Thursday, October 12, 2017

KUNG FU: EPISODES 19-23 (1974)



PHENOMENALITY: (1) *marvelous,* (2,4) *naturalistic,* (3) *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: (1,2 4) *fair,* (3) *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, metaphysical, sociological, cosmologicaL*


Up to this point, Caine has only encountered other Chinese martial artists who were either out to kill him for a bounty or who, like Captain Lee of "The Way of Violence Has No Mind," gained Shaolin skills without actually attending the temple. The titular character in "The Passion of Chen Yi" is a fellow priest whom Caine knew during his own temple-service, and there was a bond between them more of animosity than of fellowship.

Nevertheless, Chen Yi is for some reason on Caine's mind at the start of "Passion," to the extent that Caine seeks out an old Chinese man for advice. In the episode's only marvelous touch, the elder informs Caine of exactly where Chen Yi can be found, relying on what the old fellow calls "emanations."

Once Caine arrives at the town where Chen Yi last resided, he learns that the former Shaolin priest has been sentenced to hang for murder in the next few days. Caine remembers that Chen Yi was an arrogant priest, and that he maneuvered Caine into a fight-- which Caine lost-- so that Caine would serve as his go-between, taking messages to an outside mistress. The Shaolin masters find out about Chen Yi's duplicity before Cains becomes enmeshed in the other priest's transgressions, and thus Chen Yi is turned out. But evidently the matter preyed on Caine as an unresolved conflict, and since Caine does not believe that any Shaolin would commit gratuitous murder, he decides to investigate. Having been told that Chen Yi is in the local prison and that no visitor can see him, Caine simply goes through the motions of holding up the local bank-- naturally, without wielding a gun or even harsh words-- and gets himself sentenced to the same prison.

Chen Yi (Soon Teck-Oh) is surprised to see Caine, but he maintains that he committed the murder and is willing to hang for it. Caine then uses his superior skills to escape prison and to continue his investigation. This leads him to Chen Yi's ex-girlfriend Louise and her (perhaps) crippled sister Rita. It's no great revelation to disclose that the girls killed the murder victim and that Chen Y, has chosen to accept death in her place, believing that Louise loves him, when she and Rita really just want a patsy. Caine returns to prison and challenges Chen Yi to a martial arts battle, designed to force the innocent man to leave prison and find out the truth for himself. This time Caine bests the man who beat him earlier, and Chen Yi learns the unhappy truth that his sensuality has once more betrayed him. It's a strong dramatic episode, although the wrap-up is a little too glib about how easily Chen Yi's murder conviction is overturned and the real culprits are condemned in his place.



"Arrogant Dragon" emphasizes drama less than adventure, in Caine's second encounter with the Tong society. The Shaolin seeks another generic Western town, questing after the family of businessman Wu Chang and his daughter Kem. For some reason the script is unusually coy about Caine's purpose, but it's eventually revealed that the priest befriended another Chinese man while working on a railroad. That man perished in a railroad accident, leaving Caine to carry the news to Kem, by whom Kem has conceived an unborn child.

This part of the story was perhaps de-emphasized in order to give more screen time to Wu Chang's situation. Though apparently a respectable businessman, he's actually a member of the local Tong. However, upon learning that his daughter was pregnant, he made plans to desert his post and return to China. One of Wu Chang's rivals finds out and exposes the recalcitrant businessman. Caine intervenes, initially willing to fight the Tong's huge executioner for Wu Chang's freedom. In a rare development, Caine uses Oriental chemistry to avoid a fight-- resorting to an aconite potion to fake Wu Chang's death. But the ploy fails, to the good fortune of viewers, who get to see the hero use his skills on the almost invincible executioner.



I don't remember that I found "The Nature of Evil" to be one of the series' better episodes back in The Day, but now I find it a superior mytholpoeic effort. As the title suggests, it's a meditation on the meaning of evil in the world of KUNG FU. Not surprisingly, the mythos of the series runs counter to Judeo-Chrisitian traditions of simply expelling evil. In the episode's only flashback, Young Caine expatiates to Master Po his impressions of the evil in his own soul, and Po replies that beneficial emotions like pride and joy are impossible without their opposites. The wise man can only confront evil, and choose.

Caine is catching a ride with a wagon-master when he suddenly receives what seems (much more loosely than the psychic episode in "Passion") an impulse to desert his present course and take off in a tangential direction. He's told that the only thing in that direction is a no-account town by the name of Nineveh. Unable to explain his impulse, Caine still seeks out the town with the Biblical name.

Like the Biblical city, this one also has a prophetic figure who has come to excoriate the evil in the community. But the blind preacher Serenity Johnson, last seen in "Dark Angel," has come not to reform the town, but to seek out a particular devil hiding there. Caine soon learns that Serenity's former comrade Sunny Jim was viciously murdered by a hold--up man described as having "skin colored like wax" and "looking like he was hanged, but the hanging didn't take."



For the benefit of the townspeople who are sheltering the evildoer-- albeit only out of fear-- Serenity poses as a fortune-teller, complete with Tarot cards. Serenity's earlier experience as a conman makes it likely that his drawing of convenient cards like "The Devil" and "The Hanged Man" is mere trickery, but the criminal himself-- never given any name, and billed in IMDB as "The Hanged Man"-- seems to have uncanny resources.

For instance, Serenity isn't the only one seeking the criminal; there's also a bounty-hunter named Bascomb. However, because Bascomb is motivated only by money, the Hanged Man subverts him by directing him to a more valuable target: a certain fugitive Shaolin. How the villain gets hold of Caine's wanted poster is not explained, thus furthering the idea that he is in a metaphorical sense the incarnation of the evil in all men, and thus has access to all their dark deeds.

Caine bests the bounty hunter easily enough, and is finally given guidance to his quarry by a young woman who has been in bondage-- not entirely unwilling-- to the evildoer. The Hanged Man-- played with a purposefully stolid lack of affect by Morgan Woodward-- reveals that he only killed Sunny Jim because killing helps the villain forget the pain of his own near-execution. Fittingly, for a villain who is symbolically the risen dead, he battles Caine in the town's soap-factory, and suffers a second death by both "fire" and "water" when the villain plunges into a boiling soap-vat.

"The Nature of Evil" would have made a good closing episode for the season, but for whatever reason, the producers chose to conclude with a two-part episode-- #22 and #23, both titled "The Cenotaph."



This episode is focused on two forms of unconventional romance. In the series' longest "flashback sequence" to date. the viewer sees Adolescent Caine experience his first love-affair. Circumstances force him to protect Mayli Ho (Nancy Kwan), one of the emperor's concubines, from a bandit-leader. The bandit is not much of a threat, but he forces the priest and the concubine to remain in each other's company long enough that they fall for one another. Naturally, in due time they conclude that their social stations are too far apart for them to live together. This part of the story is adequate, notable for featuring Nancy Kwan at the height of her short-lived stardom.

The contemporary story forces Caine to become the frequently-bemused protector of a wild-bearded mountain man, McBurney. The man hijacks a reinforced stagecoach not for profit, but so that he can use it to transport a huge wooden box. What's in the box? McBurney claims it's his wife, but he can't  keep straight whether she's alive or not. Caine is not the only one curious as to the box's contents: so are a couple of ratty thieves, the U.S, cavalry, and a bunch of Indians who may or may not be related to the person in the box. There's an involved backstory about McBurney's relationship to his wife and the circumstances of her (alleged) death. It's a moderately amusing episode if one is in the mood for broad comedy, but it doesn't jibe very well with the overall tone of the season. It feels like the star and the producers just decided to have fun instead of projecting their usual portentousness.



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