The Super Inframan.

Hey guys, been a while and as a reward(?) I thought I'd take a look at and review something a little bit special for you guys. If you're wondering about my absence, just life really, as always. No, I haven't got a new girl in my life, sadly. I did get some new piercings though. Anyway, Super Inframan, Enjoy!

Something special? You'd be probably be asking when you saw the title of this film. The fuck is this shit? Well actually, this is quite the important film. The title translates to 'The Chinese Superman' - hence his logo on the movie poster.

What this film is is a melting pot of Hong-Kong's take on the superhero phenomena while combing elements of Japanese Superhero shows in with the mix. So it's much closer to an episode of Power Rangers than it is a Superman movie, not that there are any complaints from me. There are even some horror elements too.

Despite all this, it is still classed as the first Superhero movie in China. See, special. This film is important! And if you say, why does that have anything to do with me, it was the first superhero movie in China then you're an ignorant prick, pop culture texts like this shape everything that comes after it. The Shaw brothers were extremely important in shaping popular culture and they probably influenced some of your favourite film makers - especially Tarantino.

The opening of the film is a fucking clusterfuck, these kind of films are notorious for bad editing but I'm honestly wondering if I was sold a dodgy copy. It opens with a disappearing monster that makes a road collapse and then cuts without warning to people in chaos as a city burns to cutting without warning to some professor being interviewed about a 'disaster' that happened a few days ago.

Apparently all of these events are connected, because Princess Elzibub has apparently taken over the world with her monsters and these seemingly unrelated events are demonstrations of her power. This is eight minutes into an hour and twenty four minute long movie. Oh God. It carries on like this too, I'm convinced this must be some kind of dodgy recut because the film just jumps all over the place, rarely staying on one scene for long and rarely providing much more than a general reason as to why one scene leads to the next.

Even despite this fact, I'm pretty sure if I had the full scenes, this film wouldn't be a lot better narratively or in terms of dialogue and that isn't really why we are here anyway. We're here for Thunderball Fists!

I'm just going to pretend the subtitles are trolling me or just hope to God that they are, because if not, this has easily one of the dumbest narratives of all time and some of the worst dialogue of all time. I'd give you some examples or try and explain it but some stupidity just needs to be witnessed first hand. When this isn't dumb, it's just plain weird. It's like your typical episode of Power Rangers only on crack, which is probably what the team used to put this together. I can't tell if it's just really shitty subtitles or genuinely shit acting. I'm just gonna go ahead and say both.

So basically they need to take this chick down and her army of rubber monsters or she'll take over the world and kill every human on the planet. So some dude gets injected with some hormone and gets a load of technology rammed into his body and this turns him into an Inframan. This chick as it turns out was frozen in the Ice Age and the icy air in the glacier turned her and all of her people into monsters. And this includes a living plant, a sort of grey thing with a drill for an arm, a dragon man, a woman with eyes in her hands, some robots with springs for necks and arms, a bug guy and skeletons in motorcycle helmets. The fuck?

The effects are incredibly bad - even for 1975. Lots of papier-mâché buildings, energy attacks that look like they were drawn onto the negatives, noticeably fake monsters etc but I'd argue that is as much a part of the charm of these movies as awful dubbing. And as I watched it subbed, I can tell you, these kind of movies are a lot more fun to watch when they are awfully dubbed than when they are awfully subbed...

Also just as an aside, I also like how much the monsters seem to struggle to move around in this movie, I swear each one looks inches from falling flat on their face. And you can see the joins in the back of their suits and everything and sometimes they fall open and you can see a persons tshirt...

Oh also, the soundtrack gave me so many laughs, because the music just never seems to match what is happening on screen. And whenever they do a musical montage anyway, it's normally incredibly awkward. The scene where the professor is wedged between the Drill Monster and the minion on the boat with these sort of swanky seventies sounding music over the top - it just had me in bits.

Despite the fact the movie is an absolute mess, the action is still fantastic. It does feel straight out of an episode of Power Rangers, but for me that isn't really a complaint. That kind of crazy martial arts madness is awesome in my opinion and if you agree, then you'll get hell of a kick from this movie.

And even despite the terrible special effects, it's still fascinating to just see the lengths they went to to create some really epic set pieces. Sure they may look a little shitty, but the idea is there. We have people firing energy beams at each other, people flying around, giant roots throwing people around, cars being tossed around, giants fighting and throwing each other through buildings etc And even despite the terrible special effects, in places this film is absolutely badass. At one point Rayma grows huge and squashes a giant bug monster like you would a real monster, under his shiny silver cowboy boots, aw yeah.

So do I recommend it? It really doesn't need to be said. For fans of this genre, you've probably already seen it, already loved it for anyone who somehow missed this up to this point, you don't wanna miss this any longer. But for those not convinced or already firm haters of Z cinema, this isn't going to change your opinion.

Think About It!

-Locke