girl far more than her egotistical sire. Only the clueless viewpoint character survives.

A lot of earlier Franco films flirted with Freudian themes, but this is the earliest one in which all the characters play off one another in a stimulating manner. For whatever reason, one of Franco's most-used tropes was that of "The Evil Old Man Doing Dastardly Deeds," whether the old man was drawn from Sade, Stoker, Mary Shelley, or old Bela Lugosi flicks. REVENGE's highlight is the sight of Vernon, almost eighty years old in 1982, giving the audience a strong, nuanced take on the generally cartoonish figure of the Evil Old Mad Scientist. I suppose Usher's guilt over his past excesses plays into the movie's alternate title, since the original context of "neurosis" was that of an impairment brought about by buried psychological trauma. Often I've scorned Franco's indifference to details, but here I liked the fact that one doesn't know exactly what Usher did to Edmunda, or how Morpho became so devoted to Melissa. I can appreciate that the Spanish director wanted to be a mover and shaker in film, but I wish he'd managed to shake out a few more films with this much symbolic richness.