KUNG FU PANDA (2008)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*

It's entirely appropriate that Dreamworks landed Jackie Chan to essay one of the voices in KUNG FU PANDA. The core idea of this comic kung-fu cartoon is that the heroic panda Xiao Po can only bumble his way through the rigid disciplines of kung fu until he finds his own unique (and funny) way to kick booty. Chan made this sort of comedy-fu his specialty, but even if a viewer never saw a Chan movie, he will probably be able to guess the way Panda Po will succeed not in spite of his faults, but because of them. 

In this case, though, predictability isn't all bad. The script's simple structure makes it possible to keep feeding the audience with a steady stream of slapstick gags, balanced by a healthy sense of respect for the imagined traditions of fantasy kung-fu-- a discipline practiced in a China populated entirely by anthropomorphic animals. Po (Jack Black), a panda adopted in infancy by a goose who runs a noodle shop, conceives a passion for kung fu. He wishes he could fight with the elect masters, the Furious Five (voiced by Chan and a host of other celebrities), and to be trained by the great master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman). To his surprise, Po is selected to become the Dragon Warrior, the supreme warrior who will protect China from all threats-- even though the panda can barely muster the most basic fighting-skill.

One of the film's best conceits is its villain, the snow leopard Tai Lung, because Tai, like Po, was adopted by a parent of a different species. But Po's adoptive father tried to get him to be devoted to noodle-making, he accepted the panda's decision to choose his own path. Tai was raised the red panda Shifu to inherit the Dragon Warrior status, and to judge by the crap Shifu dumps on Po, Shifu was probably a very demanding parental figure, which results in Tai becoming a dangerous criminal. The film's best scene is not one of Po's many goofups, but a climactic battle between Tai and Shifu, in which Shifu is defeated but feels more pain for having been a bad dad.    

Naturally the drama doesn't last too long, and Po cobbles together an eleventh-hour mastery of his own unique discipline so as to defeat Tai Lung. I have not seen the other movies in the series, but the initial outing shows more promise than most cartoon franchises.  

        

TYRANT OF LYDIA AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES (1963)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic* 
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

TYRANT OF LYDIA, a TV-title, was actually the third peplum-film centered upon a hero named "Goliath," though none of the films were related to one another. But while it's true that there's no Hercules, or any son thereof, in this mundane historical flick, the Italian title isn't much better. First, not all markets kept the name "Goliath," since some christened Gordon Scott's hero with the name "Gordian," as in "the Gordian knot" solved by Alexander in a famous story. Second, it's not clear who "the rebel slave" is. One or two reviews thought it was female lead Princess Cori (Ombretta Colli). However, as her name indicates Cori is royalty, and though she's sometimes treated as a bone over which two national "dogs" are fighting, there's only a small part of the movie during which Cori is captured and sold in a slave market-- none of which action is important to the main plot.

The aforementioned "dogs" are Greece and Persia, who are at odds under the respective commands of Alexander and Darius. Both nations impinge upon the smaller kingdom of Lydia, typically an ally to Greece. The heroic Lydian soldier Gordian favors Greece, but Lydia's tyrant king (Massimo Serato) and his queen Zoe (Gloria Milland) plan to hand over the kingdom to the Persians for profit.

The setup could have made for some decent political intrigue, but TYRANT is slackly written, with lots of talking-heads who don't say much of anything, with occasional bouts of action whenever Gordian gets into a fight for some reason. There are no metaphenomenal elements, and even Gordian seems just slightly stronger than average, despite all his associations with myth-figures. There's a slightly interesting bit of stunt-casting in that Gordian receives a little aid from a Black muscleman, played by Serge Nubret, a bodybuilding competitor of some note in the day. Ombrella Colli holds up her end by looking stunning all the time, but the villains don't do anything all that dastardly. Really, Milland's Zoe doesn't do anything more than listen to the evil king's plots, so it's a bit surprising near the end when she's gratuitously speared to death during a battle-scene. TYRANT is a pretty ordinary peplum in every way, and only worth seeing for completists.

Incidentally, my dubbed copy came with a German title, "Goliath vs Hercules," but if Gordian was Goliath, I have no idea who some marketer thought Hercules might have been.       

HARD ROCK ZOMBIES (1984)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *irony*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS 

I don't know how I never stumbled across HARD ROCK ZOMBIES. I certainly didn't avoid it because it had a bad rep; I've seen many worse flicks, including those in the "heavy metal horror" subgenre. I only sought it out now when I noted that it had "monster mash" elements, but I still wasn't expecting much. To my (mild) surprise, ZOMBIES-- directed and co-written by one Krishna Shah-- is one of those oddball movies that deserves the label "so bad it's good." That's not to endow it with any sort of profundity, for it's still a stupid movie that appears made up on the fly. But it's never dull, like a lot of lesser dreck. 

Shah does at least set up some of his horror with an attention to detail. Before we meet the rockers who will be our viewpoint characters, sexy blonde hitchhiker Elsa (Lisa Toothman) cadges a ride from a couple of young males on a country highway. She guides them to a pond and persuades the guys to do some skinny-dipping. However, in the nearby bushes are a tuxedo-clad guy with a camera, along with two dwarves, one of whom wears a gargoyle mask. The full-size fellow takes photos while Elsa drowns both guys by holding them under the waters, apparently by main strength. Then Elsa and her buddy cut a hand off one of the victims.

After that, we meet the four rockers, but no one should worry about their names, since only the leader Jessie (E.J. Cursio) is more than a placeholder. From the band's conversation with their manager, we learn that the musicians are due to play in some California town at a rock concert named Grand Guignol, and that they hope to impress some record-company bigwig who's supposed to attend. The manager then gets some publicity photos as a bunch of fan-girls fawn over the players-- all except for Jessie, who excuses himself. Stepping outside, he runs into a lone fangirl, Cassie (Jennifer Coe). She tells Jessie not to attend the concert, because certain elements in town don't want the band there, including Cassie's father. All of which sounds a little like the previous year's hit FLASHDANCE, except that in FLASHDANCE, the local girl who warned away the musicians was not fourteen-year-old jailbait. Also, Cassie's warning begs the question: if powerful elements didn't want a rock concert in town, how did anyone get the permits required to stage one? 

En route to the concert in a van, Jessie experiments, riffing on a tune he found in an "old book." No one in the band notices that every time Jessie plays the tune, a fly, despite having been squashed by the manager, keeps coming back to life. Then the van stops for a hitchhiker-- guess who-- and the toothsome blonde invites the guys to reside at her family's mansion. We see again the photographer, the two dwarves, a wheelchair-bound granny and a grandfather who-- okay, I'm just gonna say it. Grandpa is a ninety-something Adolf Hitler in disguise, while Grandma is Eva Braun. Oh, and Grandma turns into a werewolf at one point, so I guess she was one of those "werewolf commandos" one hears about.

The film takes a break from THE OLD DARK HOUSE to dispose of its FLASHDANCE emulation in a town council meeting that shows the locals to be both petty and perverse, though it's not clear if most of the townfolk know that the occupants of the mansion are Nazi maniacs. But soon enough, we're back to Fuhrer-fear. While the band's rehearsing on their electric guitars, Elsa or someone nearly electrocutes them all, but they survive to perish individually. 

Jessie doesn't twig to the band's peril, but he does figure out that his new musical riff can bring dead things back to life. He suspects bad things on the rise, so he records his ditty on a cassette for insurance. Sure enough, one rocker's killed by Elsa in a shower (with copious PSYCHO references), and another by Were-Granny. But before Jessie's meets a humiliating death by a weed-whacker, he passes his cassette to Cassie. After the rockers are dead and buried in a local grave, Cassie plays the song-- and the rockers arise to take vengeance on the Nazi maniacs. However, for some reason I didn't follow, the power of the resurrection music spreads and brings the Nazis back to life too, even though I don't believe anyone's continuously playing the music at the time. The undead rockers don't hang around town after killing the Nazis but drive their van to the not-yet-opened concert site. No one's there except the record-company rep and Cassie, the latter having followed the rockers, and the two of them give ear to a song Jessie wrote for Cassie with the significant line, "For you it's new; there's so much that I've been through." Director Shah even provides a romantic slo-mo video showing Jessie and Cassie together-- their only clinch-scene in the movie, which may or may not be something imagined by undead Jessie.   

The imperiled townfolk are played for laughs. One guy gets the idea that because zombies (he calls them "ghouls") are anti-intellectual, they'll be repelled if faced with the images of heads. So the citizens try to drive off the zombies with big pictures of celebrities-- which seem to work, until they don't. Then another fellow gets the idea that they can drive the zombies back to the graves by setting out a virgin for the zombies to both defile and devour-- and to her misfortune, Cassie flees the concert and runs back to town, just in time to find herself elected for the position. By this time, the undead rockers, having finished the set they wanted to play in life, have gone back to the graves. However, the band's manager passionately exhorts the musicians to arise and play their resurrection-song, which diverts the Nazi zombies from Cassie, allowing the manager to save her.

And the big conclusion? Well, before Hitler gets killed, he explains to a flunky his plan to take over the US using gas-weapons that he stores in a cave outside town. By the way, said gasses are stored in "ovens," sort of a belated acknowledgement of the Holocaust in a junk-flick about undead Nazi freaks. The band's music forces the evil zombies into the cave, where the gas destroys them. Why? Well, it's not just because of poetic justice, because the four rockers join the Nazis in the gas chamber, thus rendering all the undead dead again. However, a coda suggests that death itself may not impede the Cassie-Jessie romance.

Since there was no substantive reason in the script that Cassie could not have been a totally legal romantic interest, either Shah went in a forbidden direction because (a) he was indulging a private fetish, or because (b) he was making some point, however badly. The script of ZOMBIES does not offer firm support for either position, but I could argue a bit more for the latter just because all the ZOMBIES characters are pretty perverse. Had the Jessie-Cassie romance been more normative age-wise, they would have been the only normal characters in a morass of weirdness. As it is, no character condemns the relationship-- even Cassie's father only objects to all the musicians because they're rock-and-rollers-- so *possibly* Shah is counting on the audience to see the irony implicit in playing the romance straight. All that said, the movie's biggest source of perversity is certainly the Nazi maniacs, so they get the nod as being the "starring monsters" of the story.

                 

                  

THE NINJA VIXENS: THE FINAL CONSPIRACY (1991)

 

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

Forget: "final conspiracy"-- it's finally the end of this awful series, at least for me. I've watched a shit-ton of subtitled Japanese movies and TV shows, and I've never seen such a complete lack of storytelling talent as I behold in the NINJA VIXENS series. The writers and directors of this series of TV-films seem to be positively in love with talking-head scenes that essentially SAY NOTHING. The actors for that matter communicate the same indifference to their material, and the series doesn't even succeed as simple sex-and-violence offerings.

There are two scenes that engaged me a little, though they seem to be unrelated to the rest of the film, which is again just a lot of blah court intrigue. One of the lady ninjas-- Gincho I believe-- has two encounters with a demonic-seeming fellow who can perform two marvelous-seeming feats. First, he can project his head off his body, so that the head can attack victims with biting teeth. Second, the fellow can send a pair of separate arms burrowing through the topsoil, holding a sword in the hands-- possibly a variation on the "burrowing ninja" seen in some earlier flicks. But though these scenes are technically better than anything else in all three telefilms, they're no explanation as to whether the magician-guy has real powers or is faking his stunts. So even the two scenes that are a little arresting also manage to be disappointing. So based on the mediocrity of the authors, I'm gonna guess there was some BS "uncanny" explanation for these miracles.

Avoid avoid avoid.   

 

THE NINJA VIXENS: VEIL OF ILLUSIONS (1990)

 

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

In my review of the previous NINJA VIXENS installment, I scoffed at Kagero's power to call up cartoon butterflies. However, VEIL could have used them, or something comparable, to keep from being even duller than SQUAD. The phenomenality here just barely enters the uncanny domain, through one ninja girl's use of a thrown needle to kill someone and the not-quite-Edo-period outfits the Vixens wear.

This time they're investigating a smuggling operation on behalf of their shogunate patron, However, as in the previous story the ladies are also acting to avenge some criminal deed against one or more private citizens, just so the Squad doesn't seem like cops. This time the older male ninja of the team doesn't appear often, and some of his screen time may've gone to a hot new female member, name of Gincho. The added femininity, though, doesn't mark any improvement in the underwhelming fight-scenes, while the seduction sections are just as vanilla as in the previous TV-film. Cast info is spotty online, so I'll guess that the names "Misa Shimizu" and "Kaori Yuki" might go with the actresses playing Gincho and Akane, but then, they might belong to two other actresses. Both actor-names do appear in the IMDB credits for the third movie, though.

Once again, the makers spotlight lots of lame talking heads and very little sex or violence, and the villains are even duller this time. There is one henchman of the bad guys who wears white makeup and whips a captive ninja-girl briefly, but he's quickly offed.

Possibly someone somewhere made an exciting film about the crime of smuggling, but this isn't one. Avoid.

        

THE NINJA VIXENS: THE KAGERO SQUAD (1990)

 

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

There may be as many as nine films in this cheapie series of TV-films, but only three are currently streaming. KAGERO SQUAD, named for the leader of the ninja-team, might be the first in the series, but if so, its creators didn't feel any impulse to provide an origin.

Kagero (Hiromi Takagawa) has on her team just two other ninjas, a female named Akane and an older man who sometimes wears a puppet on one hand. The trio receives word of a plot by an Evil Clan (not sure of the name) to usurp power in a particular domain of the shogunate, so the squad informs their superior, a woman highly placed at court. The squad then initiates attacks on the Evil Clan for the rest of the movie.

The court-intrigue story is very talky, and the action scenes are poorly staged. There's no strong villain-- just an enforcer-guy with a neck-brace and a redbearded foreigner who practices black magic. Speaking of magic, Kagero has one of the goofiest ninja-powers of all time: she can sic big yellow butterflies (crudely animated) on her enemies.

The Land of the Rising Sun has produced lots of junk, but usually it's at least lively junk. Avoid.

             

HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL ("THE MONSTER ON MOON RIDGE," 1959)

 

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

It's no great tragic thing to remain a child. Theirs is the best age. Their world is mysterious, wonderful, half real, half make-believe. Mr Bella, the world we live in is not always so pleasant. -- Paladin, "Monster of Moon Ridge"

 

HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL stands at the pinnacle of a small category that might be called "intellectual westerns." Most if not all of the half-hour episodes were framed as dramatic exercises, in which the cultured gunfighter Paladin (Richard Boone) accepted troubleshooting missions on behalf of his clients. Rather than passively doing what his clients wanted, Paladin applied his own strong ethical principles to suss out who among the parties he met were or were not meritorious. TRAVEL's writers wore their intellectual credentials on their sleeves, as Paladin seemed to have a literary quote for every occasion. So those scribes clearly understood how to frame moral problems on the didactic level-- but for my purposes, did any of them succeed on the corresponding mythopoeic level of meaning?      

The script for "Monster on Moon Ridge" might have been compromised by the length of the episode, making it impossible to shake out some of the fuzzy spots. From his base in San Francisco Paladin is summoned to Moon Ridge, Colorado, but even before he leaves, there's a newspaper item alleging that weird events have happened in the town, centering upon one Emily Bella. Paladin's client is rancher Dan Bella, who wants to get to the bottom of the rumors about his daughter and some sort of "monster" dwelling in the barren mountains. At least the yahoos in town believe there is one, claiming to have seen tracks that are neither animal nor human.

Paladin meets Emily Bella and finds that she acts like a child in a grown woman's body. Dan explains that ten years ago an "epidemic" ravaged the area, and that its legacy was that some of the afflicted became mentally childlike (thus prompting Paladin's remark above). Dan too has seen the mysterious tracks. and though he doesn't believe in monsters he knows that Emily wandered off for a week earlier, and he suspects she's been beguiled by something in the mountains.

Once Paladin ventures into the mystery area, he's exposed first to a hideous witch, and then to a hairy beast that overwhelms him. The gunhawk awakes to find himself chained to a wall in a cave, not far from a black bear, similarly chained. The witch appears and uses flash powders to make it look like the bear transforms him to a man. But Paladin has gone beyond the make believe of childhood, and though he's a little thrown for a bit, he quickly recognizes that the witch wears a mask and has been counterfeiting the monster-tracks, while the "were-bear" is her grown son, who like Emily was mentally impaired by the epidemic. The trickster, one Maria, was forced to leave the town because the yahoos tormented her retarded son. But as she had no money, she set up a cabin on the mountain and tried to scare away the yahoos with her witch-act.

One detail omitted from the rushed script: why did Emily leave her father's house for long periods of time? Surely Maria would not want to encourage that behavior, given that it resulted in more publicity than she would want. The narrative's broad implication is that somehow Emily befriended Maria's similarly limited son Clairy, for they're seen laughing and playing with Maria's trained bear. Still, the script rushes past those details-- including the whole utility of Maria's deceptions-- to put together a happy ending, in which Dan takes a shine to Maria, implying that he will extend his male protection to her and her son, making feminine trickery unnecessary.             

"Monster" was one of 24 TRAVEL scripts written by Gene Roddenberry, who in my estimation is one of the few toilers in the TV medium who succeeded at making mythopoeic scripts, mostly in the series STAR TREK. "Monster" is not as good in the myth-department as the best TREK scripts (which Roddnberry reportedly always rewrote, no matter who was the credited writer of each episode). However, underneath the routine contrivances of "the rational Gothic" pattern followed by the episode, Roddenberry invokes a folkloric motif that I'll term "the demon lover." In some iterations, the motif takes the form of some demon or devil luring innocent girls-- who may or may not be "special" in some way-- into assignations. Maria admits that she patterned her witch-act on MACBETH, but in the symbolic sense Emily's the true witch-woman. Because she's a child in a woman's body, she suggests the possibility of sexual transgression-- which here could be one involving intimacy with a man-child. Maria's trickery can't keep that from happening, but a strong father like Dan Bella can. Together Dan and Maria can not only keep away the bothersome town yahoos, they can also ensure that Emily and Clairy are never more to one another than de facto brother and sister, and so never produce any "monsters."

A minor point: though Paladin does not dispense justice this time using either his fists or guns, he does so on many other occasions. Therefore the episode is a combative drama because so many others in the series have been in the combative mode.