Category: Feature

Gloria (1980)

★★★½
“Gloria, you’re always on the run now…”

Yeah, I’ll confess to having Laura Branigan’s eighties hit running through my head on repeat almost the entire movie, even if its lyrics can only be tangentially tied to it. What also struck me is how strong of an influence this was on Luc Besson’s Leon, especially at the beginning. I mean: a criminal gang takes out an entire family in a New York tenement, except for one child, as punishment for the father having tried to steal from them. That survivor takes refuge with a very reluctant neighbour with mob ties, who then has to protect the child as they move about the city. There’s even a scene where one of the gang fires his gun at a nosy resident.

In this case, the protective neighbour is Gloria Swenson (Rowlands), and the child is Phil Dawn (Adames), son of a mob accountant, who is also in possession of a highly incriminating notebook given to him by his father. Gloria makes no bones about her opinion, telling the parents, “I hate kids, especially yours.” However, necessity is the mother of motherhood, as it were, and her maternal instincts end up being awakened by six-year-old Phil, who swings wildly between acting three times his age and one-third of it. Gloria has no issue with using lethal force against those she perceives as a threat, as she seeks to broker a deal that will trade the book in exchange for her and Phil being allowed to walk away. This brings her into contact with mob boss Tarzini (Franchina) – not for the first time.

Rowlands is great in this, and you can see why she’s one of the few actresses to have been nominated for an Oscar in a girls with guns role. Director Cassavetes was her husband – he was originally just going to sell the script, but took on the director’s role after his wife was cast – and their long history of working together likely helped provide her nuanced performance. The problems are elsewhere. Phil is certainly no Matilda, and I was largely with the opinion Gloria expressed above. There’s also no-one like Stansfield, to act as an antagonist. Tarzini isn’t seen until the end, and up to that point, Gloria is opposed largely by a series of faceless goons.

Even given her background, it does seem remarkably convenient how she and they seem to stumble into each other in every other scene. It’s as if the film took place in a small farming town, rather than a city of over seven million inhabitants at the time. However, the film is never less than engaging due to Rowlands, who was fifty when the film came out, so is definitely older than your typical action heroine. Though your biggest takeaway may be how early eighties it all feels. Chris, who lived in New York at the time, loved that even seeing a car identical to her first one parked in a scene. Personally, I just had to marvel at how an unaccompanied six-year-old could buy a train ticket from New York to Pittsburgh without anyone batting an eyelid. Truly, a very different world… But what I really want to know is this: what happened to Gloria’s cat?

Dir: John Cassavetes
Star: Gena Rowlands, John Adames, Basilio Franchina, Buck Henry

Gloria (1999)

★★½
“Gloria, non in excelsis“

Nineteen years after the original, four-time Oscar nominated director Lumet opted to remake Cassavetes’s movie. Though by some accounts, it was more a case of him wanting to work, rather than being particularly attracted to the project. If the results are anything to go by, he should have stayed at home. For the film was a bomb, and leading lady Stone received a Razzie nomination for her efforts. I wouldn’t have said she was that bad, though she’s clearly not at the same level as Gina Rowlands in the original. It does also address some of what I felt were its’ predecessor’s weaknesses. However, it tones down the central character, and this helps lead to what you’d be hard-pressed to argue is other than an inferior product overall.

It keeps the basic premise. Gloria (Stone) becomes the unwilling custodian of a young boy (Figueroa), whose family was wiped out by the mob. However, the kid is in possession of incriminating data, which could either be his salvation or his death knell, so Gloria has to protect him as the Mafiosi try to hunt him down. The big change is, rather than being a neighbour with some mob ties, Gloria here has just got out of jail, having served a three-year sentence after refusing to squeal on her boyfriend, mob lieutenant Kevin (Brit actor Northam, sporting a very credible New York accent, i.e. Chris didn’t complain about it!). When he brushes her off, she absconds with both the boy and the floppy disk which holds the data here. All 1.44 MB of it, I guess. For comparison, the original image of the poster (right) is larger than that. Gotta love tech in the nineties.

This does give the film a clear antagonist in Kevin, something lacking in the previous version, and the child here is less irritating, with a character that seems more consistent. The problem is Stone’s take on the character, which feels like the “Is Diet Pepsi alright?” flavour of the character. This one is considerably less ruthless: while she is happy to wave a gun around, I don’t recall her ever shooting anyone, which Gloria v1.0 did with an almost reckless abandon. Her motivation is also considerably more selfish, spawned (at least initially) by a desire to hit back at Kevin for dumping her.

You can perhaps tell the difference simply by comparing the posters for the two movies. The one here appears more interested in putting Stone’s cleavage front and centre: I note the kid did not stay in this picture. Indeed, on its own merits, this would have been a fairly marginal entry for the site, since it’s closer to a thriller-drama than an action movie. It does possess some effective enough moments, though some of these are cribbed wholesale from the original. This is not as terrible a remake as its reputation indicates: the core concept is too strong for that. Yet any purpose to it remains obscure at best, and entirely missing at worst.

Dir: Sidney Lumet
Star: Sharon Stone, Jean-Luke Figueroa, Jeremy Northam, George C. Scott

9 Bullets

★½
“Copy of a copy of a copy.”

While this is not an “official” remake of Gloria, it’s so damn close that I have no problem considering it as one. Writer/director Gaston seems to have… um, a bit of a track record in this area, shall we say. She previously appeared here by directing Beyond the City Limits, a film with such a strong resemblance to Set It Off, that it was released on DVD as Rip It Off. Some might call that a particularly appropriate title, and here, she once again seems to be sailing quite close to a lawsuit. It was purely by coincidence we watched this, the weekend after seeing the two versions of Gloria, and Chris took only a few minutes to call it out.

It’s definitely the worst of the three, and I write that as a fan of Lena Headey. She has done sterling work in things such as Game of Thrones and Gunpowder Milkshake, among others, so to see her in this mess is almost tragic. I almost can’t be bothered to provide a recap – a link to my Gloria review would suffice – yet here we go. A man is caught stealing money from organized crime, so he and his whole family are liquidated, except for young son, Sam (Vazquez). He escapes with an iPad that’s crucial to the mob’s operation, and is rescued by neighbour Gypsy (Headey). They go on the run from the henchmen seeking to recover the iPad, and Sam gradually breaks down Gypsy’s chilly facade, despite her ties to the criminals, being an old flame of its boss, Jack (Worthington).

Ouch. But… but… Sam has a dog! And Gypsy is a retiring burlesque dancer, now writing an autobiography! It’s totes different! No. No, it isn’t. Especially since neither of these are significant. The only relevance of the latter seems to be to allow Headey to show that she still looks pretty good in her late forties (pasties, please: this isn’t some cheap exploitation vehicle). Meanwhile, Sam manages the genuinely impressive feat of managing, somehow, to be more annoying than the kid in the original, burbling on in a child genius way about his booming cryptocurrency portfolio. Yeah, that aged like milk.

Despite Headey’s best efforts, there’s no aspect here which wasn’t done better in both the original, and the remake starring Sharon Stone. Even the new stuff falls flat, such as a weird and almost irrelevant subplot where they steal an already stolen car with a hooker (Anthony) in the back seat. None of the relationships are convincing, and the only moment that has any intensity does not involve any of the main characters. It occurs after Gypsy drops off the dog at the cabin belong to friend Lacy, played by veteran actress Barbara Hershey, who demonstrates an admirably no-nonsense approach to their pursuers. Please, do not even get me started on the finale, where Gypsy literally turns out to be bulletproof. When a film leaves you thinking, “Who came up with this shit?”, it’s never a good sign.

Dir: Gigi Gaston
Star: Lena Headey, Dean Scott Vazquez, Sam Worthington, La La Anthony

Firestarter (1984)

★★½
“I’m the trouble starter, punkin’ instigator…”

It’s somewhat ironic that John Carpenter was originally supposed to direct this. However, after The Thing tanked at the box-office, he was let go from the project, and replaced by the more commercially “safe” Lester. The irony being that The Thing is now regarded (rightfully) as one of the greatest scifi/horror films of all time, while this is… not. It’s very much a mid-tier Stephen King adaptation, far less well remembered than the similarly themed The Dead Zone, from around the same time. I can understand why: it’s lumbering when it needs to be taut, needlessly coming in a little shy of two hours, and only comes to life at the end, when a pissed-off Drew gets enough XP to learn her Level 3 Fireball spell.

She plays Charlie McGee, daughter of Andrew (Keith) and Vicky (Heather Locklear), who met during a fringe scientific experiment, carried out by a dodgy arm of the government. Dosed with a substance called Lot 6, she can read minds, and he can compel people to act in accordance with his will. Charlie, meanwhile… Oh, see the title. Or the poster. Figure it out for yourself. Though the stiff breeze which springs up out of nowhere, each time she furrows her little brow and gets toasty, is a nice touch. Naturally, the government under Captain Hollister (Sheen) are very keen to get their hands on her, with psycho Indian hitman John Rainbird (Scott) eventually sent out to bring in Charlie. 

There’s quite a lot here which has not stood the test of time, and/or wasn’t very good to begin with. Top of the list is likely Keith’s performance, which feels like a poorly conceived effort to channel Patrick Swayze. Scott is creepy, for all the wrong reasons. Rainbird’s relationship with Charlie feels inappropriate from a 2020’s angle, and few people are likely less appropriate to play a native American than Gen. Patton. The film’s main strength is Barrymore, who alternates between adorability and frankly being damn scary. Every other minute, you want to hug her… while wrapped safely in a fireproof suit. At the age of eight, I guess she was still a couple of years from going into rehab.

While the structure largely mirrors the book, doing so probably doesn’t help, beginning when Charlie and her father are already on the run. This then requires a series of clunky flashbacks to get us caught up, and there is too much sitting around the lab, getting father and daughter to demonstrate their talents. Charlie probably isn’t the only one to issue a derisive snort when she is presented with a pile of wood chips. When things do eventually get going though, this is deliciously well-done (in the steak sense, at least), a throwback to the days in Hollywood when wanting to blow stuff up, required actually blowing stuff up. I would nod in acceptance if you told me the finale was responsible for starting off global warming. It just doesn’t quite make up for the 105 minutes which preceded it.

Dir: Mark L. Lester
Star: David Keith, Drew Barrymore, George C. Scott, Martin Sheen
A version of this review previously appeared on Film Blitz

Firestarter (2022)

★★★
“The fire-devil is back!”

I must admit: While I always found the premise for Stephen King’s 1980 novel Firestarter interesting, I never read the book. 500 small-printed pages are just too much for me. The story itself shares some of its DNA with Carrie, with the difference that this here is about a younger child, not an adolescent, and instead of telekinesis the girl knows pyrokinesis, meaning she can create fire from nowhere and control it. It could be argued that King was just kind of re-using ideas from Carrie, making less of an effort to create something original as he did with other material. Opinions on the story seem to be split. Some think it’s a great novel, of the usual King quality; others think it’s a typical work from the time when King was writing as if he were on the run, and striking while the iron was hot (honestly, I don’t really see he has slowed down so much over the years).

Anyway, the novel became a 1984 movie, with all the qualities and flaws a Stephen King adaptation had in the 80s, featuring then-child star Drew Barrymore (gosh, I just realize while I’m typing that she is as old as I am!) a considerable ensemble of actors, a soundtrack by Tangerine Dream and – for its time – impressive pyro special effects. The film’s reception was lukewarm but it went on to become a success on VHS. In Germany, the title translates as “The Firedevil”, which in German means somebody who likes to play with fire. A sequel, albeit unrelated in story and without any King input, came out as as a TV miniseries in 2002 to similarly questionable results as far as fan opinions go. The main character was still Charlie, but now all grown-up. Strangely, the villain of the original piece was still alive there which made zero sense if you witnessed his demise at the end of the movie.

So here is the 2022 version, produced by Blumhouse, a studio with a very good reputation for first-class horror movies today, and also gave us great non-genre movies like Whiplash. Martha de Laurentiis, co-producing wife of the late Dino de Laurentiis (involved in a number of King adaptations in the 80s) has a producer’s credit, although she died last year at cancer. Akiva Goldsman who was chosen to direct the movie before being replaced, also got a producing credit, which doesn’t necessarily mean much nowadays.

The new Firestarter does its best not to just repeat the story beats of the 1984 movie, though by doing so is less close to the original King novel. The beginning of the movie shows young girl Charlie (Armstrong) in school being bullied by one of those ugly red-haired boys we all know from 1970s movies (nasty then, nasty now – talk about discrimination against red-haired children!). It reminded me quite a bit of Carrie, though it’s just a few scenes and serves little more purpose than to illustrate Charlie’s problems in general.

Her parents (Efron – suddenly grown up; wasn’t he just a boy yesterday? – and Lemmon) have been on the run for a long time: After being involved in an experiment that gave them paranormal powers,the secret government organisation that conducted these experiments, “The Shop”, want their child. Therefore – and a bonus point to the screenwriter for taking modern communication and tracking opportunities into account – they have been staying away from the Internet and mobile phones. I was therefore surprised when Charlie in a key scene of the movie suddenly came up with one.

These forces are on the track of the family again, after an outbreak of fire in school and Charlie burns the arms of her mother in a fit of rage. It’s funny to compare the latter scene in old and new movies. Nothing much worth mentioning happened to the mother in the original, but a great fuss was made about it. Here, she has what feel like at least second-degree burns, and the parents behave as if it were nothing in front of Charlie. Let’s go have some ice-cream! What kind of message is being sent to young parents, folks?

The Shop is now under the management of Captain Hollister (Gloria Reuben), who send apparently disgraced operative John Rainbird (Greyeyes) to get Charlie back. She is seen by Hollister as having great potential, though original leader of the experiment, Doctor Wanless (Kurtwood Smith in a cameo), fears an unmeasurable threat from the girl’s potential when she comes into full control of her power. Charlie’s mom resists Rainbird and dies in the confrontation, causing father and daughter to go on the run, where Dad’s ability to influence people telepathically comes in handy.

They find sanctuary with recluse Manders (John Beasley), only to be discovered by the police and Rainbird shortly after. While Charlie gets away, her father is caught and is brought back to the lab. After training to control her powers in the woods, a scene that feels two minutes long, Charlie comes to free her Dad. Although “The Shop” does its best to get her under control, the girl prevails, burning all those who threaten her.

Firestarter is a strange beast with a difficult task: Retaining the core of the original story but not being to close too the orignal movie. Paying tribute to current political correctness, yet not changing the original material too much. For most of the time, they do fine, I’d say. Some changes did catch my eye: the conflict between the parents wasn’t there, as far as I remember, in the original movie. The mother wants Charlene to train so she can control her powers, the father would rather she suppress them, for who knows what may come out of them being released? In contrast, the original spent more time with Dad and daughter in the lab, the evil Rainbird slowly gaining Charlie’s confidence in order to kill her when appropriate. It went more for slow menacing tension – also the approach of King’s novel – while this plays more as a “fugitives-on-the-run” scenario.

But the biggest change is the John Rainbird. In the original, he was played by elderly over-weight “evil uncle” George C. Scott. In no circumstance would he ever have been considered a Native American. Here, he is played by Canadian and Cree actor Michael Greyeyes, though Rainbird in the books was Cherokee. Perhaps because Hollywood thinks it can’t allow villains to be an ethnic minority, the character is slightly changed: Rainbird works for the organisation, because it is suggested they are too powerful. He himself was betrayed by them, and seems to have been part of the experiment, gaining certain supernatural powers. Here, Rainbird helps Charlie, ready to accept his death. Strangely, she spares his life and while the building behind her burns, takes his hand and they walk away. Make out of that ending what you want: it’s definitely not King’s.

It seems a lot of critics disliked the new movie. As a whole I can’t condemn taking a different approach to the story. I’m not even sure if I would call the new movie “woke”, though it definitely has woke moments. Director Keith Thomas, does fine, I think. The movie is atmospheric, has more focus on the parents and their differences over how to raise their daughter, and there is some genuine tension, e. g. when Rainbird confronts Charlie’s mother. What really astonished me is the musci by John Carpenter and his son Cody. Yes, that Carpenter. I don’t know how they got him to do the music: he directed the King adaptation Christine in the 80s and was the original choice for that Firestarter, so that may have something to do with it.

What’s my judgement? The new movie isn’t bad. Acting-wise I’d even say it’s better; I especially prefer Michael Greyeyes’s performance to the ham-fisted approach of Scott. But if I had to chose… I’d stick with the original. That had the “oh, she is so cute” Barrymore factor and a really, really impressive cast, which this movie only can dream of. The pyro FX party at the end is much more impressive than the toned-down finale here. There is also the “zeitgeist factor” to consider. In 1984 you could still accept and be fascinated by the idea of a girl who can create and control fire. In 2022, with Pyro, Dark Phoenix or Sunspot doing similar or more impressive things, Charlie’s powers just aren’t as fascinating as they used to be.

Dir: Keith Thomas
Star: Zac Efron, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Sydney Lemmon, Michael Greyeyes

Firestarter, by Stephen King

Literary rating: ★★★½
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆

Having watched both versions of the film, I followed up by reading the book on which they were based. Despite my general fondness for horror, I haven’t read very much Stephen King: this is only the second novel of his, after Salem’s Lot. First thought: at 576 pages in the mass paperback edition, it’s quite a door-stopper, and you can see the problems in adapting a work of that size into a movie. Inevitably, a lot of the detail and nuance is going to be excised. There’s no doubt, the 1984 version is more faithful; the 2022 adaptation takes the basic concept of a young girl with pyrokinetic powers, on the run from the government with her father, and does its own thing, more or less.

How you feel about those different approaches, probably depends on how you feel about the original book. Despite the length, it wasn’t a chore; I was typically reading 25-30 minutes a night, and never felt like it was a burden. King had a relatively straightforward style, that’s generally easy to read. The novel does, like the 1984 film, move back and forth in the time-line. It begins with Charlie and her dad trying to escape the experimental government program which spawned them, only later filling in how they got to this point – both the events of that program, and the subsequent surveillance, leading to the death of her mother. This, to me, worked better on the page than the screen, where it ended up becoming too convoluted.

You get a good deal more background on “The Shop”, the murky federal group behind everything, and its employees. In particular, a good portion is told from the perspective of near-insane operative, John Rainbird, Here, he’s very badly disfigured, the result of a friendly-fire incident in the Vietnam War, which seems to have helped push him over the edge. His madness is considerably more apparent in the book, along with the dubious nature of his psychological attachment to – almost dependence on – Charlie. The novel also delves deeper into Charlies’ internal struggle for self-control, fighting to keep hold of her talent, rather than letting it rule her.

While both film versions end with her fiery escape from the shop, albeit in radically different ways, the book has a fairly lengthy coda. [spoilers follow]. This covers Charlie’s return to the Manders farm, where she finds sanctuary once more. Inevitably, however, word seeps out and the Shop pay a visit, only to find their target already left. The novel finishes with Charlie arriving at the offices of Rolling Stone magazine, ready to tell her story. From a 2022 viewpoint, this had not aged well, with that publication now a de facto mouthpiece for the establishment, with as much counter-culture credibility as Teen Vogue or Buzzfeed. However, this remains an entertaining read, and if such a talent ever existed, you sense the events it depicts are quite plausibly how things could go down. Here’s hoping we never find out.

Author: Stephen King
Publisher: Pocket Books, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Standalone novel.

Jungle Girl

★★½
“You can take the girl out of the jungle…”

This is nominally based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’s 1932 novel of the same name, also known as The Land of Hidden Men. Though there’s very little beyond the title in common. The book was set in Cambodia, and told the story of explorer Gordon King, who finds a civilization which has been lost for a thousand years. This… isn’t. It is instead the story of Nyoka Meredith (Gifford), the daughter of a doctor working with the Masamba tribe in the middle of Africa. “Nyoka” is Swahili for snake, and she seems to spend most of her free time swinging through the forest on vines.

But there’s trouble in paradise, as ne’er-do-wells Slick Latimer (Mohr) and Bradley Meredith (Bardette) show up, hoping to get their hands on the tribe’s stash of diamonds. Their plan involves Dr. Meredith’s twin brother, who just got out of jail. They knock off the doctor, replacing him with his sibling, who feigns “amnesia” to explain the holes in his memory. They also team up with disgruntled witch-doctor Shamba, who was displaced from his tribal position by Western medicine. But Nyoka, along with Jack Stanton (Neal) and Curly Rogers, stand in the way of the villains. Though naturally, they will have narrowly to dodge death – I’m guessing, fourteen times, give or take.

While this was the first serial in the sound era to have a female lead, it’s a little disappointing in this regard. It feels like, over the course of the 15 episodes, Nyoka is more rescued than rescuing, though it does work both ways. In terms of getting into the action, there’s more than one occasion where she just yells “Look out!”, then lets the menfolk get on with punching each other. However, Nyoka still has her moments, such as in Episode 5, where she dives into a gorge and goes hand-to-hand with a crocodile, in order to save a native child. I did appreciate the lack of any romance here. Despite the obvious candidacy of Jack, everyone is too busy narrowly dodging those deaths, I think, for emotional entanglements.

Considerably less progressive is the portrayal of the natives. I guess we should be happy Shamba is at least played by a non-American, Frank Lackteen being Lebanese-born. But the native boy saved from the crocodile? Born in Minnesota (the actor, Tommy Cook, was still active almost eighty years later, playing a senator in an episode of Space Force!). Even aside from the blackface, add patronising lines like “It took a white man to figure it out,” and there are a lot of elements which have not aged well, to put it mildly. Some of the plot threads are also a bit implausible, such as Jack and Curly building an impromptu refinery in the native village, to convert crude oil into airplane fuel. I’m fairly sure it’s not that easy.

One of the stunt co-ordinators on this was the legendary Yakima Canutt. He would go on to choreograph the chariot race in Ben-Hur, though there’s none of his renowned equine stuntwork here. Helen Thurston was the main double for Gifford, though for the scenes where she’s swinging from vine to vine, a male stuntman (David Sharpe) took over. Apparently, Gifford said he looked better in the costume than she did! The series was so successful it became the first Republic serial to be re-released, six years later. A lot of the action footage from this was reworked into 1955’s Panther Girl of the Kongo, but we’ll talk more about that in its own review.

Dir: William Witney and John English
Star: Frances Gifford, Tom Neal, Trevor Bardette, Gerald Mohr

Perils of Nyoka

★★★½
“Serial thriller.”

After the success of Jungle Girl, Republic looked to repeat the process the following year. However, despite bringing back the heroine, they were able to avoid paying Edgar Rice Burroughs again, because Nyoka was not a character who appeared in the original novel. It may also be why she has a different surname here, and her father is missing, rather than killed. Republic used a different actress too: Kay Aldridge replaced Frances Gifford, who was unavailable. Aldridge had recently seen her contract with 20th Century Fox expire, though had some qualms: “I did it with the attitude we had in that day that to make a B-western or a serial was a comedown for a featured player at Fox. It was a comedown in one way, but it was a comeup in another way because I was the lead. They paid me about $650 a week, which was pretty good money at the time.” Still, it proved her most popular role, though she retired from acting just four years later, to get married.

With a title clearly nodding to 1914’s The Perils of Pauline, this operates at a particularly breathless rush, even by serial standards, over its 15 episodes. The main plot has Nyoka Gordon in search of the Tablets of Hippocrates, both because they offer a cure for cancer, but in order to help find her father, who vanished mysteriously in the African wilderness years previously. Well, I say “African”. There’s really no effort at all made to make Southern California look like anything other than Southern California. Anyway, she’s joined in her quest by Dr. Larry Grayson (Moore, best known as TV’s Lone Ranger) and other scientists, but opposed by the evil Vultura (Gray) and her native minions, who wants the tablets for herself. Actually, from a modern perspective, Vultura probably has more of a claim to the artifacts than the tomb-raiding Westerners, Nyoka’s protestations about them belonging to “humanity” notwithstanding.

This was the first serial I had watched since Zorro’s Black Whip, and I really appreciated the relentless pace with which things moved forward. There’s literally never a dull moment, despite the usual overlap: opening of each episode recaps the previous cliffhanger, then details how (usually) Nyoka gets out of the peril in question. These escapes were a bit varying in quality: some of them were clever, others were more or less cheats, e.g. falling from a great height into a pool of water that wasn’t there previously.

But the show never gives pause to consider such things, moving on to the next treachery, chase or fight sequence. Of particular note is the antagonist also being a woman, and Vultura is every bit as smart, driven and hands-on as Nyoka. There’s potentially an alternative version of this where she is the heroine. It’s definitely an improvement on the “ignorant savages” portrayed in Jungle Girl. Indeed, Nyoka v2.0 is also a clear upgrade on the original, being much more self-reliant, certainly the equal of the men.

Admittedly, the pace is maintained at the expense of just about everything else. When you have perhaps 15 minutes in which to cram a recap, escape, move the plot forward and then set up the next cliffhanger… there’s never going to be much chance to get in a lot of character development. Everybody here is more or less what they appear in episode one, and there’s hardly anything in the way of an arc for anyone across the four hours. Hard to complain though, since it is for understandable reasons. What matters here is not any backstory, it’s a simple matter of hooking the audience into coming back the following Saturday for the next episode. Having shotgunned as many as five episodes back-to-back, I can’t argue with its success on that front.

I also feel I should mention the animals. Fang, Nyoka’s dog, is perhaps the smartest canine I’ve ever seen on a show: to be honest, he’s more intelligent than some of the human characters, and does a remarkable amount, especially considering his lack of opposable thumbs. There’s also a little monkey, belonging to one of her sidekicks, who chips in, while Vultura keeps a pet gorilla. That, however, is a guy in a not particularly convincing suit. Though considering it gets into fisticuffs with Dr. Grayson, I can understand why they didn’t want to use a real primate for that! Their cute presence do make me wonder if this was aimed as much as kids as adults. Though given the amount of violence – there are corpses everywhere, albeit bloodless ones – it feels a little inappropriate for children by modern standards.

The show proved popular enough to be re-released a decade later, under the rather confusing title, Nyoka and the Tigermen. A few years further down the road, it was converted into a 100-minute TV movie, Nyoka and the Lost Secrets of Hippocrates. Normally, hacking out such a large amount of content would render any cinematic product incoherent. But I can see how it would be possible here, though I dread to think how adrenaline-crazed that end product might be!

Dir: Bill Witney
Star: Kay Aldridge, Clayton Moore, Lorna Gray, Charles Middleton

The Tiger Woman

★★½
“A leopard which changes its spots.”

Am I the only person irrationally annoyed by the title of this 12-episode serial? It takes place in South America, where the only tigers are in captivity. And look at the picture of the heroine. LOOK AT IT. In what universe is that a tiger? I mean, the ears are a nice touch, but it’s very obviously not tiger stripes. Though it has been pointed that in its location, the jaguar is known as el tigre. Which might make sense if there was any other jot of Hispanic culture to be found here. [GWG readers: “Get on with it!”] Oh, alright… if you insist.  

As mentioned, we’re in South America, where two competing oil companies are seeking to establish their territory. The Inter Ocean Oil Company are the current occupants, and have been working in association with the indigenous population, under their white queen (Stirling), known as the Tiger Woman. But if they don’t strike oil soon, their franchise will expire. A predatory, far less friendly (but unnamed) company, is standing by, to make sure that doesn’t happen, allowing them to take over. But Inter Ocean has sent top troubleshooter, Allen Saunders (Rock Lane), to work with the Tiger Queen and block their enemy’s attempts. Those get more desperate as the deadline approaches and Inter Ocean appear to be succeeding. Complicating matters is the Tiger Queen’s original identity as missing heiress, Rita Arnold, something her enemies want to use to their advantage.

The heroine is something of a step forward from Jungle Girl, with Rita/Ms. Tiger at least making an occasional effort to get involved in the fisticuffs (copious, to the point half the oil company’s profits must have gone on replacement furniture). However, it’s rare for this to last more than a few seconds, and it seems she’s as fragile as cut crystal. Run into a wall? Knocked out. Trip on the carpet? Knocked out. Looked at askance by a bad guy? Probably knocked out. I swear, there are times where it feels like she spends half her screen time unconscious.However, as in Jungle Girl, there are odd moments which rise above, though I’m not sure the aeroplane spin would be a move familiar to white goddesses from the sky.

She does have a regal presence (perhaps due to Sterling’s background as a model, before she turned to acting), even if her throne looks a bit like it was built out of banana boxes. Ms. Tiger is also reasonably brave, always willing to put herself in danger when necessary for her tribe – or, probably more relevantly, necessary for cliff-hanger purposes.  I was less impressed with the plotting, especially the shenanigans of the villains, which seem almost random, rather than well-conceived to their particular aims. For instance, they’re supposed to kill Rita, then get someone else to impersonate her and claim the inheritance. If that’s the best plan you can come up with… you need to bring in some kind of outside consultant. Again, it feels as if everything they do is for cliff-hanger purposes, not as a means to an end. It gets kinda repetitive after a while.

Still, this was a big hit, and led to Republic fast-tracking another vehicle for Sterling. Only a few months after this was released, production started on Zorro’s Black Whip, in which she would get to be more of a proper lead.

Dir: Spencer Bennet and Wallace Grissell
Star: Linda Stirling, Allan Lane, Duncan Renaldo, George J. Lewis
Subsequently re-released in 1951 as Perils of the Darkest Jungle, and in a cut-down TV version in 1966 as Jungle Gold.

Zorro’s Black Whip

★★★
“Masked woman with a whip? Despite being almost 70 years old, still better than Catwoman.”

This 12-part serial from Republic was a spin-off from the success of Zorro – though despite the title, the Z-word is never mentioned. It moves the legend from Spanish California to Idaho in the 1880’s, just before a vote to decide whether it would become a state. Villainous Dan Hammond (McDonald) begins a violent campaign to prevent this, and is opposed by local newspaper owner Randolph Meredith, who has a secret identity as The Black Whip, a masked vigilante. When he is shot dead, his sister Barbara (Stirling) takes up the cape and whip, along with the help of undercover federal agent, Vic Gordon (Lewis). Together, they foil Hammond’s increasingly-desperate plots as voting day nears, and escape from 11 precarious positions. Well, it is a serial, after all…

Within the harsh limitations of the format, it does its best. In less than 15 minutes per episode, they have to fit in opening credits, a recap, replay the previous cliff-hanger, resolve that, set up the next cliff-hanger and finish with the closing credits. It leaves precious little time for plot or character development, which may explain why all the bad guys wear black hats. Seriously. They could reduce crime by 90% simply by banning the sale of non-white headgear, or so it would appear. Vic does most of the heavy lifting, action-wise, brawling frequently; Barbara generally stands back and uses her whip, which makes sense. Though, to be honest, the villains are remarkably oblivious to the Whip’s feminine curves: they’re blinded by their own sexism, at one point rejecting a suggestion Babs is the masked marauder, saying, “She couldn’t be! The Black Whip’s got to be a man!”

While clunky, sporting a dreadful ending for Hammond, and truly a product of its time (1944), the action is frequent and competent, thanks to the second-unit work of the legendary stuntman Yakima Canutt, who was the inspiration for much of John Wayne’s on-screen persona, and is best-known for staging the chariot-race in Ben Hur. The horse-work here is still outstanding: Babe DeFreest was the double for Stirling, and can be seen riding with her here. You could edit this down into a somewhat hyper feature, which would still be complete nonsense, yet given its age, is far from unwatchable.

Dir: Spencer Bennet and Wallace Grissell
Star: Linda Stirling, George J. Lewis, Francis McDonald, Hal Taliaferro

The Black Widow

★★½
“Stay here. And make me a sandwich!”

This is something of a fringe entry, and illustrates a few of the issues with Hollywood of the time. In particular, a severe reluctance to let female characters act with genuine independence. We see this on both side of the story here. The title character is Sombra (Forman), a vaguely Asiatic woman who is engaged in a plot to steal nuclear secrets from the United States. To this end, she has been trying to bribe acquaintances of a notable scientist, but the trail of spider-envenomed corpses resulting from their refusal to help has brought her to the attention of the Daily Clarion and its ace girl reporter, Joyce Winters (Lindley). Which would be fine, if the women were allowed to go head-to-head on their own terms, in the same way as Perils of Nyoka.

Except, neither of them are. Sombra is basically a puppet of her father, King Hitomu, who pops up through a cloud of smoke in a teleportation device, to keep her in line and hand down decrees that must be obeyed. Worse, the newspaper calls in Steve Colt (Edwards), a hard-boiled crime fiction author, to take lead in their investigation. He truly treats Joyce like crap, repeatedly ordering her to stay behind and refusing to let her drive. This unrepentant chauvinist even handcuffs her to the car at one point, to stop her following. Fortunately for him, Joyce is resourceful enough to unbolt herself, and so is able to stop Steve from being gunned down by Sombra’s minions. His gratitude for saving his life is… largely notable by its absence.

In between the blatant sexism, which definitely hampers things, there are some cool elements. I particularly liked the way Sombra is a woman of a thousand faces, able to disguise herself as any other woman perfectly. So we get some scenes where we have Lindley playing Forman as Sombra, pretending to be Joyce, if you see what I mean. It’s fun. There is a fair amount of technobabble here e.g. a sonic disruption device, but occasionally the script does hit on something a little prophetic, e.g. the tracking device Steve uses to locate Sombra’s lair. Though it is rather larger than the modern equivalent, shall we say! I’m also a little concerned about the ease with which he is allowed to gun down unarmed civilians, and his lack of remorse thereof.

I did like the performances of both Lindley and Forman, though one aspect of the latter is a “Yellow Peril”-like portrayal that hasn’t aged well. But as is often the case, being a villainess does give you a bit more independence, and Sombra is clearly the boss when her father isn’t around. However, if you’re not throwing things at the screen when Steve gets all “No, you’re not coming with me, little lady,” then you’re probably on the wrong website. I was wishing throughout for him to have a close encounter of the poisonous kind with Sombra’s arachnid pals.

Dir: Spencer Gordon Bennet and Fred C. Brannon
Star: Bruce Edwards, Virginia Lindley, Carol Forman, Anthony Warde

Daughter of Don Q

★★★
“No relation to Maggie, presumably.”

Lorna Gray, the lead here, had been the villainess in Perils of Nyoka, but graduates to the role of protagonist. This is notable for its contemporary, urban setting, without any of the “jungle girl” trappings of previous Republic serials. Heroine Dolores Quantero  (Gray, although now billed as Adrian Booth) is a thoroughly modern woman, who happens to be proficient at jiu-jitsu, and also no mean hand with a longbow. The former is of rather more importance than the latter, which only really crops up during one episode. Perhaps this feistiness is genetic, since Dolores is a descendant of Don Quantero, a heroic historical figure [the title of this may be a nod to 1925 silent film, Don Q, Son of Zorro, starring Douglas Fairbanks].

Another member of the family, Carlos Manning (Mason) becomes aware of a land grant given to their ancestor by the Spanish crown, which will allow him to claim ownership of large tracts of property. However, the rights would be divided among all the Don’s descendants, so Carlos decides to start bumping off other family members. The process begins with the attempted theft of a heirloom from Dolores’s house which details the Quintero genealogy. This alerts her to the plan, and along with journalist Cliff Roberts (Alyn), she looks to protect her relatives and get to the bottom of Carlos’s scheme, dodging retaliatory efforts to lop her off the family tree.

While I liked the modern scenario, it’s a bit of a mixed bag, both in terms of story and in Dolores’s character. Even by the low standards of serial villainy, Carlos’s plans seem both ridiculous and ill-conceived. I was particularly unimpressed by the attempt to have Dolores shot with a harpoon gun while dangling in a net, apparently because it would look like a “vendetta killing.” Yeah, between two gangs of whales. The serial even seems to have a bottle episode consisting largely of footage taken from previous parts, with the heroine and hero describing their previous brushes with death. Considering there are only 12 chapters to begin with, this recycling of previous peril is disappointing, as is the apparent inclusion of action footage from earlier serials, such as The Masked Marvel.

However, some of the more imaginative elements do work, such as Dolores going undercover as the target in a knife-throwing act, and some of the supporting characters are surprisingly memorable. That the heroine knows and uses martial arts may also be close to a first for Hollywood, even if it’s a few basic throws at most. Despite this, she does still have a tendency to fall unconscious too easily, and sit back when things kick off – though we’ll give her the benefit of the doubt for the fight where she takes a chair to the face! While overall entertaining, the finale is particularly disappointing in terms of her passivity, with Cliff speeding to her rescue, as the crate she’s tied up in, is about to be thrown off a high bridge. I’d rather she had rescued him, or at least herself. I guess jiu-jitsu and archery was as far as Republic were willing to go, in the way of female empowerment.

Dir: Spencer Gordon Bennet and Fred C. Brannon
Star: Lorna Gray (as Adrian Booth), Kirk Alyn, LeRoy Mason, Roy Barcroft

Appleseed (1988)

★★★
“Apples to oranges”

This feels like one of the first anime releases to get an official release in the West, and to be honest, the animation in particular is showing its age. It couldn’t be much more eighties, if the heroine had big hair and wore legwarmers while listening to her Sony Walkman. That said, when you get used to the relatively simple style, it’s decent enough. We are introduced to the post-WW3 world and in particular, the city of Olympus, which was designed to be a utopian environment for survivors. However, like all utopias, it failed to take into account human nature. In particular, some are very concerned by the prevalence of biodroids. These artificial creations were intended to be humanity’s servants, yet for their opponents, feel increasingly more like our masters.

In that camp is terrorist A.J. Sebastian, who is working with a disgruntled Olympus police officer, Charon Mautholos (Furukawa) to bring about the collapse of Olympus and its all-powerful computer, Gaia. Against them stand the Olympus anti-terrorist forces, in particular Deunan Knute (Katsuki) and Briareos Hecatonchires (Sakaguchi). They are refugees from the blasted hellscape which forms much of the world, who were taken in to Olympus, and became part of its police force. Already bearing a grudge against Sebastian for his killing of a colleague during a hostage situation, they are not unhappy to be tasked with his extra-judicial killing by Olympus’s leader, the bioroid Athena Areios (Sawada). But with the help of Charon, Sebastian is one step ahead of the authorities.

As shown in the video below (you’re welcome!), the original release of the anime did have its fair share of bumpy moments. Several signs clearly refer to the city as “Olumpus”, which doesn’t quite sounds like the home of the gods! Similarly Charon is referred to as “Karen” in the subtitles, which has a rather different set of associations in 2021, never mind the gender confusion it caused. Finally, Briareos is called Buliaros: I guess they were still settling down in terms of his Western name. It’s also surprisingly low-key in terms of action. Once you get past the hostage rescue mentioned above, it’s really Sebastian and Charon that are responsible for much more of the mayhem than Deunan and Briareos.

I did like the characters here though. It’s clear the heroine and hero have an easy-going relationship, trusting each other implicitly. Yet the script still finds the time to give Charon a back-story which makes his action understandable in the circumstances. Sebastian, not so much, however; he’s just a villain. The world-building is generally solid, though I would like to have learned more about life outside Olympus, to provide some contrast. The soundtrack – something I remember as a highlight of many films and series of the time – is utterly forgettable. It’s no Bubblegum Crisis, that’s for sure, and is even further below Ghost in the Shell. Overall though, allowing for its age, it did keep me entertained; truth be told, considerably more  than I feared it might.

Dir: Kazuyoshi Katayama
Star: Masako Katsuki, Yoshisada Sakaguchi, Toshiko Sawada, Toshio Furukawa

Appleseed (2004)

★★½
“Weak at its core.”

This is obviously technically superior to its 1988 predecessor, with CGI done in a way that the people, in particular, look like cel animation. I suspect that being a theatrical release, rather than a original video animation, gave it a significantly larger budget, and it hits the ground running. The opening sequence is a bravura use of all the tricks in the CGI locker: swoops, zooms and majestic camera movements round a half-destroyed cityscape. Deunan (Kobayashi) fends off a host of enemies, but ends up being knocked unconscious, and taken to the utopian city of Olympus. There, she’s reunited with Briareos (Kosugi), and becomes part of the ESWAT team. But not everything is idyllic in Olympus, which is populated about equally by humans and vat-grown biodroids, who administer the city and keep humanity’s emotions and violent tendencies in check.

In particular, there are tensions between the administration of biodroid Athena Areios (Koyama), and the army under General Uranus. The latter are fiercely opposed to biodroids, and a faction take action, destroying the facilities which extend biodroid lifespans. They want to realise the “doomsday device” which will wipe out all biodroids. But a group in the administration want to activate biodroid reproductive abilities – this is the “Appleseed” of the franchise title. They need Deunan’s help in this; her mother created the biodroids and her DNA is in them. But the question of who actually has humanity’s best interests at heart, is considerably more murky than it initially appears.

There’s a lot of plot going on here, as the above would appear to make apparent [tip: the more often a society describes itself as “utopian”, the less likely it is to be so]. The problem for me was, it seemed as if the makers all but forgot about the characters. For all the technical wizardry on view, the 1988 film achieved a significantly higher degree of emotional resonance. I don’t think it’s a particular result of the voice acting. I suspect it’s just that the creators constructed this world, and all these groups operating within it, leaving little time in the script to develop Deunan as a character. She feels less like a person than a walking collection of plot elements. There’s also very little depth to the relationship between her and Briareos, which is among the most enjoyable elements in other versions. 

Unfortunately for the sake of my headline, I can’t honestly describe this as “rotten.” But it definitely did not manage to sustain my interest consitently. Since I was watching it in Japanese, I did have to pay a certain amount of attention, since I couldn’t just listen to it. This was particularly during the gobbets of exposition provided by the Council of Elders, a group of old men who debate with supercomputer Gaia about how to run Olympus. However, it was definitely at the bare minimum level for a significant chunk of the running time. After the spectacular opening, it felt like it was largely downhill for the rest of the way, with the usual superweapon finale only somewhat able to rescue things.

Dir: Shinji Aramaki
Star (voice): Ai Kobayashi, Jûrôta Kosugi, Yuki Matsuoka, Mami Koyama

Appleseed Ex Machina

★★★½
“The Deunan wears Prada.”

I think this is probably my favourite of the various incarnations of Appleseed. It may not be the best characterization, the best animation, or the best plot. But I think in overall terms, the combination is the most successful. In all the others, you can typically point to one of those three areas as being at least somewhat deficient. Here, if none are outstanding, they’re all solid and competent. It may help that legendary Hong Kong director John Woo was one of the producers. If you didn’t know that, you could probably tell from the early scene in which Briareos crashes through a church’s stained-glass window, a gun blazing in each hand. “All that needs is some white doves in slow-mo,” I thought. And, lo, later on, the birds in question do appear – and are even necessary to the plot, which is probably more than Woo managed!

The story here begins with the latest in a series of terrorist attacks, carried out by cyborgs. It turns out they are not acting of their own free will, but are being “puppet mastered” into their actions. Worse, the human residents of Olympus now appear to be joining in, baffling Deunan (Kobayashio) and her colleagues in ESWAT. Viewers, however, will likely be quicker to figure out the cause there, given the rather obvious mentions of a hot new piece of wearable technology called Connexus, which simply everyone who is anyone is now sporting. Meanwhile, a new kind of soldier biodroid is being developed, basied on Briareos (Yamadera), designed to possess the talents of humans or cyborgs, but without the negative traits. After Briareos is injured, Deunan is partnered up with one, Tereus (Kishi). This freaks her out, because he looks just like Briareos, before his cybernetic upgrades. Meanwhile, Olympus leader Athena (Takashima) seeks to leverage the terrorist attacks to gain support for her plan to create a worldwide security network.

There’s a lot going here, yet the script manages to keep the elements clear and moving forward without confusion. There’s a sweet spot in SF between the simplistic and the over-complex, and this hit it better than most. The animation is a tad short, however. Weirdly, what stood out as defective was the hair, which didn’t move in the way it should. Either that, or I guess, after the apocalypse, hair lacquer is not in short supply. In general though, the technical aspects were competent enough and occasionally better than that. Perhaps due to Woo’s involvement, it feels a perfect candidate for a live-action adaptation, though the budget would need to be well into nine figures. I’d go with Ruby Rose as Deunan and Dave Bautista as Briareos. Change my mind. :)  Oh, and the tagline? Yeah, some of Deunan’s outfits in the film were indeed designed by Miuccia Prada. She has been running the family’s clothing company since 1978, and was a fan of the previous film. A very well-dressed action heroine indeed…

Dir: Shinji Aramaki
Star (voice):  Ai Kobayashi, Kōichi Yamadera, Gara Takashima, Yūji Kishi

Appleseed XIII: Tartaros and Ouranos

★½
“A Herculean labour to get through”

These two features, Tartaros and Ouranos, are an edited-down version of the Appleseed XIII series. This consisted of 13 episodes, each 22 minutes long, with their release beginning in June 2011 and running through the following January. Obviously, if you do the math, you can see that some fairly harsh scissoring was needed to get that down to a pair of 85-minute films. It also loses the obviously episodic nature, with some of the parts intended to be stand-alone. But, if I’m blunt, I think the problems here are considerably more intrinsic. By the end, I was glad I had decided to go with this version; the prospect of sitting through the longer version had little or no appeal at all.

The most obvious problem was the animation style, which managed to combine the worst features of both CGI and traditional animation. The end result is something which looks flat-out ugly, and thus a far cry from creator Masamune Shirow’s original art. For what I can only presume was good reason, the producers decided to have 13 different animation studios handle things, each doing one episode. While they were all clearly working from the same source material, it’s obvious that they were not all equally competent. Especially when compiled together, the decent bits simply make the bad look all the worse; it would probably have been better had it all been bad. As the original 1998 OAV showed, your eyes can get use to limited animation eventually – providing it isn’t frequently been shown anything else.

The other issue is a story which felt, at best, like another warmed-over rehash of previous elements. Oh, look: pro-human terrorists are threatening the peace of Olympus. Yes, again. It also drops in weird elements which made no sense. Did you know Deunan’s mother was African, and was killed while walking across a street reserved for white people? Briareos is also African. I’m not quite sure what woke point writer Junichi Fujisaku was seeking to make with this, also a sharp deviation from Shirow’s material. But it’s so badly-handed as to actively subtract from proceedings, and has aged very poorly over the decade since. A lot of the content is “inspired by” Greek mythology, in particular the 12 Labours of Hercules, to the point it feels on occasion like a SF episode of The Legendary Journeys.

The overall story arc mostly concerns Olympus’s “Ark Project”, which is intended to secure a future for humanity, but is being opposed by the Human Liberation Front, and in particular Deia Chades. There’s also a clash between Olympus and another city-state, Poseidon, which confused the heck out of me, as in the previous version, Poseidon appeared to be a multinational conglomerate. Whatevs. To be honest, it would have been a bit of an improvement if I could have brought myself to care about this, or anything else presented here. Instead, I found myself largely uninterested in the watered-down version of Deunan which we got here – someone who seemed more concerned about getting in touch with her feelings than with kicking ass.

Dir: Takayuki Hamana
Star (voice): Maaya Sakamoto, Kōichi Yamadera, Mikako Takahashi, Hiro Shimono

Appleseed Alpha

★★★½
“Before the war”

Though the most recent story told in the Appleseed universe, at the time of writing, this was the first to take place. It’s set before Deunan (Christian) and Briareos (Matranga) arrived in Olympus, back when they were still struggling to survive in the harsh world of the 22nd century, created by World War III. They are a pair of former soldiers, operating in New York, doing jobs of questionable legality for boss of the Big Apple’s underworld, Two Horns (Calvert). Their latest mission is to clear an area of automated drones, which now attack anyone who enter. While doing so, they rescue Iris (Palencia) and Olson, who are being pursued by Talos. He’s a cyborg, who needs Iris in particular to access and control a land battleship, which he’ll use to destroy New York, because… Uh, I’m sure he has his reasons. They’re just not very clearly explained in this installment.

That’s one of the few mis-steps in this, even if it does kinda rewrite established franchise history about how Deunan and Briareos got to Olympus. It’s a wonderful glimpse into a blasted world, with New York eerily short on people, and far from the bustling metropolis it was, pre-war. Oddly, the subway still seems to function, as we see in the opening scene, when D+B are attempting to complete one of Two Horns’s jobs, delivering a vaccine to him. Let’s just say, this particular subway line may be experiencing delays for a bit. I actually watched this back-to-back with the original 1998 film, and there’s a drastic contrast in style, with the CGI here slick and generally showing impressive detail. There are some jarring exceptions; a car flipping over looks like no effort went into it at all. But the finale involving the land battleship is undeniably spectacular, and may be good enough to make you forget the earlier glitches. Always good to finish on a high, and this certainly does.

Its plot is not dissimilar to the original 1988 version, with a young girl the key to a terrorist acquiring a weapon of mass destruction. The main difference is that D+B are operating as independent contractors, rather than state-sponsored security. This probably makes their actions more heroic; they could simply have walked away from Iris and Olson, as not their problem. But perhaps the most interesting character arc belongs to Two Horns, who goes from employer to enemy, before eventually riding to the rescue after discovering, first-hand, how much of a bastard Talos and his sidekick, Nyx, can be. I must admit though, to finding Deunan’s costume a tad distracting, since it appears to be designed largely to draw attention to her beautifully detailed, CGI cleavage. While I’m not typically going to complain about that kind of thing, the rest of the film is rather too classy for this to be needed.

Dir: Shinji Aramaki
Star (voice): Luci Christian, David Matranga, Wendel Calvert, Brina Palencia
[While it seems odd, I believe the English language version is actually the original,  with the Japanese being the “dub” in this case]