ASSASSIN (1976)

 

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

Twenty minutes from the end of this film, I was ready to describe this obscure Taiwanese chopsocky as an entirely naturalistic martial drama, about noble Chinese patriots seeking to assassinate Mongke Khan (Bai Ying), the head of a Mongolian invasion force attacking China. But at that point in the film, the Chinese leader decides that he wants one of his commanders, Ling (Tien Peng), to impersonate a Chinese officer who's been condemned for betraying China to the Mongols. And how does the official want Ling to bring about this imposture? Why, he brings in a tanner who usually cuts off animal skins and asks the guy to cut off the traitor's facial skin, which Ling then wears into the Mongolian camp-- a gambit which is for the most part a big success. This is ASSASSIN's only enjoyably brain-fried moment, though, for most of the rest of the movie is dull.

At the film's outset, Su Mei (Hsu Feng), girlfriend of Ling, has planned an imposture of her own. After some breast-beating about the danger of the mission, Su takes the place of a concubine who's going to be sent to Mongke. Once Su gets close to the enemy leader, she can pull a Chinese version of the Biblical Deborah by slaying Mongke with her knives. Before she gets there, we're introduced to Mongke, who seems to be a tough, resourceful leader, with a sister, Ha Shi Li (Chia Ling), who's also a martial artist. However, Mongke figures out the plot and ambushes Su. Armed only with two short daggers, Su makes hash of several Mongolians, but Mongke himself easily masters her, even though he doesn't do any impressive kung fu stunts. He then imprisons her, clearly thinking about making use of her, though somehow, he never quite does so. 

 Ha Shi Li, however, signals some possible sibling issues, for she seems very jealous of Mongke's attentions to this Chinese lady assassin. Li corners Su in prison, where she could stab Su to death with ease. However, perhaps to prove her martial superiority, Li simply cuts Su's bonds and challenges her to a duel, Su's double knives against Li's sword. It's a very cool diva-battle, better than the two actresses' fight in THE GREAT HUNTER, and easily the best scene in the movie, including the wacky face-stealing scene. Mongke and his guards forestall the duel's conclusion. However, prior to that, Su cleverly plants a seed in Li's mind, that if she's so great she ought to go challenge Ling to a contest at the Chinese camp. Li does so, and though she doesn't defeat Ling she does slice up a bunch of no-name soldiers, so that both kung-fu divas get an equal chance to shine. Indeed, though Hsu Feng is pictured as being more glamorous than Chia Ling, both are really the only good reasons to watch the film.

The final general dust-up is nothing special, but it has one curious moment. Mongke fights Ling, and Ling manages to stab the Mongol. Su comes up from behind Mongke and also stabs him, at which point Li tries to stab Su from behind. Mongke, who's apparently fallen in love with Su in some off-camera scene, flings Ling and Su away from him, and flings a dagger at-- his sister, in order to save Su. This might have made a little sense had Mongke actually forced himself on Su, only to become so besotted with her that he valued her life over his own, or his sister's. But if that was the intention, the filmmakers totally muffed the execution.       

THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (1939)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*                                                                                                                            In my review of Victor Hugo's original novel, I wrote:                                                                                                                                         "Hugo is sometimes linked with the artistic movement called "Romanticism," but I don't think HUNCHBACK is a Romantic novel, as are both MOBY DICK and FRANKENSTEIN. It contains larger-than-life scenes that everyone with a basic education knows, like Quasimodo's public flogging and the mercy shown him by his sort-of victim Esmerelda, and the hunchback's dramatic rescue of Esmerelda from the hangman's noose. But HUNCHBACK also contains reams of incredibly prolix prose, as Hugo burns up space descanting on the foolishness of the Parisians, from the highest to the lowest. Hugo acts as if he thinks he invented satire, with the result that most of the other characters are superficial. HUNCHBACK is one of those rare novels which has become a sort of secular literary myth, at least in the sense that most people have at least a broad knowledge of its contents. Yet Hugo's mythopoeic powers are at odds when his didactic ones."                                                                        

 For me, the 1939 film adaptation successfully adapts the Romantic elements of Hugo's novel and either downplays or elides the many ironic elements that, in my opinion, worked against the larger-than-life spectacles and emotional intensity of Hugo's basic situation. I'm sure that, given that Hollywood generally prefers happy endings to unhappy ones, scriptwriters Sonja Levien and Bruno Frank were probably tasked with giving this HUNCHBACK a moderately upbeat outcome, somewhat akin to the conclusion of the 1923 Lon Chaney Sr adaptation. But Levien and Frank seem to have been given broad cachet to retool other aspects of the novel to highlight themes important to 1939 moviegoers. The idea of societal progress through education, which is of dubious merit in Hugo, is one of the main themes, and was almost certainly a response against the rise of fascism in Europe, given some of the biographical history of Sonja Levien. None of the film's triumphalism does anything to anneal the dark tragedy of the Notre Dame bell-ringer Quasimodo, of course. But in the 1939 HUNCHBACK, idealism counterpoints irony, rather than being overwhelmed by the latter.                                                       

The character of Esmerelda (Maureen O'Hara) is one informed by a more idealistic stance. In the novel, she and her fellow gypsies have occupied Paris for some time, and she hangs out with the reprobates of the Court of Miracles even though she herself does not seem to be a thief. In the movie, she and her fellows attempt to enter Paris but are blocked by exclusionary laws, and Esmerelda enters illegally, which causes her to hide from the law amidst the thieves, even though she's so good as to be almost saintly. Audiences in 1939 could not have failed to recognize the gypsies' exclusion as a mirror of the sufferings of displaced people in Europe. The desire to make the gypsies sympathetic may have been pivotal in the producers' decision to exclude the part of the book-plot that reveals that as infants Quasimodo and Esmerelda were switched at birth, which would have confirmed the canard that gypsies were child-stealers. Selfless Esmerelda is also more religious than the one in the book, and wants to appeal to King Louis XI (a much more progressive figure in the film as well) to help her fugitive people.                 

The voice of progressivism, however, arises from the much-altered character of Pierre Gringoire. In the book, this alleged poet is a self-centered gasbag, and the best thing about him is that, after Esmerlda saves him from death in the City of Thieves by marrying him, he at least respects her boundaries and doesn't try to take her by force. (The fact that the gypsy girl carries a concealed knife might have had a lot to do with his reticence, though.) The film's version of Gringoire, passionately ostentatious as played by Edmond O'Brien, believes firmly in the advancements of the rights of all men, symbolized by the recent invention of the printing press, ensuring the proper dissemination of knowledge. In contrast to the 1923 version, this HUNCHBACK promotes Gringoire as the romantic lead for O'Hara's gypsy, and her initial attachment for the better-looking Phoebus is simply dropped after the guardsman is conveniently killed off by the story's villain. There's never really any romantic spark between Gringoire and Esmerelda, but given her limited choice of suitors, the poet ends up with the prize by a process of elimination.                                               

 Said villain Claude Frollo (Cedric Hardwicke) is more or less true to his prose model even though he's demoted from his position of Notre Dame's archdeacon to the more secular position of chief justice. His brother Jehan, who's no more than a wastrel in Hugo, gets promoted to Notre Dame's archbishop, presumably because the producers did not want to antagonize religious moviegoers. In the resultant script, the Church is just as much a friend of progress as the liberalized Louis XI, and most of the societal evil comes from the rampant cruelty of the common folk. Still, Frollo's sexual obsession with Esmerelda is true to the book, and the script even gives Frollo a little more development than Hugo did.                                                                   

Of all the characters, though, Quasimodo is the least changed, even though the progressive discourse of the script makes him more the victim of human ignorance than a victim of cosmic tragedy. Charles Laughton's spirited performance, despite his being impeded by heavy makeup, remains a tour-de-force that has not yet been equaled in film history. Every time Quasimodo is on screen, whether silently suffering on the pillory or dramatically rescuing Esmerelda from the hangman's noose, proves a captivating experience, with the result that every actor who shares the screen with Laughton-- particularly O'Hara--suffers by comparison. But as stated before, he benefits from a script that gives depth to his sufferings, and fine direction from William Dieterle that enhances the spectacle. This film, far more than Hugo's novel, is one of the greatest exemplars of the Romantic tradition.  
  

RAPTUS: THE SECRET OF DOCTOR HICHCOCK (1962)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

I saw the U.S. cut of this film some fifty years ago and was not moved to watch it again until coming across this DVD release. RAPTUS, though dubbed in English, seems to be the full-length Italian film, written by one of the most prolific Italian horror screenwriters, Ernesto Gastaldi. Direction was provided by Riccardo Freda, whose 1957 I VAMPIRI made Italy a major player in the international market for horror film-production, and though Freda used horror elements in other works between 1957 and 1962, RAPTUS is the second "pure" horror movie in Freda's repertoire. However, my re-watch didn't uncover any hidden complexities in RAPTUS, even with the extra footage.  

Bernard Hichcock (Robert Flemyng) is a rich doctor in Victorian England, living in a mansion with his wife Margaretha (Teresa Fitzgerald). After a few minutes of situational setup, the audience learns Hichcock's naughty little secret. At night he likes to dose his wife with a soporific so strong she appears dead, at which point he makes love to her. The script only loosely implies this, since in 1962 a mainstream movie couldn't do more than imply sex of any kind. However, though Hichcock and Margaretha have obviously done this role-playing game before, the doc makes a mistake and overdoses his wife, causing her to die. The script doesn't spend too much more time in this time-period-- we don't even see whether or not there's an official inquiry into Margaretha's death-- and soon the bereaved physician buries his lost love in a family vault on the property, and leaves his estate for twelve years, allowing the servants to manage the house.

I'm not sure if twelve years was a correct translation. It tutrns out to be an important plot point that Margaretha, like Madeleine Usher before her, did not die but survived and somehow started wandering the grounds, possibly being fed by the servants. However long Hichcock's away, he comes back with a new bride twenty years his junior, Cynthia (Barbara Steele). There's a brief mention that Cynthia recently lost her beloved father and became rather unstable, and under these dubious circumstances she became the second wife of an arguable father-substitute.

I was never sure how much Hichcock knew about his first wife's survival, if indeed he was gone from the estate for over a decade. Yet, as soon as the new couple enter the mansion-- decorated with assorted mementos of Margaretha and supervised by a forbidding maid right out of REBECCA-- Hichcock instructs Cynthia that she must not enter a particular room in the house. Later the doctor tells the young woman that the room holds the old laboratory where he brewed the sedative that accidentally killed his first wife, but this BLUEBEARD-like taboo doesn't have great consequence for the plot.

Though Cynthia gets spooked by the musty mansion and sees a specter that is probably Margaretha, her real peril is not her imagination. At some point Hichcock starts gaslighting Cynthia, at one point wearing a grotesque face-mask to drive her mad. He also imprisons her in a coffin, though in Steele's best scene, the tormented wife escapes captivity. Fortunately for Cynthia, she charms a young medical colleague named Kurt, and he ends up coming to her rescue at the climax. 

Just as the sequence of events is unclear, Hichcock's plan doesn't hold much water. He wants to use Cynthia's blood to restore Margaretha somehow, but it's never clear what's happened to her. RAPTUS possibly enjoys a strong reputation because it was Freda's second horror film and the third one for Barbara Steele, who had made her mark in 1960 with Bava's BLACK SUNDAY and followed that up with Corman's PIT AND THE PENDULUM. Steele is beautiful and the setting of the supposed Victorian house is convincing, but the script tosses out standard Gothic tropes without rooting them in narrative logic (for one thing, the minatory maid just disappears from the movie's latter half). RAPTUS isn't a direct adaptation of any Poe tale, though an USHER influence seems likely. Poe uses a lot of death-imagery in his stories and poems, though I don't recall his sexualizing such imagery in any work except the very early BERENICE. I wouldn't have expected such an early Italian horror film to be that daring. Yet RAPTUS still seems overly tame, even for the early sixties.

RISE OF THE BLACK BAT (2012)

 

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

I wanted to like this adaptation of the old prose-pulp crimefighter The Black Bat. The most famous version of the character debuted the same year as Batman, though the two characters were probably conceived independently. The Bat was also one of the first "blind crimefighters." In an origin that probably influenced the story of Bat-foe Two-Face, crusading prosecutor Tony Quinn is attacked by a criminal who blinds him with acid. However, in Quinn's case, a special operation endows the lawyer with renewed sight, including the ability to see in the dark. He then takes on the persona of the Black Bat to bring down both the men who blinded him and many other evildoers.

The script by one Trevor (JURASSIC SHARK) Payer reproduces the basic scenario accurately. Prior to launching a major case against the strangely named gang-boss Oliver Snate (yes, that's the name in the pulp story), Quinn (Jody Haucke) is blinded by acid. Carol, a young woman who loathes Snate for killing her father, sponsors an experimental operation. After the operation is done, Quinn finds that he can see perfectly in the dark (nothing's said about him seeing in the light). This inspires him to take on a bat-like vigilante persona and to go after criminals, culminating in his taking down Snate.

 The hero's costume is serviceable and there's even some decent background music. However, everything else-- the locations, the feeble action-scenes, and the direction by Brett Kelly-- is strictly from hunger. Worse, none of the actors can act. And for that matter, the script doesn't bear close scrutiny. Prior to Quinn being blinded, he confers with a mousy young woman who's apparently his intern or something. Seemingly introduced as a support-character, she turns out to be the one who blinds him-- and then disappears from the narrative. 

To be sure, I've read the first few tales of the prose hero, and they weren't that memorable, so the Black Bat wasn't a great classic of the pulp days. But there was some genuine potential in the original series, and RISE doesn't come close to realizing it.

KICK-ASS (2010)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

I don't have much more to say about the movie KICK-ASS than I did about the original Mark Millar graphic novel. Millar presented a very schematic idea-- that of an ordinary high school boy who decides to play superhero-- and director/co-scripter Matthew Vaughn followed the schema very faithfully, only riffing a few new scenes along the way.

Though KICK-ASS is replete with the same sort of bloody ultraviolence one might find in a hardboiled adventure movie, the movie like the comic book has enough wry humor thrown into the mix that I judge it to be a comedy. It's one of the most visceral comedies ever made, but it is not, as one ad claimed, "black humor." Black humor is the domain of the irony, the literary locus where most if not all nobility has vanished. There's considerable absurdity to be found in the green-clad Kick-Ass (Aaron Johnson) and his more skillful comrades, Big Daddy (Nicholas Cage) and Hit-Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz). But at base, their desire to fight back against the forces of organized crime remains admirable.

In keeping with Millar's design, Kick-Ass is only to function as an amateur crusader because an accident screws up his nervous system, so that he doesn't feel much pain, and replacement of many of his bones with metal rods makes him somewhat more resilient than the average human. Big Daddy, who has a vendetta against a New York drug-dealer, raises his daughter Mindy, eleven years old as the film begins, to become a prodigy in terms of martial combat and weapons-use. The sight of a pint-sized girl-child as a superhero was naturally formulated by Millar to undercut the usual image of heroes who were either teenagers or adults, and Vaughn delivers the combination of bloody action and absurd excess with great elan. 

Johnson and Moretz are the key players and accordingly deliver the best performances. Cage's depiction of Big Daddy seems somewhat off, as if he wasn't all that involved in the character. Most of the support-characters, both high-school teens and ruthless gangsters, are as underwritten here as they were in the graphic novel.

Like the graphic novel, the film is a decently executed formula-work, memorable mostly for Moretz's energetic embodiment of Hit-Girl.

THE DARK AVENGER (1990)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

I thought I knew all of the failed TV-pilots of the 20th century that involved superhero-like characters. Yet the Agents of Streaming managed to unearth this curiosity, which supposedly appeared the same year as Sam Raimi's theatrical DARKMAN.

In my DARKMAN review, I addressed an assortment of possible influences on that film. There's probably next to no information out there about the genesis of DARK AVENGER, though it wouldn't be surprising if the director and writer (both well-traveled TV talents, with the latter being the creator of the series HUNTER) just whipped AVENGER out in response to a general impression of DARKMAN, rather than with the intention of literal emulation. The titular Avenger (Leigh Lawson) is disfigured in a rather more mundane manner than Darkman, in that the Avenger has lost one arm and half of his face. In his vigilante identity he sports an artificial arm (complete with a taser-gimmick) and a half-mask over his scars, much like the Gerard Butler Phantom of the Opera. The Avenger unlike Darkman cherishes no hope of undoing his freakish appearance, and where Darkman leaves behind a bereaved girlfriend who believes him dead for a time, the Avenger leaves behind both a former wife and a little girl-child, both of whom continue to think him dead by movie's end. 

Since AVENGER is a TV-film, it doesn't have the budget to indulge in the sort of hyperkinetic feats seen in the Raimi film. But since it's also less than 90 minutes long, writer Frank Lupo dispenses with any long recapitulation of the crusader's origin. Through the shadowy sentinel's dialogue with his tech-aide-- a smart-mouthed former lady crook named Rae (Maggie Han) -- we learn that the Avenger was once crusading judge Paul Cain, and that his gangland enemies ordered him knocked off. With Rae's help Cain survived, but since he no longer felt capable of living a normal life, he dedicated his existence to fighting crime. That said, on a couple of occasions he shows up at the house where his daughter lives, and leaves her a gift of flowers, just to feel some sense of connection. But that's about all the emotional tumult we get from this character. 

The strongest scenes are at the beginning, when the Dark Avenger succors a woman being intimidated by a criminal gang holding her brother hostage. Director Guy Magar, who mostly did TV-episodes, does a nice job of building tension as the small clique of thugs are driven to distraction by the hero's Shadow-style spookiness. Then the rest of the flick becomes jumbled between an arc concerning the assassin who tried to kill Judge Cain, and an arc about a young man falsely accused of being a serial killer named the Grim Reaper. Even having just watched the movie, I couldn't even follow who the real Reaper was supposed to have been. The most impressive scene in the telefilm's latter half concerns the assassin, who suspects the Avenger's identity and so kidnaps Judge Cain's daughter. The hero saves his daughter, but she doesn't recognize him due to his mask and is grossed out by his forbidding appearance. Back at home and in bed that night, she fantasizes that the spirit of her dead father will protect her from "the monster."

I doubt AVENGER would have made a very good series, though Lawson and Han had decent chemistry. Robert Vaughn appears as a crime-boss in just one scene. Possibly the producers hoped that if the pilot engendered a series, they might have been able to sign him on as a regular in order to profit from his relative star-power. Lupo works in a number of superheroic references to The Lone Ranger, "atomic batteries to power," and (of all things) Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse.

MARRIED WITH CHILDREN: "THE CAMPING SHOW" (1988)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*

MARRIED WITH CHILDREN launched its third season with this fine take on the "war between men and women." True, this season, like the previous two, hasn't yet reached the acidulous depths of the series at its best. The episode includes an opening in which Al actually expresses a desire to have sex with Peg, and she, very atypically, puts him off to assign him chores. Later in the episode, Peg even pays Bud a rare compliment-- stating "He's so cute" when Bud fools Steve with a fake high-five-- while in later seasons, Peg shows almost total indifference to her son's existence.

Steve Darcy starts the comedy ball rolling by suggesting that he and Al go on a fishing trip to a cabin in some nearby woods. But Steve, half a traitor to masculinity, intentionally brings Marcy along, and in no time, Peg, Bud, and Kelly are part of the expedition, messing up what Al hoped to be a masculine retreat from domesticity. In fact, Kelly brings along the ultimate feminine contagion-- and in next to no time, the three women are all "cycling" at the same time, making them both irritable and, in Peg's case, sexually aggressive. This strikes fear in the heart of Al, as he compares her to the black widow spider, wanting to mate before she murders. And Kelly doesn't even need sex to warm up to homicide. After the six of them pass a tense night in the cabin, the two adult males sneak away for some fishing. The three women wake up, and their ire at being left alone, with Bud the only masculine representative, leads Kelly to suggest, "Let's pretend Bud's a man and kill him." And by the way the three ladies surround the sleeping youth, they do seem like Dionysian Maenads, ready to rend him into ribbons.

Now, since scientists have validated synchronized menstruation, that part of the story, even if far-fetched, remains within the domain of the naturalistic. Not so the other factor tormenting Al Bundy: the fact that all the beasts of the forest converge on the cabin. Steve throws in some psuedoscience to justify the phenomenon, but in truth, the script is trying to play the effects of menses as if they made the human women seem to be "in heat," attracting the forest-dwellers with the pure animalism of femininity (including not only a bear and a moose, but even mosquitos). Finally, Al's unable to take being pent up with so much negative female energy-- particularly from the black widow in their midst-- and he makes a desperate attempt to gain access to their car.

Of course, Al gets duly mauled by a bear and barely escapes with his life. But that little sacrifice to Dionysus seems to dispel the female bane, for all three ladies are then cheery again. Steve gets his car savaged by wildlife, and Bud gets punched once by Kelly, but Al's sufferings, as will be the case for most of the series, are what MARRIED WITH CHILDREN most requires. By the end of the show's eleven seasons, Al will have endured more pain and humiliation than did Dagwood Bumstead in his first forty years.

DOOM ASYLUM (1988)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *irony*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

I'm going to give away the ending of this film, but the film's Big Reveal is not its biggest asset. Rather, DOOM ASYLUM is one of the few humor-centered slasher-movies that qualifies as a irony rather than a comedy.

Comedies, even when they center upon jokey versions of killer psychos, usually allow one or more sympathetic characters to emerge unscathed. Ironies may utilize similar humor-tropes, but all of the characters are subjected to ridicule-- and this time, one of the results is that this time, the psycho-killer isn't the main character of the story.

Palimony lawyer Mitch Hansen is driving along with his new love Judy, implicitly a woman he met during one of his litigations. The car crashes, Judy dies, and the ambulance pronounces both Judy and Mitch dead. But Mitch, badly mangled by the accident, recovers while he's under the autopsy knife, which has made his deformation even worse. He kills the attending doctors and somehow escapes to an abandoned asylum. Apparently the place still has power, because he's able to sit around watching television, particularly a broadcast of an old Tod Slaughter film.

Two groups of teens converge on the asylum, despite having heard stories about other teens being mutilated on the grounds. A trio of female punk rockers, headed by Tina (Ruth Collins), gather on the roof to practice their music. Five other teens show up on the grounds to sun-bathe, and the rocker-girls pick a fight with them. As the two factions attempt to square off, Killer Mitch begins picking them off one by one with the standard gory deaths.

Director Richard Friedman, also credited as one of ASYLUM's writers, endows the doomed teens with all sorts of tics to make them more absurd than the standard cannon-fodder of the "serious" slasher. Mike and Kiki are nominally the "serious romantic couple," but Mike is a dunce who can't make up his mind. Kiki's not much better. When the punk girls mock the clean teens by throwing water-filled condoms at the latter, Mike picks up a dripping piece of plastic and Kiki comments, "Ew, that's like incest!" for some unrevealed reason. (Maybe they knew each other as neighbors since childhood?) Later, when Kiki pleads for divine assistance, she offers God money, sex, and a charge card. Jane (Kristin Davis, the only actor to go on to considerable fame) is a psychology nut, analyzing everyone, and Dennis collects baseball cards.

Of the three punk girls, Tina is the showiest, since she gets into a fight with Mike and kicks his ass. But Rapuzel's also good as the singer who keeps prating about "the bourgeoise," but when she's about to die reveals, "I voted Republican!" Davis might be the only actor who "made it," but all the performers do well.

Killer Mitch is no Michael or Jason either, and the TV-clips of Tod Slaughter are probably meant to suggest that his villainy is equally cornball. He almost gets defeated by Tina, but she falls victim to a packing-machine (why it's in an asylum, who knows). He forms a fixation on Kiki because he thinks she looks like Judy-- and there's a reason for that, because Kiki is Judy's daughter. But Kiki is also pissed because her dead mother was going to leave Kiki flat, and since she holds Mitch responsible for that, she kills him in an almost anti-climactic conclusion.

Determining the focal character in most slashers is easy because the mad killer is the common bond pulling together all the story-threads of his victims. In this case, the goofy teens are actually more interesting than the killer, even though most of them are still meant to be cannon fodder. This time, because the Final Girl exists to mete out ironic justice to the killer, I tend to think that Kiki takes pride of place, even though she's no less moronic than any other nut in this ASYLUM.

ADDENDUM: Structurally DOOM ASYLUM reminds me of "Bridal Night," a short comics-story I analyzed here, in which the author sets the reader up to believe that a petty tyrant is the monster of the story, only to do a turnabout and reveal that the real star of the horror-tale is the apparently defenseless female.

DEAD EYES OF LONDON (1961)

 

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

I've seen Alfred Vohrer credited with directing fourteen of the German crime films known as "krimi," and it looks to me like DEAD EYES OF LONDON might be his first. It's a remake of the 1939 British programmer THE HUMAN MONSTER, which was itself an adaptation of a 1924 Edgar Wallace novel that I've not read.

Even so, there have been textual changes. The novel had two villains, which MONSTER cut down to two roles played by one fiend, but EYES returns to two villains, though one doesn't find this out until the rousing conclusion. The main hero is about the same, doughty Inspector Holt, this time essayed by Joachim Fuchsberger. However, in MONSTER, comedy relief is supplied by a wisecracking American cop, while here it stems from a slighty fey British cop who is mocked for his habit of knitting. 

The female lead in MONSTER is a young woman whom Holt sets up to investigate the slayer of her father. But here a lady named Nora (Karin Baal) works with Scotland Yard as a "braille expert," helping the police decipher a clue found on one of the bodies floating in the Thames River. She still infiltrates the Home for the Blind, where supposedly blind Reverend Dearborn (Dieter Borsche) runs things, but Holt doesn't know from the start that Nora is also the daughter of one of the victims. Finally, MONSTER included a hulking blind fellow named Jake who served the villain but ended up turning on him. EYES plays up a bald, blind hulk named Blind Jack (Ady Berber) who's seen strangling a few victims, but he's executed halfway through the movie by one of the two main criminals. 

Vohrer and his scenarists comprise a much more kinetic adventure than anything seen in the 1939 MONSTER, making liberal use of intense close-up shots. Indeed, many of the murder-sequences look forward to the giallos and the slashers for sheer brutality, though there's nothing fit to compete with Argento. (Klaus Kinski has a small role as one of the evildoers' pawns.) The one weakness in the lively script is that there's some peculiar mention of a "league of blind killers" early on, even though no one has any reason to think that any of the deaths are even associated with blind men. In contrast to MONSTER's fairly dull conclusion, Vohrer delivers a serial-style "woman in peril" sequence and a last-ditch battle between Holt and his adversaries. The narrative emphasis thus shifts from the story's "monster" to its crusading hero, though the detective elements still align the movie's mythos with the drama.

THE HUMAN MONSTER (1939)

 

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

The British title of this thriller-- the first movie to earn a rating of "H" for horrific content-- was DARK EYES OF LONDON, the same as a popular 1924 source book by Edgar Wallace. I have read none of Wallace's works, but I will parrot the best known difference between book and movie: that in the former, two villains are in charge of the criminal enterprise, while in the latter, there's one villain playing two roles, and both are essayed by Bela Lugosi.

The less visible role is that of Dearborn, the soft-spoken administrator of a Home for the Blind in London, who pretends to be as blind as his charges. But his true identity is Doctor Orloff, who runs an insurance agency. Orloff sells insurance policies to wealthy men but also loans money to the policy-holders if they make the policies payable to the Dearborn Home for the Blind. Then Orloff uses an electrical device to execute the policy-holders, dumping their bodies in the Thames River. In these endeavors he's helped at times by the hulking blind man Jake (Wilfred Walter).

Scotland Yard inspector Holt (Hugh Williams) is assigned to investigate the surfeit of dead bodies in the river. Holt is also detailed to meet a New York cop visiting Scotland Yard, one O'Reilly (Edmon Ryan), a character whom I suspect was invented for the movie to add an element of wisecracking American humor. The two cops have a meet-cute with a lovely young woman named Diana (Greta Gynt), but she eludes the two of them. Later Holt meets her again, when Diana is called upon to identify the murdered body of her late father.

 Very atypically for most police inspectors, Holt gets Diana to accept a job at the Dearborn Home in order to poke around. This gambit inevitably ends with Orloff revealing his double identity to Diana before he attempts to kill her. Diana manages to turn Hulking Jake against Orloff and the two kill one another before the belated arrival of Holt and the Scotland Yard cavalry.

MONSTER is effectively directed by British raconteur Walter Summers and probably remains his best known work, though personally I prefer Summers' uncredited script-work on the silent version of SHE. Lugosi's double performances are similarly effective but not outstanding. Evidently this film had a great impact upon a young Jesus Franco, who reworked various elements of MONSTER into the first commercial horror film in Spain, THE AWFUL DOCTOR ORLOF.

BLACK CHRISTMAS (2006), BLACK CHRISTMAS (2019)

 

PHENOMENALITY: (1) *uncanny,* (2) *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: (1) *fair,* (2) *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Since I didn't regard Bob Clark's 1974 BLACK CHRISTMAS as any sort of major classic despite its place in horror-history, I didn't have any objection to writer-director Glen Morgan choosing to revise the original story. The nebulous stalker in the sorority house at Christmas break becomes more fully fleshed out, and this might have worked had Morgan been less over-the-top in his approach.

I expected the remake would dump the subplot in which one of the sorority sisters wants to terminate her pregnancy over her boyfriend's objections, and my hunch was confirmed. I also guessed that, although the salty language was NOT left out, the spectacle of fresh young women being potty-mouthed didn't carry the same anomie I mentioned in my review of the 1974 film. I also expected that the kill count would be elevated to suit modern audiences. So the element of how Morgan reworked the serial killer was of paramount interest.

The 1974 stalker is never seen fully on camera and the audience never knows his identity, though when he's making obscene phone calls to the college women he alludes to a "Billy" which may be the stalker himself, and also to someone else named "Agnes." From these fragments Morgan tries to craft a figure along the lines of Michael Myers. In current times, Billy Lenz (a clever touch, referencing the "lenses" of the eyes with which he scopes out the women) has been institutionalized since slaying his mother and assaulting his sister Agnes. All these crimes rather improbably took place in the same building that has now been transformed into a college sorority house, and once Billy (Robert Mann) escapes he makes a beeline for his old haunt. 

An extended flashback explains Billy's dark past. Born with yellowish skin due to liver disease, as a child he's rejected by his trashy mother Constance. As a child he witnesses Constance and her lover murder Billy's father, but to keep Billy quiet Constance imprisons the boy in the attic, feeding him but not allowing him any freedom. To compound her crimes, one night Constance's lover can't satisfy her, so she goes into the attic and compels her son to have sex with her. She becomes pregnant and bears Billy a daughter/sister named Agnes, who becomes Constance's favorite. Years later Billy breaks free and commits the acts that land him in the asylum.

I revealed all of this simply to make clear that up to this point, Morgan set up a formidably nasty human monster. However, when we get into his stalking of the sorority sisters, Morgan totally loses control of his narrative. It's just one hyper-violent scene after another, with less emotional nuance than one finds in any of the original FRIDAY THE 13TH sequels. Worse, for some reason Agnes, now a grown woman, has become Billy's ally even though he mutilated her when she was a child. One writeup asserts that the script suffered many rewrites, but I'd say that just proves that Morgan didn't craft a hole-proof story in the first place.

For all the flaws of the 2006 remake, though, it's Horror Gold compared to the 2019 reboot. I saw this piece of crap over a year ago and hadn't planned to review it at all, and I include this abbreviated review just for contrast. The 2019 CHRISTMAS is a prime example of an indie director/writer, one Sophia Takai, trying to rework a horror-movie narrative to promote a political agenda. In place of a stalker, the campus menace this time is an "old boys' club" that likes to rape and murder independent young women, and whose members may be possessed by some spirit of toxic masculinity. It's a thoroughly moronic movie, incoherently scripted and poorly directed, with the exception of one early scene in which a young woman is murdered while making a snow angel.

SANTO AND THE TIGRESS (1971)

 

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

As the above lobby card shows, the movie possesses a longer alternative title, but the short form works well enough for describing what happens in it: the peripatetic Silver Mask makes his way into a "ranchera movie," where he meets a character played by popular Mexican singer Irma "The Tigress" Serrano.

There's not much else to the film. Santo is summoned to the ranch of La Tigresa to find out who's plotting to kill her. In between mostly mundane murder attempts, Santo has a minor romantic dalliance with the ranch-woman and there are a lot of songs, as ranchera films tended to display. Santo has a few fights with hired henchmen, and with one fellow who almost seems like one of the monsters of the wrestler's more mind-bending flicks: a hulking fellow with a deformed face.

There's also a more mundane "monster" in the story, but at first he seems to be a down-to-earth specimen, for he's hunchbacked ranch-servant Alejandro. Since there aren't a lot of candidates for the murder-mastermind, it's no big surprise to learn that Alejandro is the culprit. In fact, he's been raising the big deformed brute in hiding for twenty years in order to await just the right opportunity, for the brute is actually La Tigresa's half-brother. Alejandro brings the hulk along to strangle his half-sister, but the big guy can't do it, turns on his master, and is shot to death. Santo shows up for the finale but has little to do.

TIGRESS is distinguished only by being the dullest Santo film I've ever seen. I certainly hope there's nothing worse.

PUNISHER: WAR ZONE (2008)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

It's hard to believe, but this hard-R PUNISHER movie-- sadly, a box office bomb-- came out the same year as the much less violent IRON MAN, which of course became the cornerstone of the MCU. Further, two of IRON MAN's writers are credited on the ZONE script, and while producer Gale Ann Hurd (famed for both ALIENS and two TERMINATOR films) did not work on the Robert Downey Jr movie, she did produce the previous PUNISHER flick and both of the two HULK movies. ZONE is thus far director Lexi Alexander's only feature film in the "superhero opera," though she did also direct an episode apiece for ARROW and SUPERGIRL.

While the 2004 PUNISHER was bland action fare, the director and writers serve up the best action set-pieces seen in all three films starring ruthless vigilante Frank Castle. The script even suggests some of the ambivalence toward Castle's obsession seen in the 1989 PUNISHER, though there wasn't enough symbolic discourse to justify my calling ZONE a "myth-film."

The continuity of the 2004 movie is ignored as the script boots ZONE back toward the Marvel origin, in that Castle (Ray Stevenson) becomes Punisher after mobsters kill his family in a park. Further, the writers work in two allies from the comic books, Castle's armorer Microchip and policeman confidante Martin Soap, as well as recurring Punisher villain, Jigsaw (Dominic West). The story, however, seems to be independent of any established comics narratives.

This version of Punisher has been preying on underworld scum for at least four years, and has racked up a huge body count, in part because a handful of police officers abet his vigilante activities. Alexander opens the movie with a visual tour-de-force of eye-popping violence, as Punisher invades the home of a Mafia capo and slaughters almost everyone there with stabbings and shootings. (He shows himself a gentleman when a woman tries to stab him, merely snapping her neck.) One gangster, Billy Russoti, escapes and hides out in a glass-recycling plant, but the obsessed hero tracks him there and consigns Billy to a glass-crushing machine. Cops enter and save Billy's life, but he's so badly scarred that he renames himself Jigsaw. He gathers a few loyal hoods, who help him break into an insane asylum and break out Jigsaw's psychopathic brother, Looney Bin Jim (Doug Hutchison), apparently an original movie creation. 

Meanwhile, the Punisher learns an unpleasant truth: one of the men he killed was an undercover cop named Donatelli. This version of the crusader is a little less monolithically obsessed than the usual one, for he considers dropping his mission because of having slain a "good guy." He attempts to make amends by contacting Donatelli's widow Angela (Julie Benz) to present her with monetary compensation. But even though the agent's daughter Grace seems to like the solemn vigilante, Angela refuses the money and threatens to shoot Punisher, but can't do it even though he's willing to let her do so. However, he later realizes that because Jigsaw survived, he and his hoods will seek vengeance on the surviving Donatellis. Further, the late agent's partner Budiansky (Colin Salmon) has a strong jones for capturing/killing the vigilante, though Budiansky is inconvenienced by being saddled with the "help" of Detective Soap.

It's a foregone conclusion that the two main detractors of the ultraviolent hero, Angela and Budiansky, will end up becoming the Punisher's allies. What makes ZONE enjoyable is not any extraordinary originality, but the elan with which the scripters and director bring to the skull-chested hero's mayhem, not to mention a heaping helping of black humor. There's never any serious doubt that Punisher's targets (except for the slain agent) totally deserve killing, and that's the essence of the vigilante fantasy in all its escapist glory.

The heavy kevlar of this Punisher's outfit detracts from the iconic costume, but it's certainly preferable to, say, the black T-shirt of the 1989 movie. The late Stevenson, as I said, is a trifle too emotional to provide one with the ideal Punisher, but his performance, both in terms of emoting and performing stunts, is solid across the board, and the overall cast is equally fine. Lexi Alexander (who is, if one can't tell from the name, female) deserves another shot at a big-budget action-movie as soon as possible, and hopefully the 2024 production ABSOLUTE DOMINION will provide her with another such opportunity.

BLACK SAMURAI (1977)

 

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

Though I realize it may have been director Al Adamson's destiny to be best known for the "so bad it's good" mishmash known as DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN, I know from a recent documentary that the guy really did love the experience of moviemaking; that he wasn't just in the game to make a few bucks. I had almost zero memory of BLACK SAMURAI after seeing it once over forty years ago, so I thought, "Surely Adamson didn't mess up such easy-sleazy material as an adaptation of a pulp-paperback about a Black kung fu expert, particularly when he Adamson had the starring services of Jim Kelly, who made a big hit in ENTER THE DRAGON!" But sadly, he did, and BLACK SAMURAI falls into the category of "so bad it's ordinary."

According to this online review, the movie was based on the sixth in the eight-volume BLACK SAMURAI book-series, and the reviewer considers Number Six one of the best entries in the series in terms of offering good sleazy entertainment. He also makes clear that the movie does follow the bare bones of the novel's plot, and that the casting of Jim Kelly was potentially a good match for the chopsocky-hero Robert Sand. 

Unfortunately, Kelly's basic charm and fighting-skills were not enough to make the movie come together. Adamson chose a story that needed a certain amount of visual pizzazz to work on the big screen, and I tend to doubt that even with a bigger budget, Adamson could've pulled off the more spectacular scenes. 

American secret agent Sand is called upon to put a hit on the leader of a cult, one Janicot, who uses voodoo sex rituals and Satanism to lure rich victims into blackmail-able situations. The hero isn't very motivated to take on this new enemy until Sand's boss reveals that Janicot has imprisoned Sand's Japanese girlfriend Toki (Essie Lin Chia). Sand's boss doesn't cite any reason for the cult-leader to abduct Toki; it's like the villain's sole purpose in the film is to do things that make the hero fighting mad. 

Janicot may have an "inside man" in Sand's spy-organization, the comically named D.R.A.G.O.N., because as soon as Sand accepts the assignment, he's intercepted in his car by another auto with gun-toting thugs. Fortunately, Sand's car is fitted with a machine-gun in its chassis, so he takes the assassin-auto with no sweat.

Being so targeted doesn't move Sand to use a disguise or anything when he invites himself to one of Janicot's ritzy parties. However, since Janicot and his lieutenants all know Sand right away, maybe any counter-move would have been pointless. The rest of the movie unfolds like a typical bad James Bond imitation, in which the "spy" makes no real attempt at espionage and acts in essence like a commando licensed to kill. Once the two adversaries have thrown down their respective gauntlets, the movie is just one attack after another, all in roughly the same location to save money. The photography is flat and most of the fight-scenes, supposedly arranged by Kelly himself, range from the ordinary to the awful. Oh, and Sand uses a jetpack at one point-- a real jetpack, though surely not piloted by Kelly-- though I was never clear what advantage that conveyed, since Sand seems able to penetrate any complex without half trying. 

As played by one Bill Roy, Janicot is a wimpy, second-rate villain, though I suppose he's a little better than the colorless conspirators seen in most Eurospy films. He does, like many Bond villains, surround himself with weird henchmen-- an albino-Black muscleman, killer dwarves, a couple of Black guys who for some reason dress up in African tribal costumes, and a flamboyant seductress named Synne (Marilyn Joi). None of the hench-people have any good moments, though Synne, the "bad Bond girl" here, tries with might and main to distract the hero from saving his girl. Adamson clearly had all the elements for a good sleazefest, but he chose to burn up time with pointless musical numbers. I can understand a five-minute segment with a nude lady dancer gyrating on a stage-- but five minutes of a Mariachi band?

Toward the conclusion things pick up a little as Sand has a lengthy fight with the albino guy while Synne and Toki exchange a couple of blows before the bad girl buys it. Sand then kills Janicot in a very low-energy climax and everyone goes home, The End.

Adamson was probably at his best when he didn't attempt big spectacle, but kept all conflicts at a very simple level, as he did with 1975's JESSI'S GIRLS, which may be his most coherent story. As things stand, SAMURAI's most interesting aspects are Kelly and three other "cult film" actors: Marilyn Joi for ILSA, HAREM KEEPER OF THE OIL SHIEKS, Essie Lin Chia for RETURN  OF THE ONE ARMED SWORDSMAN, and dwarf-actor Felix Silla, who played "Twiki" on the BUCK ROGERS TV show.

THE AWFUL DOCTOR ORLOF (1962)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

Jess Franco's first horror film, also called the first commercial film in that genre from Spain, stands apart from most of his later oeuvre, much of which is either incoherent or what I called (in my SUCCUBUS review) "phony-baloney surrealism." Crisply photographed on Spanish locations (though set in turn-of-the-century Paris), ORLOF is a straightforward formulaic take on tropes made famous by George Franju's 1960 art-horror film EYES WITHOUT A FACE. Franco, who also wrote ORLOF, displayed none of Franju's gift for visual poetry, but at least the Spanish filmmaker doesn't display the vice of trying to undercut his horrors.

Pretty women are disappearing from the streets of Paris, and since not all of them are mere streetwalkers, the Surete steps up its investigation. In a scene reminiscent of Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue," several witnesses describe a possible stalker with different descriptions, but clever young Inspector Tanner figures out that the witnesses saw two different men.

The audience gets to see them at work: mad scientist Doctor Orlof (Howard Vernon, from then on "typed" into the horror genre) and his saucer-eyed assistant Morpho (Ricardo Valle). The latter's injured-looking eyes are meant to indicate that he's blind, but I didn't get a sense of his impairment as he unerringly locates pretty women and helps Orlof transport them to the scientist's lab. There we meet two women: housekeeper Arne, possibly in love with Orlof, and Orlof's daughter Melissa. As the result of some barely discussed accident, Melissa's face was deeply scarred, and in response Orlof keeps her a virtual prisoner in his home, so that someday he can repair her face with skin grafts taken from uncooperative women. 

After a visually stunning opening, ORLOF more or less settles into a lot of vague running around as Tanner and his girlfriend Wanda (Diana Lorys, who also plays the scarred Melissa) for about an hour until things finally heat up for the climax. With a few exceptions, most of Franco's films show no interest in developing the second act: he seems to care only about delivering a bravura opening and a big finish. The middle portion of a film, even a purely formulaic one, is often the place where the creator builds up his characters and makes their conflicts more detailed and relatable, but Franco shows no interest in such development. This is a shame, for Vernon gives Orlof a lot of physical charm, and it would have been interesting, as Franju did, to explore the mad scientist's obsessions more. Like the captive daughter of EYES WITHOUT A FACE, Melissa does not want to be the subject of her father's experiments, but Franco allows for just one line in which she complains to Morpho about their mutual enslavement, and then Melissa fades from the story. I may be wrong that Arne carried a torch for Orlof, but not much explains her willingness to go along with the serial murders for a while, and then to suddenly get fed up, at which point Orlof kills her. For some reason this riles Morpho and the film concludes with the de rigeur destruction of the mastermind by his pawn-- though in truth we're never really sure just what Orlof did to Morpho, or why.

Still, if only because Franco was trying to emulate Franju, he produced a very nice looking basic horror film. Considering some of his later productions, that's a fair accomplishment.

THE NEW YORK RIPPER (1982)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *irony*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

Since the rise of the psycho-killer subgenre in the 1960s-- some history of which I covered in this essay-series-- there have been numerous works in the specific subgenre-of-the-subgenre, which I will dub the "sleaze psycho-killer." In this sub-subgenre, the killer is always located in an urban environment, and his activities bring both the killer and anyone pursuing him to delve in the seamy side of city life.

Most of the sleaze-psychos aren't especially well made. Hitchcock's FRENZY is the best known in this category, but as my review should make clear, I found the 1972 movie one of the least compelling works from the Master of Suspense. America and Italy seem to have produced more sleaze-psychos than any other country, and few are noteworthy even from a purely technical standpoint.

Though I've never been a Lucio Fulci fan, NEW YORK RIPPER justifies the director's claim that he was seeking to emulate the work of Hitchcock, at least in the technical sense. RIPPER is a hard film to watch. Not only do its events take place in a vile version of New York, almost destitute of any goodness, the titular psycho preys upon helpless women with an ugly, bloody violence far removed from the artful assaults of Fulci's countryman Dario Argento. And yet RIPPER is technically better than the majority of sleaze-psycho films, and certainly better than FRENZY.

Aging, seen-it-all cop Williams (Jack Hedley) investigates the grotesque killing of a young model, and soon the New York Ripper piles up more bodies in his rage against pretty women. Eventually some witnesses claim that the killer is missing two fingers and that he is heard to speak in a falsetto Donald Duck-voice, and he even has some inside info on Williams, giving the cop an insolent call while the policeman's in bed with a working girl. Concerned by the escalating violence, Williams engages a psychologist to help profile the madman. Though the psychologist does render some aid during the narrative, he makes clear that he will only do so if the police pay him adequately-- one of many references to the dog-eat-dog nature of all levels of New York society.

Fulci introduces a number of potential targets and builds suspense as to which may be the Ripper's next victim. Of these female targets, only Fay (Almanta Suska) survives an attack from the Ripper, and so she becomes the linchpin of Williams' investigation. She's also the only female character who learns the psycho's true identity and manages to deal him a near fatal wound, though admittedly she has to be saved in the end by Williams. But not too many Hitchcock heroines get even that much agency in terms of defending themselves, excepting Grace Kelly in DIAL M FOR MURDER and a tiny number of others.

Most sleaze-psycho directors produce unremarkable visuals and practically exhaust themselves in putting together scenes of sex, violence, or of the two combined. But Fulci makes mundane scenes in the police department look just as well planned as his gross-out moments. RIPPER's main weakness is that the script doesn't really work out much of a psychology for its psycho. I did guess correctly that his affectation of a cartoon-duck voice had something to do with a struggle between the world of childish innocence and the world of mature experience. But Fulci doesn't really have a handle on the former, since RIPPER is almost entirely devoted to the horrors of New York existence. Along with Hitchcock's rural psycho-killer film-- the one that gave the subgenre its name-- NEW YORK RIPPER falls squarely into the mythos of the irony.

PROM NIGHT (1980)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

PROM NIGHT is one of the iconic slashers of the eighties, so I wished it had been better overall, rather than having a great opening and a not-so-great rest-of-the-movie. Along with TERROR TRAIN, it's the last of the slashers headliner Jamie Lee Curtis made in response to the phenomenal popularity of her role in HALLOWEEN. After those two, Curtis made other films that might have psycho-killers in them, but she stayed away from the specific slasher-subgenre except for participating in sequels to the film that bumped her up the fame ladder. 

It's a shame the rest of the movie doesn't match up to the opening. In an abandoned house, four pre-teens play a nasty version of hide-and-seek in which they pretend that they're going to kill someone. It's all pretend-violence, but there's a nice feeling that the kids' indulgence in their darker sides may get out of control. A fifth preteen, a girl named Robin, gets swept up in their game and she suffers a cruel accidental death. The kids conceal their knowledge of the death, but an unidentified witness has seen the whole thing. The witness also keeps quiet about the incident for the next six years, and this results in the police fingering a local outcast for the crime. In the film proper, this disfigured individual is frequently evoked as the possible killer, though the script also supplies a much more likely suspect even during the opening.

Six years later, the family of the deceased Robin still mourns her, but life goes on. Widower-father Mr. Hammond (Leslie Nielsen) and twin siblings Kim and Alex (Curtis, Michael Tough) are making ready for the prom at their high school, where Hammond is the principal. As the viewer follows Kim and Alex in their school routine, we see that the siblings' classmates include all four of the now adolescent kids who were implicated in Robin's death. The only male member of the guilty group, Nick, is now dating Kim, much to the chagrin of Wendy, one of the three females from that coterie. Wendy, who's evidently read Stephen King's CARRIE, plots to embarrass Kim at the prom celebration with the help of a local bad boy, Lou. While all this teenage soap opera is going on, some members of the guilt-group receive photos of themselves in which their images have been slashed up. This leads to real murders by a man clad in a black ski-mask, black shirt and black trousers-- who nevertheless does not have as much visual mojo as many of the more distinctive serial murderers in the subgenre.

Much of the film is achingly slow rather than suspenseful, and the killings are at best fair until one reaches the expected "prom night."  Even then, one does have to put up with lots of tacky disco dancing before the killer makes his move, forcing Kim, the "prom queen," to unleash her Final Girl persona. I like how the script follows through on the traditional faux-royalty trappings of the American prom, by having one crowned head take a tumble, but one has to slog through a lot of dully directed scenes to get to the good stuff.

HELLHOLE (1985)

 

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

"I want you awake to hear your brain scream in your head!"

Such is one of the many ripe lines delivered with great brio by mad scientist Mary Woronow, and she does it so well that I wished she had been the headliner of this wild, cheesy chicks-in-chains effort.

Alas, HELLHOLE follows the by-then well-trod trope of focusing on an innocent "new fish" sent to durance vile. In this case, the innocent is Susan (deer-in-headlights actress Judy Landers). Susan's mother gets some evidence on a prominent doctor, so the doctor sends some hirelings to steal the evidence and kill Susan's mother. However, the murderous thug Silk (Ray Sharkey) gets the order wrong and kills the woman before getting the evidence. Susan witnesses the murder and loses her memory soon after, so that she's committed to an asylum despite the fact that she's not crazy, just amnesiac. But because Susan is the only one who knows where the vital evidence is, the hired goons want to both question her and then kill her. So Silk goes undercover as an orderly in an asylum devoted to female mental patients who all act like they're in a women's prison-- dealing drugs, having frequent lesbian affairs, etc.

If this was your ordinary faux women's prison, Silk would probably knock off the hapless Susan in the first half-hour. However, the asylum is ruled by queen bee Doctor Fletcher (Woronow). The doctor and her aide (a wasted Marjoe Gortner) are conducting illegal lobotomy experiments on many of the inmates, and some of their "rejects" end up imprisoned in a basement level called "the Hellhole." Prey Susan and predator Silk don't square off until the final reel, as the script focuses on Fletcher, on the terror she wields over the inmates, and on another fellow who enters the asylum under false pretenses-- Ron (Richard Cox), an investigator trying to get the goods on Fletcher. Still, I guess I have to assert that Susan's still the main character here, since her presence in the nuthouse is the main reason many of these characters cross paths.

Both the scripters and director Pierre de Moro try to crank up this pulp craziness up to the max, but they're not quite good enough to really exploit the madness as would a pulp master like, say, Russ Meyer. Thus what we get is a bunch of rambling scenes that don't cohere very well, though I certainly can't fault the filmmakers for giving fans of babes-behind-bars flicks what they really want-- lots of nude female flesh, and even a short but vivid catfight between Edy Williams and another chick.

Speaking of actors, I can't deny the dominant online opinions that Woronow and Sharkey get the utmost out of their meaty roles, though I think jobbing actor Richard Cox does well with the unrewarding role of the determined good guy. Other names of interest, however brief the roles, include Dyanne Thorne, Robert Z'Dar, and Terry Moore.

While HELLHOLE wouldn't make it to my top ten chicks-in-chains movies, it might at least rate a mention in the top twenty.