DETECTIVE DEE: DEMON CURSE (2022)

 

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

Long ago I read a handful of the mystery novels of Robert Van Gulik, who brought the exploits of medieval Chinese magistrate Judge Dee to Western audiences. I've also seen one of Tsui Hark's high-ticket "Detective Dee" films, and this later film follows Hark's pattern of stressing supernatural adventure over mystery. The Dee here is younger than in the traditional tales Van Gulik used as his template, and so is known only as "Detective Dee."

The Empress of China is due to arrive at a particular city, but as there have been strange murders therein, Detective Dee (Benny Chan) and his aide come to town to sort things out. Dee does not believe in ghosts or demons, but despite his acumen and martial skills, he can't keep others from being killed. What he eventually finds is a cult of humans planning to sacrifice the Empress for an "ascension rite," and though they're not demons, they do seem to command some sort of ill-defined magic.

Though the settings and costumes are sumptuous the script seems rushed, and I wondered if it had been done for TV. The action-scenes looked as if the photographers had "undercranked" the film-speed to make it look as if the actors were moving faster than in real life. I can't say I followed all of the details of the story, partly because the voices used for the dubbing were rather peculiar. This isn't actively bad, just underwhelming, so it probably shouldn't be anyone's first Detective Dee film.  

THE NAKED WITCH (1964)

 

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

Initially I meant to give NAKED WITCH a quickie review, because it was a chore to watch director/co-writer Larry Buchanan pad the already short film with enervating tracking shots of the Texas wilderness. But upon re-examination, I must admit that the script is probably the best original writing by Buchanan, eclipsing even the risibly titled MARS NEEDS WOMEN.

To be sure, Buchanan gives off mixed signals. The main script centers upon a witch who comes back to life to take vengeance on those who maltreated her in life. Yet Buchanan begins the film with a tedious prologue-- a voiceover lecture accompanied by illustrations from Bosch-- talking about the long history of evil witches making compacts with Satan-- even though the Naked Witch is never said to have made any such pact. Padding is the usual suspect here too.

An unnamed student goes to Luckenback Texas to research the folklore of witches. Most of the German-descended townsfolk won't talk to him, but a pretty young blonde, Kirska, takes him to the house she occupies with her grandfather. She gives the student a guest bed, in which an unnamed witch of the 19th century, referenced only as "The Widow," slept a century ago. The fellow opines that all witches were just scapegoats for societal troubles, so Kirska also offers to loan him a book on local folklore. He's not overly flirty toward Kirska, but he pays her a compliment, so when she returns with the book, she wears a sexy black nightgown. The student, perhaps feeling out of his depth, declines to make a pass, so she leaves him to his reading.

The book chronicles more real history than a latter-day writer could have possibly known. Sometime in the 1800s, the Widow (Libby Hall), an unmarried and unpopular woman in Luckenbach, sleeps with a rich married man, one Schoennig, with the idea that he means to divorce his wife and marry her. Schoennig-- who is also Kirska's ancestor--  not only reneges on promises, he accuses her as a witch to get her out of his hair. The community duly executes the Widow via burning (not shown) and then nails down her corpse in a grave with a metal stake. The execution's imagery slightly resembles the one in Bava's 1960 BLACK SUNDAY, but since that film wasn't released to the US until 1961, Buchanan might not have seen SUNDAY before completing the film in the same year, only to have it sit on a shelf until 1964.

Night falls, and the student goes chasing after the Widow's grave. He unearths it with ease, finds the corpse nailed down by the stake, and pulls out the stake, his voiceover telling us he has some idea of exhibiting it. He wanders back to his lodgings-- it's still not entirely sure that he hasn't been under a spell-- and falls asleep. Behind him, the Naked Witch resuscitates, though her film-nudity is confined to side-boobs. She follows the student to the house and takes the stake from him while he sleeps. Then, to save Buchanan the trouble of more angled shots, she seeks out Kirska's room, rips the black nightgown right off the girl's body and flees. Clothed now, she goes after the few surviving descendants of her seducer, killing two men by using the stake as a dagger.

Since the Witch never has dialogue-- not even being quoted within a voiceover, as occurs with the Widow in the book-flashback-- there's no explanation as to where she got her supernatural powers. During the flashback the Widow prays to be avenged on her accuser's family, but she does not pray to Satan, so for all the audience knows, she was granted her powers by a vengeful Heaven. The student tracks her to a pool, where she mesmerizes him and has sex with him. Then she goes after Kirska, also using remote hypnotism to pull her out of her house. The student recovers his wits and intervenes, though his "struggle" with the Witch is so desultory, it's obvious to the viewer that the actress intentionally falls down so as to be killed by the stake, this time for good.

One source claimed that WITCH was the first cinematic use of a recrudescent witch anywhere. Obviously BLACK SUNDAY puts the lie to this claim, though offhand I don't know of any American feature films in which a dead witch comes back to malefic life.

This is a clansgressive film with respect to both the sex and violence that the Witch doles out to 20th-century persons born outside her natural timespan.              

MERLIN'S SHOP OF MYSTICAL WONDERS (1996)

 

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

The above VHS cover is a total lie as to the content of MYSTICAL WONDERS, but it might be the best thing to come from this misbegotten pile of crap. It didn't even yield a very good episode of MST3K, which is the only way I would have ever screened it.

I'll be brief because the project is so pedestrian, it's not even worth ranting over. The shop of the title is actually a little shop of two horrors, in which unwitting victims are brought into contact with cursed items thanks to a modern-day venue run by the magician Merlin and some fat chick.

First story concerns the fate of a hot-shot newspaper columnist (the "demihero" of my subject line) who acts obnoxiously toward the greybeard proprietor. In retaliation the sorcerer gives the unbeliever a book of magic to eff around with. The guy almost kills his wife but a magic spell from the book backfires on him. There's no particular "ironic justice" to his fate though the actors are competent.

The second story is a cut-down version of the director's feature film THE DEVIL'S GIFT, about a cursed cymbal-playing monkey (the "monster" in my subject line). I saw GIFT many years ago and though it was nothing special, at least it was an adequate cursed-object horror flick. But it becomes lame thanks to being cut down for time and interpolated into the frame story of Merlin's shop. The original film had an unhappy ending, but here Merlin saves the imperiled victims. 

The only MST3K joke I remember was a line about DENNIS THE MENACE's Mister Wilson exposing himself while watering his lawn, or something like that.   
    

  

THE WAR OF THE NINJA MONSTERS: JARON VS. GOURA (2024)

 

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

At the end of my review for GOD REIGA VS KING OHGA, I wrote:

Happily, there have been no sequels to this embarrassment, and IMDB claims that writer-director Hayashiya is now working on a project with two new monsters. I'd like to think it could only be an improvement, but that's probably just wishful thinking.

Well, this 2024 movie must be the one alluded to, and it is a small improvement, though one has to parse out what screenwriter Shinpei Hayashiya had in mind. It helped me that I think he borrowed, in a roundabout way, from the 2016 film COLOSSAL, about a young American woman who finds that she has the ability to control a giant kaiju-like creature.

First, in the Japanese town of Chichibu, we meet two young guys who work for a gym, though they're only at the gym for a few minutes. At the same time they're listening to their manager complain, a Shinto priestess goes on a local TV show and proclaims that Chichibu is in danger from an archaic ninja cult, the Jirai.

The two guys-- unnamed according to the subtitles-- wander out into the nearby forest. They enter a cave and faint-- and the next thing they know, both of them are gigantic versions of themselves, looming over Chichibu. However, the locals don't see two giant humans: they see two reptilian monsters, one looking like Godzilla and the other a four-footed critter loosely like Gamera. An additional curiosity: when newspeople try to take video or photographs of the creatures, they don't appear visible in any form. Yet the two "monsters" have tangible effects on the buildings they hit, though there's very little building-bashing, since that would have been overly expensive.

There are some comic scenes of receptionists at the Self-Defense Public Relations office, who don't know what to make of calls about monsters. However, one female supervisor seems to know what's going on, for she references the Jirai, just as the priestess did.

Soon, it's evident that a Jirai ninja, a bald guy with an eyepatch, is controlling the monsters, hoping to unleash chaos for some vague purpose. His control may be lacking, because a couple of times "Jaron" and "Goura" attack each other, which would seem to be counter-intuitive. But Supervisor Girl turns into Ninja Girl and goes into the forest, where she finds Bald Guy and a few other ninjas. She defeats all of them, and around the same time, some citizens come across the same cave the two guys entered. They find the two guys comatose, but they become conscious when the evil ninjas are beaten. The huge monsters disappear, and all's right with the world.

There are many comic bits that probably play much better in Japanese, but they're not overly painful, as they were in GOD RAIGA. This is a curiosity among monster mashup because this time the giant monsters are not the focal icons, and though all the characters are flimsy, I suppose the main menace here is really "the Jirai" as a whole, since they unleash the kaiju, and the good ninja is too routine to be the star.

  

     

    

HOUSE OF THE WOLF MAN (2009)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *irony*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*

**SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS**

HOUSE, as many others have observed before me, must have been a labor of love for writer-director Eben McGarr. Clearly no one would seek to duplicate the look of the 1940s Universal monster-mashes without having an abiding affection for the material. At the same time, McGarr-- who to date only has a smattering of credits on IMDB-- wasn't doing a "straight" version of a Universal monster-mash, nor was he doing a spoof-horror, like ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN and at least three different films titled MONSTER MASH. I'd guess that he hoped to appeal to the enthusiasts of "so bad they're good" films, but with a calculated irony that would have been foreign to guys like Ed Wood and Jerry Warren.

The setup: five individuals are summoned to a mysterious castle for an inheritance. None of the five-- athletic Reed, his scientist-sister Mary, antiquarian Sully, "loose woman" Elamira, and big game hunter Whitlock-- think that they're all related to their summoner, Bela Reinhardt (Ron Chaney, grandson of Lon Chaney Jr). But they're all willing to check things out in case there's a big payoff. 

All five are meant to be sendups of familiar Hollywood "types," and though the first four recall similar POV characters from "old dark house" mysteries, the big game hunter Archibald Whitlock seems to have been imported from an imitation MOST DANGEROUS GAME. McGarr's script doesn't expand the other four beyond the stereotypes they represent, but the writer lavishes more attention on Whitlock. He shares the Nietzschean worldview of GAME's Count Zaroff, and travels with three African bearers just in case he decides he wants to hunt something. In a mild shot at 20th-century racism, Whitlock knows the lead African's real name but calls him "Leopold" for his amusement, while he's never learned the names of the other two. That said, he's equally arrogant toward White people, since in the film's best line, he says to Reed, "I shall call you Azrael because the name Reed displeases me." I'm probably in the minority, but I think all five actors did well with their deliberately artificial dialogue, whether the dialogue hits or misses-- and there are possibly more misses than hits. All five performers make Ron Chaney look worse, because there can be little doubt that he was hired just for the value of his familial connections.

  

But if anything's weaker than Chaney's performance, is McGarr's conception of Reinhardt, who occupies the position of the "main menace," but who is more poorly conceived than the most threadbare Monogram mad scientist. Here are the big reveals: Reinhardt is the offspring of Peter Frankenstein, son of Wolf in SON OF FRANKENSTEIN, and the never-mentioned sister of Bela the Gypsy from WOLF MAN. Therefore, even though his real surname is Frankenstein, his "house" has inherited the werewolf curse-- though maybe it doesn't pass through paternal genes, since none of his offspring have lycanthropic qualities. And who are his offspring? All of the supposed heirs (though one may be adopted, that part was hard to follow) are half-siblings because Reinhardt had sex with at least four mothers. This leads to a little recrimination when Mary realizes she's been vamping half-bro Whitlock, though like most Universal horror-flicks, no inappropriate genes were mixed in the scripting of this movie.

And what is Reinhardt's endgame, given that he's due to "wolf out" soon? Well, he has some hazy "survival of the fittest" notion, in that he wants to test his children in bloody battle. Somehow this will help him suss out whether his lycanthropy is some biological mutation, rather than a magical curse. It makes no sense, and most if not all the "heirs" get killed by Reinhardt's rampage. Whitlock and the bearers at least put up a fight, but they're slaughtered too. However, a certain "abandoned experiment" escapes confinement, and once again, the Frankenstein Monster Meets (a) Wolf Man. The fight's one of the better things about HOUSE, being livelier (though no longer) than the one from the 1943 movie. 

One more visitor arrives during the fight, and yes, it's Dracula, decked out in full Lugosi regalia, and he either finishes off the last victim or makes her a vampire. Oddly, though Dracula and the Monster are the only characters who make this a crossover, both of them are irrelevant to the movie-- which would have been improved if there had been SOME reason for Reinhardt's family-killing madness.

       

              

BIGFOOT VS. MEGALODON RESURRECTION (2025)

 

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

"Mother of mercy-- can this be the end of Bigfoot?"

Probably not; there's some other BCF opus called MEGA TRUMP not currently on streaming, which spares me from yet more exposure to the director's lame "satire."

For some goddamn reason the god Ra, who's popped up a few times, resurrects Megalodon, and sends the shark-man to Earth to dominate the humans. This seems unnecessary, since humans are already under the thrall of mechanical overlords, but whatever.

Bigfoot-- back to looking like a Sasquatch again-- hears of his enemy's rebirth and goes to fight him. He has a new female commander, a robot named Coila, though previous installments didn't mention intelligent robots at all. There's also a small robot, X-Max, who somehow knows that his name sounds like a stool-softening Earth-product from thousands of years ago.

Bigfoot makes sex overtures to Coila even though she has no imitation genitalia, curses a lot, and finally ends up on Earth to fight Megalodon. I guess Ra causes them both to grow to kaiju-size, because they throw down amidst skyscrapers. The fight's a little longer than the last one, but only adequate. Megalodon is defeated but nothing is said about the fate of the humans under robot dominion. I can't say that there's anything resembling a "high point" in this dopey series, but RESURRECTION would be a good place to stop anyway.      

 

BIGFOOT GOES TO HELL (2023)

 

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

In my review of BIGFOOT VS MEGALODON 2, I said it gave a slight "ray of hope" in that the movie delivered at least on a couple of its tenuous subplots. But I didn't really believe BC Fourteen would get even as good at storytelling as Ed Wood. Sure enough, BIGFOOT GOES TO HELL, the next flick in this hypothetical "series," defaults back to jibber-jabber.

In his wheelchair at the end of time, Lucifer gets all wrong up at the pestilence of humanity, whom he considers sycophantic (the soundtrack saus "psycho-phantic") to the will of a non-existent Heaven and its non-existent God. So he sends another demon, Baphomet, to rain nuclear death on Earth-- which I thought was already devastated. Either before or after Baphomet does this, he runs into Bigfoot (back to looking like a fanged monkey) in another spaceship. The two ships exchange fire, and Bigfoot is killed. His spirit shows up in Lucifer's hell, where he exchanges witless dialogue with the Devil. Then when Lucifer has had enough, an angel, looking like a standard Cupid, pops in, and apparently everything Lucifer did is unwritten. A living Bigfoot shows up at the Allies' base and thinks he's had a weird dream.

Toward the beginning someone claims Princess Kali died in a previous installment. I'm not going back to check though. It's not a combative adventure but it is a monster-mash. If I didn't consider Baphomet and Lucifer monsters, there's also a crocodile-man who's the reincarnation of Anton Sandor LaVey.