No Good Very Bad Movies Special: The one with Slinky killbots

 

 

Title: The Super Inframan

What Year?: 1975

Classification: Prototype/ Irreproducible Oddity

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/3)

 

As I write this, I’m approaching 2 and a half years of writing this blog, and reflecting depressingly on just how far my view counts have gone down. So, of course, I have planned out one last ride to clear out my backlog. For this feature in particular, I had one more thing that wasn’t fitting in anywhere else, a movie so legendarily weird that I hadn’t gotten around to watching it. I took a look, and I knew it always belonged here. I also knew that it was something that I needed to wait to watch until I was ready to review, because this is the kind of movie where the first impression is what matters. I present Super Inframan, a movie possibly as weird as House.

Our story begins with a bus load of kids apparently on their way to defeat the Red Army with sonic warfare when they are attacked by a mysterious pterodactyl creature. In the aftermath, we learn that it’s the work of a mysterious ancient queen named Dragon Mom who has only just made herself known to the modern world. The actual military with guns, tanks and attack aircraft are helpless against her hazy combination of magic and super-science, but a scientist who for once has the full backing of the government believes he can turn the tide by transforming a heroic volunteer into Inframan, a cyborg with whatever powers will barely defeat the latest wave of Dragon Mom’s biomechanoid goons. Meanwhile, the monarch has sent an infiltrator to destroy the mentor’s headquarters while her forces close in. Inframan keeps her at bay, but when the scientist and his daughter are kidnapped, it’s up to the superhero to take the fight to them. There’s no doubt of the outcome, but you will still have no idea what’s going on!

Super Inframan was a 1975 science fantasy film by the Shaw Brothers (see Mighty Peking Man, Meteor). The film was regarded as a knockoff of the Ultraman and Kamen Rider tokusatsu TV series. It has also been described as the first Chinese superhero film. Danny Lee was cast as the titular hero, with Terry Liu as Dragon Mom and Dana Shum as the minion She Demon. The film’s profile was improved by a favorable review from Roger Ebert, who stated, “When they stop making movies like Infra-Man, a little light will go out of the world.” The movie has remained popular as a cult film, receiving favorable reviews from James Rolfe and Brandon Tenold. It is currently available for digital rental and purchase from Google/ Youtube, but not on the Amazon US platform.

For my experiences, I heard of this one from Brandon’s Cult Movies, and was immediately interested. What has fascinated me is the multiple directions of evident influence. On one hand, it’s quite obvious that the Hong Kong auteurs were ripping off Japan. On the other hand, there’s plenty of evidence that Japan more than repaid the debt, egregiously through the Super Sentai/ Power Rangers franchise. I have continued to wonder about its influence on movies I had reviewed: The Transformers animated movie; House, which I really did not like; and Everything Everywhere All At Once. I finally bought and watched the present a few days before this review, which I started and then stopped before coming back as I approached my usual 3-day limit. That was about the time I needed to digest this properly. What I find is that I still cannot quite make up my mind, and what truly vexes me is whether this was meant to be funny.

Moving forward, the counterintuitive thing about this film is that it is not actually random in the way that House and Everything Everywhere All At Once are. Sure, the visuals, the effects and the powers of the hero and villains look like they could have been conceived by placing nouns on a dart board. At its narrative core, however, this is deceptively linear. The story and stakes are clearly defined. The villains and other entities are introduced early. The authority figures are competent enough to help, and draw an equally measured effort by the villainess to remove them before they get further. The characters are genuinely developed into generally interesting ways. As a corollary, the film plays its influences and premises on something resembling a “straight” basis, which is even stranger to say considering the villainess and her utterly demented goons. The mutants and biomechanoids may be surreal apparitions brought to life with indifferent production values, yet they are quite consistently portrayed as legitimate threats to the hero and the world, with genuine personalities to boot. This shows especially in the finale fight with the queen and the slinky goons, who thoroughly pummel the hero.

If there’s a con, it’s a shared feature of very weird Asian cinema: This rides a razor edge between inspired and simply exhausting. This is where the seeming seriousness of the material comes closest to being a defect. There are moments where the somber tone is welcome, especially in light of the kiddie fare that the tokusatsu/ kaiju genres were already devolving into. There are others where having a good laugh is your only shot at getting through this damn thing in good spirits and with some vestige of your sanity. Again, this is especially evident with the villains, particularly Dragon Mom herself, whose bizarre regenerative powers have regularly been discounted as comical. The highest toll, however, is for the good guys. This is set up as a superhero plot with real stakes and genuine weight, and it holds up for a while. By the professor’s solemn warnings, Inframan himself can only gain his powers at the price of terrible pain and an uncertain future, a problem we can easily believe after seeing the transformation. After a while, however, it becomes clear that the toll is never going to come, at least in any way that figures in the story. Thus, the most compelling element of the story becomes a bait and switch.

That brings me to the “one scene”, and I went through a new viewing to get back to it. Around the 40-minute mark, Inframan and a squad of enthusiastic agents chase after a double agent sent by Dragon Mom. A fight between the good guys and minions is in full swing when a newcomer appears. We get our first look in a distance shot of a desolate quarry. The figure stands at the top of the rock face, its face hidden by some kind of mane, and announces itself with a truly unnerving laugh before literally leaping into action. It quickly proves to be one of the most formidable antagonists out of the entire rogues’ gallery, trading blows and laser beams with Inframan until the hero finally dives into the water of the dodgy mill pond. The creature continues to fire away, drawing a blast like a depth charge with each shot, of course laughing all the while. What stood out on second viewing is that it finally stops and looks for any sign of the hero, dead or alive. As it peers into the water, it makes a sound quite different from the laugh or whatever it is, almost like a cat’s meowing. Naturally, that’s when Inframan counterattacks. It’s a well-choreographed scene that works far better than it should, in no small part because the film actually conveys a real sense of danger.

In closing, I come to the rating. What I suppose might seem odd is that I didn’t simply give this one the Unrated ranking, as I did Everything Everywhere All At Once and House before it. I certainly considered that very strongly, before and after actually watching it. I suppose the difference is that the other films were very much exceptions to my usual rules. By comparison, this one is exactly the kind of movie I would normally view and review. Within my admittedly skewed framework, I can understand what they were trying to do. In those terms, it’s not great, and was presumably never intended to be. It is good, hallucinogenically weird fun, and its light truly deserves to burn for a long time. With that, I can once again call it a day.