Thomas and Frank review two classic "Tokusatsu" films, discussing their love for the genre that brought us "Power Rangers," "Kamen Rider," "Godzilla" and more.
First, Frank reviews "Mechanical Violator Hakaider" (1995). Then, Thomas reviews "Super Inframan" (1975).
It's a Mighty Morphing Double Feature, and it starts right now!
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Meet Your Double Feature is a double-blind movie review podcast hosted by brothers Thomas and Frank. Thomas is an event producer and broadcaster from Chicago. Frank is an independent filmmaker living in Los Angeles.
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For full episodes, written reviews and more, visit our website at https://www.MeetYourDoubleFeature.com/
"Nate and Moriah in Venice" (which Frank co-produced) is now available to stream on Amazon Prime Video! Rent or purchase here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.a3d9cdc1-4b7c-45c1-a3dc-b77887438867?tag=justusqxg9-20&token=ADE07EB7B9E7DB86DEEEF0D5D4FC5F0B5FB44D3F
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Music for tonight's show licensed through Soundstripe
"The Shakedown" by Dresden, The Flamingo
"Soul Tonic" by Cast of Characters
"Sophistikitty" by Cast of Characters
(00:00) Intro
(00:44) Mechanical Violator Hakaider (1995)
(40:40) Frank's film is now available to stream!
(41:30) Super Inframan (1975)
(01:25:29) Final Scores and Wrap-Up
(01:39:48) Outro
00:00:09
Tonight on Meet Your Double feature, an amnesiac Android
00:00:13
joins a band of rebels to take down the evil ruler of Jesus
00:00:17
Town. It's a fight for free will in
00:00:20
mechanical violator Hikaider. Then a heroic Android leads a
00:00:24
band of fighting scientists in a battle against ancient demons.
00:00:29
It's a fight for survival in Super Impriman.
00:00:33
It's a Mighty Morphing Double feature, and it starts right
00:00:36
now. Hello and welcome to Meet your
00:00:45
double feature, a double-blind movie review podcast.
00:00:48
My name is Thomas, joined as always by my brother Frank.
00:00:50
Frank, how are you? I'm.
00:00:52
I'm good, you know, I'm pretty well hydrated.
00:00:55
Hydrated. Yeah.
00:00:58
OK, I mean. That's good.
00:01:01
I'm excited. I'm excited.
00:01:02
He's. Excited.
00:01:03
There it is. Okay, I'm gonna say this is what
00:01:05
our 19th episode is. Just gonna drop the I'm excited
00:01:08
bit. I was just gonna make it.
00:01:09
I'm hydrated. That's my new thing, just always
00:01:12
coming. In Water Children.
00:01:17
All right, Frank's excited. I'm excited.
00:01:19
We are back with another episode.
00:01:21
In case you have never listened to Meet Your Double feature
00:01:23
before. First of all, thanks for joining
00:01:25
us. The way our show works is that
00:01:26
every episode Frank and I will exchange recommendations for
00:01:29
films that neither of us had ever previously seen and then
00:01:32
talk about those two films on the show to figure out which of
00:01:35
us gave the better blind movie recommendation.
00:01:38
It's like gambling, but for nothing of value.
00:01:41
Wait, wait, wait. It's like gambling.
00:01:45
Well, it's like, that's the double, but it's like a blind
00:01:47
bet where you where you wager without knowing what it is.
00:01:51
We don't know if the movie's good.
00:01:53
Yeah, right, right, right. I was like, how much money you
00:01:55
got on this? Anyway, we are back with the
00:01:58
third episode in our ongoing season talking about forgotten
00:02:01
superhero films. Essentially any superhero movie
00:02:04
that is not part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe or released
00:02:07
in the past like 6 months, I would say counts as forgotten
00:02:10
because it's the only thing people talk about.
00:02:12
So Frank, First off this episode I'm going to hand things over to
00:02:15
you to talk about the movie I recommended, 1995's Mechanical
00:02:21
Violator. Kaider.
00:02:23
Possibly the weirdest movie title ever.
00:02:27
Question mark. I mean, it's cool.
00:02:29
It's definitely a mouthful. It's, it's difficult to say
00:02:32
quickly, but it was an interesting movie.
00:02:35
Where, where did you find this? What?
00:02:38
What brought you to this? It's a great question.
00:02:41
I had done a lot of research before the season began looking
00:02:44
for examples of what we would call like a forgotten superhero
00:02:47
film just to have like a pool of choices to pick from.
00:02:50
And oddly enough, totally outside of that effort.
00:02:52
I came across like a Reddit post talking about this movie and I
00:02:56
saw the title in the post and was watching this little clip
00:02:59
that they were showing that looked like it was a scene from
00:03:01
like aliens or something. It was just like humans in army
00:03:05
gear with like sci-fi weapons. And it wasn't until like 45
00:03:08
seconds in that Hakaider shows up and I was like, oh, this is
00:03:11
like a Super Sentai movie. What on earth is this?
00:03:14
So the the total shift there was very curious to me because as we
00:03:20
have documented a two dozen times, you and I really liked
00:03:23
Power Rangers growing up and watched it all the time.
00:03:26
And so every now and again I get to see one of these Japanese
00:03:28
films that's kind of in that same genre.
00:03:30
And I just love all of them. So I'm excited to see what this
00:03:33
one does differently. Yeah, totally, 100% agree on
00:03:38
that. And and I think we, we preface
00:03:40
this in our previous episode, we're, we're going to be
00:03:42
pronouncing several things incorrectly.
00:03:45
I I assume. Oh absolutely.
00:03:47
I'm I'm pretty sure Hakaider is correct, but we'll see.
00:03:52
We will see. People will let us know.
00:03:55
Yes, because that character is actually from a different series
00:04:00
like which is really interesting and I and I didn't know this
00:04:03
until I looked up the film afterwards.
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I think you may have mentioned it before that he's like an anti
00:04:10
hero in a previous series. He was in a, yeah.
00:04:14
Like a, the, the broader term here is a tokusatsu series,
00:04:18
which is essentially anything you might recognize as looking
00:04:21
like Power Rangers. If it's it's if it's people
00:04:23
morphing into battle suits and doing martial arts, that's
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basically it. And so I guess there was some
00:04:29
sort of TV predecessor that this character was part of, and then
00:04:32
he got his own spin off and I cannot imagine how he deserved
00:04:36
that much attention. Well, yeah, yeah, we, we, we
00:04:41
will get into into Hikaiders specifically.
00:04:43
But to, to touch on your previous point about the
00:04:47
connections to Power Rangers is probably the easiest entry point
00:04:51
that people would understand in, in the West.
00:04:54
I mean, the Power Rangers itself was a phenomenon, but it it is
00:04:59
adapted from the Japanese series Super Sentai.
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And so in doing research for this, I realized that the
00:05:08
Hakaider character is was from a series called Nikaider.
00:05:15
I'm sorry, Kickaider. Yeah.
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Yeah. And he was, he was just like a
00:05:22
bad guy in that He wasn't even like an antihero.
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He was he was like he worked for the villainous organization in
00:05:28
that show. And then this movie is sort of
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like a almost what if story where it's like he's the good
00:05:36
guy, which I think is kind of fun.
00:05:38
OK, so he's going on like a, he's on his like Shadow the
00:05:41
Hedgehog redemption arc. You see, I'm glad you brought
00:05:44
that up because something I'm going to get into with this
00:05:46
movie is just all of the things it reminded me of, which I
00:05:52
thought was interesting because it's like, I feel like you can
00:05:54
almost see direct lines of inspiration coming from this in
00:05:59
a good way, though, because it was all things that I was
00:06:02
previously familiar with that I liked.
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And I was like, Dang, did they just steal that from Hokkaider?
00:06:07
Like, Oh my God, did he just do it all first?
00:06:10
But but to touch on on the the the tokasatsu series quickly
00:06:15
this that that series Kukaiter and and by extension Hokkaider
00:06:19
was created by Shittoro Ishinimori, who is a very
00:06:24
interesting person and and very relevant.
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I think for this season that we're doing of like forgotten
00:06:28
superhero stuff because he is known in Japan as the king of
00:06:35
manga, OK, and is essentially like he would be like the
00:06:39
equivalent of like a Stanley Jack Kirby in Japan.
00:06:44
That's how like synonymous he is with like their comic industry
00:06:50
of manga. But he was also the creator of
00:06:54
Common Writer and Super Sentai which has spawned this this
00:06:58
whole sub series of tokusatsu. Yeah, because Common Writer is
00:07:02
like the, I think they're both like 50 plus years old now, both
00:07:06
of those franchises. And Common Writer also had a bit
00:07:08
of a breakthrough in the West. There was like a Common Writer
00:07:10
TV show around the time of Power Rangers.
00:07:12
It just didn't last for as long. Yeah, well, and currently in
00:07:15
Japan especially, the Super Sentai series just ended for the
00:07:19
first time in like 50 years, and Kamen Rider is having a huge
00:07:24
surge of popularity over there right now.
00:07:26
And I think that's spilling over into the West a bit too.
00:07:29
So they've kind of flip-flopped a bit there in terms of like,
00:07:32
which is the more popular series.
00:07:33
But they were both originally created by him, and he even
00:07:37
worked directly on some seasons of the Power Rangers adaptation
00:07:41
here. He worked on.
00:07:43
Really. Yeah.
00:07:45
He was on Zeo Turbo and in Space Seasons.
00:07:49
That OK, we're going to quickly pull up our Power Rangers season
00:07:53
tier list. Those are pretty high.
00:07:56
Those are good ones. Those are good ones.
00:07:58
Yeah, the first like 5 or 6 years.
00:08:00
People generally liked those. Turbo less so, but in space?
00:08:04
In space, pretty good. Space is what turned the whole
00:08:07
franchise around. It was It was on the verge of
00:08:08
being cancelled actually. But then the In Space season was
00:08:11
so popular that it kept Power Rangers going for another 20
00:08:15
years after that. Wow, so that can OK so just to
00:08:18
recap this for my own understanding, the person who
00:08:21
worked on a Kaider like helped create that character is the
00:08:26
same man that was responsible for like common rider Super
00:08:29
Sentai and had some role in Power Rangers itself.
00:08:31
So he's just. The Big Boss, Yeah.
00:08:34
And on top of all that was a huge name in the world of like,
00:08:40
manga, like Japanese comic books as well, Like several like manga
00:08:46
and anime series that people would be very familiar with
00:08:49
would cite him as like a direct inspiration.
00:08:51
And, and I think the one that I guess I would be the most
00:08:55
familiar with in terms of works he's created in that space would
00:08:58
be Cyborg 009, which I don't know if you.
00:09:02
Remember, I actually don't remember that.
00:09:05
It it had a Toonami adaptation. It wasn't one of their more
00:09:09
popular series, but I think I tried showing a little bit of it
00:09:12
to you one time. Oh wait yes no I do remember
00:09:16
this. It was we watched like the first
00:09:18
couple episodes. Yeah.
00:09:20
OK, OK, I'm back in. All right, so it sounds like the
00:09:24
person behind Hekaider and the show he originally was part of
00:09:27
is just a Stanley level like creative influence over the
00:09:30
entire genre, which I assume means that Hekaider is amazing
00:09:35
and really good and really cool. It actually is all of those
00:09:38
things. Oh, nice.
00:09:43
It's it's like, I'm not. I'm not sure where to even begin
00:09:48
with this because it is a pretty simple narrative for this movie.
00:09:52
And I think again, the character Hekaider was a bad guy in this
00:09:56
other series, but I think this story is completely independent
00:09:59
from that. I think they're just like taking
00:10:02
that character and putting him in a new space where we follow
00:10:05
him as the good guy. But basically the the rough
00:10:10
beats of the story are we're it's like a dystopian sci-fi
00:10:17
setting, which is always fun. It was more fun before it
00:10:21
started to resemble the real world, but it it used.
00:10:23
To be really fun. It was cool when it was like a
00:10:27
what if and not a what now. Yeah, what do we do now?
00:10:32
But no, it's a, it's a really fun looking setting and they're
00:10:37
the way we were introduced to our titular character is there's
00:10:41
a group of like, I don't even know what to call them.
00:10:44
Like, it's just like a, a group of like scavengers who, who are
00:10:50
like looking through this abandoned laboratory because
00:10:54
they believe there's treasure there and they're using like
00:10:57
explosives to like dig deeper into this abandoned space to see
00:11:02
what they can find. And underneath the laboratory is
00:11:05
where they discover Hekiter and he's just like chained up.
00:11:09
And so they inadvertently like, release him from his prison, I
00:11:14
guess. So he's like the mummy?
00:11:16
He's kind of like the mummy. Yeah.
00:11:18
That's that's that's a fair, that's a fair comparison that.
00:11:21
That you mustn't read from the book and then.
00:11:23
Yeah, I got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:11:26
If that if that what is what makes sense to you, then then
00:11:29
yes. But actually I will say even
00:11:34
even before that, 'cause that's that's like our first real
00:11:36
scene. But the first thing you see is
00:11:38
that the Toe logo, which is, is the production company that
00:11:43
released the movie, which I don't know if you're familiar
00:11:47
with, but it's usually like the logo comes up over this sort of
00:11:51
B roll footage of like the ocean in Japan.
00:11:55
Yeah. OK.
00:11:56
Yeah. So it's so it's cool.
00:11:57
And so I'm like, all right, all right, Toei, you know, you I've
00:12:00
seen this before. But the way this movie starts is
00:12:02
like the logo comes up and you see the ocean and then we just
00:12:06
like whip pan to the left. And that's where the the
00:12:09
abandoned science lab is. So I was like, oh, that was
00:12:12
really cool. Like it made it seem like we
00:12:14
were in that space that the that the logo is.
00:12:18
And I was like, I've never seen that before.
00:12:20
That was really neat. So canonically, any time you see
00:12:23
the toe logo, you just assume Akita's slightly off screen.
00:12:26
He's slightly to the left, yeah. He's a little bit over there.
00:12:30
Yeah, it's like that one secret cutscene in Halo Reach where you
00:12:32
can see Master. I was about to mention this.
00:12:36
I was holding an in because I was like, we don't talk about
00:12:37
video games, but they're in. Yeah, no, I'm with it.
00:12:40
Yeah, yeah, I will say this, this is another movie that has a
00:12:44
video game adaptation too. It does.
00:12:47
I will have to see if I can get footage captured for that,
00:12:50
doesn't it? Like from what I remember, it's
00:12:53
kind of in the style of one of those like arcade gun games
00:12:55
where it's just people poking around corners and you have to
00:12:57
like, shoot at them. Yes, I I believe that is true.
00:13:00
The interesting thing about the game though, well, two
00:13:02
interesting things because one of the other production
00:13:05
companies listed on this movie is Sega, which I didn't know
00:13:08
Sega was ever really in the actual filmmaking space because
00:13:12
they're primarily a video game company.
00:13:16
But the game is a Sega Saturn game.
00:13:19
So there was like some brand synergy there.
00:13:22
And I don't know in what way they were involved in the actual
00:13:25
movie, but they're the ones that that made the game.
00:13:28
It was a game that was really stolen in Japan.
00:13:30
So there is there is no right so.
00:13:33
I might not be able to actually record my own footage for this
00:13:35
one because I do not own a Sega Game Gear, but we'll see.
00:13:39
Yeah, but the other interesting thing I was going to say about
00:13:41
the game from what I read is that that game, which is an
00:13:44
adaptation of this movie, features characters from the
00:13:48
Kekaider show that Hekaider originally came from, even
00:13:52
though this is like a different thing.
00:13:54
That's OK, so they're just recombining the characters back
00:13:57
in. That's neat.
00:13:58
This is odd lore I did not expect.
00:14:00
There's this much like preamble about a cool guy in a suit
00:14:05
fighting. Yeah.
00:14:06
Well, it was all really interesting because it was just
00:14:08
like you, you sent me this, this movie, and I'm like, what did
00:14:10
you call me? What is that crazy name for this
00:14:13
like? Say that on air.
00:14:15
Yeah, so that I, so after I watched it and I enjoyed it, I
00:14:18
had to kind of look into all this though.
00:14:20
And I was like, this is all really interesting stuff though.
00:14:22
So I'm I'm glad I kind of delved into this more.
00:14:25
But to get back into the story itself, it is really
00:14:31
straightforward, but in a way that it's still fun and
00:14:34
interesting because as you said, they awaken the mummy.
00:14:39
Hekiter. Yep, as he's known as he's
00:14:43
known, I believe he he cause those those guys that find him,
00:14:48
they like before he even says anything, I think they start
00:14:52
shooting at him. So they they started it.
00:14:54
And then I think, I think he kills them all.
00:14:57
I don't really know. It might be unclear.
00:15:00
It's kind of when we're getting like our opening like credits
00:15:03
sequences. And it's really funny because
00:15:06
like he was all chained up and after he like dispatches with
00:15:10
these guys that found him, like he goes to find like his bike,
00:15:13
his like motorcycle and it's also chained up.
00:15:16
I'm like, why'd you have to chain up the bike like it was
00:15:18
going? To like, get away on its own.
00:15:21
Like is the bike sentient too? Like why is it chained up?
00:15:25
I hope what we see next is him like looking around on the floor
00:15:28
for the key but then the keys are chained up to.
00:15:32
Well, it's just, it's funny, like you said, like the first
00:15:34
thing that it made you think of was like Shadow of the Hedgehog,
00:15:37
which I, I believe we actually mentioned in last week's episode
00:15:40
too. So I didn't think we'd be
00:15:41
talking about the Shadow of the Hedgehog video game so much.
00:15:43
But here we are like the the imagery of him on the bike in
00:15:52
this sort of like future sci-fi city that he adds into to me.
00:15:57
I was like this. This looks really similar to
00:15:59
like Final Fantasy 7. Oh yeah.
00:16:02
That was like the first thing that kind of came to mind for
00:16:05
me. And that actually continues that
00:16:09
like imagery continues because he gets on his bike.
00:16:13
He he literally does the Jackie Chan like who am I?
00:16:18
Like he shouts it into the sky, or he's just.
00:16:20
Thinking about it, he's just like, who am I?
00:16:23
Like so he's just kind of like roaming around.
00:16:28
And so the first thing he does is he heads into this major city
00:16:34
that we learn is like being like the citizens are, are being
00:16:39
subjugated by the person who's in control of the whole city.
00:16:45
And it's a sort of thing where it's like the outside world is
00:16:48
mostly like desolate wasteland. And so people are kind of like
00:16:52
congregated in this one place, but there's like a sort of evil,
00:16:55
maniacal ruler of the city. And so that's where he heads to
00:16:59
'cause I guess he's just, it doesn't know what else to do.
00:17:02
But when he gets there and we first see the person who's in
00:17:07
control of this place, he's like this very fancy man.
00:17:14
No one can escape under the Iron rule.
00:17:16
Of fancy man, Yeah, yeah, Fancy man's in charge, but he's
00:17:19
wearing this like suit this like this, like white and black suit.
00:17:24
But then on, on one of the shoulders he literally has like
00:17:28
A1 wing. So he's like A1 winged Angel.
00:17:31
This is all very specific to Final Fantasy 7, yeah.
00:17:34
It is. It is, yeah.
00:17:36
And I was like, that's so interesting.
00:17:38
And then it gets even more interesting because we're
00:17:41
introduced to like, quote UN quote, like, evil Hikaider.
00:17:44
There's like another metal man in a suit who they call Michael.
00:17:51
So he has, like, an Angel name, too.
00:17:54
Oh, OK. And then he also has like, he
00:17:56
has, like, a thing on his back that sort of drapes down.
00:18:00
But later in the movie, we see he can kind of, like, use it as
00:18:03
a weapon and it becomes like a wing for him, too.
00:18:06
So he's also like, A1 winged Angel.
00:18:08
And I'm like, wait, yeah. Did Final Fantasy 7 just get all
00:18:12
of its inspiration from Kiter? It does predate the game.
00:18:16
I want to say Final Fantasy 7 came out in like the late 90s of
00:18:20
this movie's 95. Could be on to something.
00:18:23
Conspiracy abound. Yeah, it was reminding me of
00:18:26
other things too, which I, I guess I won't get into too much
00:18:30
because Final Fantasy 7 is probably the thing, if anything,
00:18:32
that that people would be most familiar with that this is
00:18:36
similar to. Yeah, I know it's not a movie,
00:18:38
but go watch all the cutscenes and you'll be like, Oh yeah,
00:18:40
that's basically just a movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:18:44
But yeah, it's really interesting.
00:18:45
It was really interesting to see, like the DNA of Hekiter in
00:18:49
other things that I already liked and was familiar with.
00:18:54
And I was like, oh, that's kind of cool, I guess, you know, this
00:18:55
is this is kind of where. And it makes sense given, you
00:18:59
know, what I read about the creator, you know, Shittoro
00:19:02
Ishinamori, and how his influence is seen throughout a
00:19:06
lot of Japanese media. You know, he's sort of like, you
00:19:10
know, as I said, he's the king of manga and manga.
00:19:14
So yeah, so that was cool. But then from there, the story
00:19:17
is really straightforward because basically, like Kaider's
00:19:22
just trying to live his life. Like he doesn't know who he is
00:19:24
and people just start messing with him because, you know, he
00:19:29
comes into the city, he's not supposed to be there.
00:19:31
And so I I think this might have been the scene you had seen
00:19:34
previously where there's all these foot soldiers running
00:19:36
around the city. And I don't remember how he
00:19:39
initially gets into it with them.
00:19:41
But basically, like they all start attacking him.
00:19:46
We get tons of fun action sequences of him beating up and
00:19:50
killing them. He Hekider, just to touch on his
00:19:56
look, actually briefly, he is kind of like, he's kind of like
00:20:01
the Mandalorian. OK, that's a good comparison.
00:20:05
Yeah, because when they first meet him, he's he had, he's
00:20:08
just, he's wearing like all black.
00:20:10
He almost just looks like a guy wearing like biker clothes.
00:20:12
But then he has similar to Power Rangers, he has like a morphing
00:20:15
sequence where he puts his like full suit on and he has a helmet
00:20:20
covering his whole face. And that's how he spends like
00:20:23
90% of the movie. You rarely see him with his
00:20:27
regular human face. He's he's mostly suited up in
00:20:31
his full Hekkaider look. And the the other character, the
00:20:35
the Michael character who's like his, you know, main nemesis that
00:20:40
he fights in this movie. I don't think you ever see him
00:20:42
without his his mask on. But they're both cyborgs.
00:20:47
I don't know if I said that before, but they're both.
00:20:50
So he's a human looking man who transforms into the full suit
00:20:54
but is Cyborg isn't like partially human and partially
00:20:57
mechanical? I believe so, although he seems
00:21:00
to be mostly mechanical like but to look like a human maybe?
00:21:05
Like a Terminator? Yeah.
00:21:07
How many other things can we connect this back to?
00:21:10
What I mean, there's a lot to to me, it's like, again, I won't
00:21:13
get, I won't get too into it because I could spend all day
00:21:15
talking about it, but it's very Mega Man to me.
00:21:17
Like the parallels between this and specifically like the Mega
00:21:20
Man 0 series of games. I'm like.
00:21:23
It's the same picture. This is the same thing, like,
00:21:27
except it's the, it's the same picture me.
00:21:29
But you have like two dozen pictures in your hand, right?
00:21:32
Exactly. Yeah, it's just all of them.
00:21:35
But yeah, I just want, I just want to point out because it,
00:21:38
it's, I think that even in itself is a subcategory within
00:21:43
like the tokusatsu genre, I think it's called henshin, which
00:21:47
translates to something along the lines of like transform.
00:21:51
Right. Because I think even stuff like
00:21:54
the old Godzilla movies is kind of in the same broader genre
00:21:57
category. But Henshin does specifically
00:22:01
put you in the category of all the stuff we're talking about
00:22:03
with like Sentai and Power Rangers and Common Rider.
00:22:06
Yeah, exactly, exactly. So that's why, that's why I want
00:22:08
to bring it up. And then from there, honestly,
00:22:11
the rest of the movie is mostly just like fun action sequences.
00:22:17
Like for a lot of it, I mean that that that opening sequence
00:22:20
when he first gets into it with like the foot soldiers in the
00:22:22
city goes on for a while. It ends with them like shooting
00:22:25
him with a tank at one point. Like it's just like it's really
00:22:32
intense and it's and it's very from what I saw from the movie
00:22:35
that I recommended for you and for man, I feel like that one is
00:22:38
maybe going to learn more into the like stunt martial arts work
00:22:43
type stuff. This one is that, but maybe
00:22:47
leaning more heavily into the like explosion and special
00:22:51
effects side of things because the Kaider's pretty stiff.
00:22:56
He's not, he's not doing like any serious karate martial arts
00:23:01
moves. He's more like moving it like
00:23:04
Terminator pace and but he is still punching and kicking
00:23:07
people quite a bit. Good.
00:23:09
I mean, this really grounds it for me.
00:23:11
All of this stuff that we're comparing it to and all these
00:23:14
like general genre characteristics.
00:23:16
It's just like, what would a 12 year old boy think is the
00:23:18
coolest thing he could possibly imagine?
00:23:20
And it usually is some combination of like martial
00:23:23
arts, robot, motorcycles, sunglasses, apocalypse.
00:23:28
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I still think all of those
00:23:30
things are cool. So I'm like, I'm with them.
00:23:31
You. Know what?
00:23:33
Not too bad. Not too bad, Kiter.
00:23:38
But yeah, like narratively from there, he gets involved with a
00:23:44
resistance group within the city Avalanche from Final Fantasy.
00:23:50
But like, they even look like them.
00:23:54
They're even, like, dressed the same way.
00:23:56
And I'm like, this is so interesting.
00:23:59
But he gets involved with them there.
00:24:02
There is a woman in that group. Her name is Kairu, I think, and
00:24:08
there's some fun interesting sequences with her where she's
00:24:10
having this like recurring dream about being like attacked by a
00:24:13
monster. And then like a knight, like a
00:24:15
medieval knight in black armor, like shows up to save her.
00:24:19
And then she, you know, when she meets a kiter, she starts
00:24:23
associating him with that knight.
00:24:27
She he's, I guess the only other really like protagonist
00:24:32
character alongside him, but even she doesn't even get that
00:24:35
much screen time really, because I guess it's worth mentioning.
00:24:39
The movie is not that long. It's I, I think an hour and 17
00:24:44
minutes, but that just means it just moves it like a blazing
00:24:47
pace. Yeah, it's actually the same for
00:24:50
Info Man. So I imagine it's just the
00:24:52
nature of the genres that they're very like short films.
00:24:55
Yeah, yeah. It still hits all the beats you
00:24:58
would expect from this story. It just moves through them very
00:25:01
quickly, which was kind of fun. I mean, you know, like normally
00:25:05
when we're watching these movies, I'm taking notes and
00:25:07
stuff, and when I was watching Hekita, I got to the end and I
00:25:10
was like, well, it's over. I'm like I only have like 2
00:25:12
notes here. Notes.
00:25:15
And it's just like motorcycle sunglasses.
00:25:17
Cool. Yeah, pretty much.
00:25:20
I was like wow, that that went by really quickly, but not a bad
00:25:24
way because I mean it's, it didn't feel like it like how
00:25:29
should I say this? It didn't feel like it was
00:25:30
missing anything. It just felt like it just moved
00:25:34
through its story quickly and it was exciting throughout because
00:25:38
it just like it kind of moved from like 1 action sequence to
00:25:42
the next. But like each one was unique and
00:25:46
interesting Because once a kiter meets this group of like
00:25:50
resistance people, they then get attacked by the foot soldiers in
00:25:56
the city who are trying to retaliate against what Hekaider
00:26:00
did when he first showed up. And they were also trying to
00:26:03
crack down on this resistance group.
00:26:04
So like most of them get killed in like an action sequence.
00:26:08
And then Hekaider decides, OK, well, I'm going to go to the Big
00:26:12
Bads headquarters and take care of him to avenge my new buddies
00:26:17
that I just met in this city here.
00:26:19
And so that's what leads into the final action sequence of
00:26:22
him, like raiding this building, and leads to the final showdown
00:26:27
between him and the I can't want to call this other character the
00:26:31
evil Hekiter, but Hekiter's kind of the evil one in a way.
00:26:34
Like that's a good point. Like he even has a line because
00:26:38
it which is which is cool because it to remind a little
00:26:42
bit in in Karu's dreams where she's seeing this like Black
00:26:45
Knight character. There's like this recurring
00:26:48
imagery where like wherever he walks, like there's like flowers
00:26:52
on the ground and they just like burst into flames when he's
00:26:54
nearby, I guess. And.
00:26:56
So in the ending action sequence with a kiter versus Michael, the
00:27:03
Michael characters going on on this whole like monologue about
00:27:07
how he is like justice and order and society and there's like a
00:27:12
flower on the desk. And because they're fighting in
00:27:15
like the fancy businessman's office and kiter like picks it
00:27:20
up and he says if you're a justice, then I'm evil.
00:27:24
And he just lights the the flower just bursts into flames.
00:27:31
So they're definitely going for that like anti hero thing with
00:27:33
him, especially because he was the villain in that previous
00:27:35
series. But that was fun.
00:27:38
And then that, that whole action sequence between the two of them
00:27:41
is cool. It goes on for a while and like
00:27:45
for the first half there's like no dialogue or music.
00:27:49
That is a weird trend with these.
00:27:51
I had that at Inframan 2 that like a lot of the action scenes,
00:27:54
cut all the other sound. It's just the inserted sound
00:27:57
effects of all the hits and that's it.
00:28:00
Yeah, yeah, This one had the added thing like, which was kind
00:28:05
of silly in that they were both like metal men.
00:28:09
So anytime they hit each other, there was like this like screen
00:28:13
effect and and sound of like metal hitting each other, you
00:28:18
know, and they're hitting each other so much they're having
00:28:20
this back and forth fight that it got ridiculous that it was
00:28:24
just like how much it was happening, you know?
00:28:28
But yeah, those two have this this fun back and forth
00:28:31
sequence. And then this part I I will say
00:28:37
is very it's like the most Mega Man thing I've ever seen.
00:28:40
Like after he Hekiter that is defeats Michael, the fancy
00:28:46
businessman who's in charge of the city shows up and he's like
00:28:49
talking to Hekiter. And while that's happening, like
00:28:52
a like a machine takes the head off of the Michael robot and
00:28:58
like puts him onto like a giant like misshapen kind of creature
00:29:03
robot. And then Hekiter has to fight
00:29:05
like that thing. And that's like the final boss.
00:29:09
And I'm like, that is the most like video game, like Mega Man
00:29:13
type thing. This is very, very video game
00:29:18
coded with its logic, which I guess kind of goes back to like
00:29:23
the roots of all of these tokasatsu, pension, whatever
00:29:26
films where they all just feel like a kid playing with action
00:29:28
figures, you know? It's like the the conflict never
00:29:31
ends until you get bored and go home.
00:29:34
Right. Yeah, yeah, exactly it, which is
00:29:36
which is fun. I mean, you, you kind of have to
00:29:38
know what you're getting into when you're when you're sitting
00:29:40
down to watch one of these. But I will say a fun thing about
00:29:44
that particular action sequence once he's fighting like the
00:29:46
giant monster thing is, they started introducing like some
00:29:50
quick clips of of Claymation, which hadn't been used anywhere
00:29:54
previously in the film as a way to kind of like show the scale
00:29:59
of this robot that he was fighting.
00:30:02
Some of the shots were like claymation versions of the
00:30:05
characters were like the robot would like pick up a kiter and
00:30:08
like throw him around the room, you know?
00:30:09
But I was like, oh, that's kind of fun.
00:30:12
That that reminds me of like RoboCop.
00:30:15
The original RoboCop has a bit of that where like the order to
00:30:18
render some of the more complicated ideas, it switches
00:30:20
over. And honestly, all of that stuff
00:30:22
does kind of fit together. It's like an odd combination of
00:30:25
of qualities. But to me, this whole thing kind
00:30:27
of just sounds like RoboCop in a in a positive way.
00:30:31
That's a really good comparison because you're right, they do
00:30:34
the exact same thing in RoboCop. And I think it works in both
00:30:36
cases because the characters in both films are like robot
00:30:41
characters. So it's like the claymation is
00:30:43
very like stiff, you know, and it, but it kind of works for the
00:30:46
characters that it's that it's using that style for, you know,
00:30:51
'cause like when claymation Kiter gets picked up and thrown
00:30:54
across the room, he barely like reacts to it in a way, but it's
00:30:57
like, yeah, he's kind of like a robot man.
00:30:59
So that that kind of works in that instance.
00:31:02
I, I would say if that's where your head is at visually is
00:31:05
comparing this to RoboCop, then you're, you're kind of in the
00:31:08
right place. OK, that is interesting.
00:31:11
Definitely puts it in like opposite.
00:31:14
I don't mean to keep preempting about Inferman, but definitely
00:31:17
kind of an inversion. Inferman is very bright and
00:31:18
sunny and old looking, whereas this one seems to be aiming for
00:31:22
that 90s kind of grungy sci-fi atmosphere, which I know some of
00:31:27
the things we referenced are from the 80s, but same idea, no?
00:31:30
Totally. And I, I think it's, I mean that
00:31:31
that's we kind of planned last time that these two would be
00:31:34
very, very similar for this double feature pairing a kiter
00:31:38
and and for man. So that'll be interesting to to
00:31:41
hear how that one's almost the opposite.
00:31:43
But I I I feel like I've I've maybe rambled a bit about a
00:31:46
kiter here, but it was interesting and fun despite
00:31:51
being very straightforward and simple.
00:31:55
Like it's something that if you are a fan of this genre or type
00:32:01
of film already, I think you would like this one.
00:32:04
If you especially like, as I do that like dark dystopian sci-fi
00:32:11
kind of setting that like cyberpunk look and like machines
00:32:17
and people fighting against evil organizations, like it has all
00:32:21
of that, like stylistically, which really endeared it to me.
00:32:26
So I appreciated it for that. Yeah, I mean, I normally when we
00:32:31
finish these episodes, I don't instinctively think like, all
00:32:34
right, now that we've talked about it, I can go watch the
00:32:35
movie I asked Frank to watch. But I'm like looking at my
00:32:38
schedule for this afternoon and I'm like, I think I could make
00:32:41
80 minutes for to watch a kite here.
00:32:44
It's just cool. Like you really would not be
00:32:48
disappointed, you know, because it's so like you could almost
00:32:54
watch it in the background in a way, you know, because there's
00:32:56
not much narratively to gleam onto it.
00:33:00
It really is mostly about the atmosphere and the action and
00:33:07
the visuals, which I think are all good.
00:33:09
I think it excels in all of those things that it's like
00:33:12
highlighting for itself. Yeah, I mean, it sounds fun.
00:33:16
I feel like I definitely can picture this movie.
00:33:19
I've I've only seen that short clip, but like I can picture
00:33:21
just from hearing you talk about it.
00:33:23
Somebody listening to me is not as familiar.
00:33:25
I think your best bet is to just picture RoboCop.
00:33:27
But Japanese. I'm sold.
00:33:30
I feel like there's more we could maybe get into, but sounds
00:33:34
like you've kind of covered your main thoughts unless unless I'm
00:33:36
missing anything. No, I mean, I was thinking about
00:33:38
that going through this, that like, I guess anyone listening
00:33:42
to this, it's, it's going to be a lot more accessible if you are
00:33:47
already familiar with really any of the things I've brought up in
00:33:50
comparison to this. But if you're totally new to
00:33:54
this space, it's kind of hard for me to to put myself in that
00:33:57
headspace of how someone else would react to this.
00:34:00
Because I feel like if you're someone like us, you you got to
00:34:04
get pretty deep into this stuff before you find yourself
00:34:06
watching Hikiter, Yeah. That's true.
00:34:08
That's true. I try not to take that for
00:34:12
granted is that we mostly talk about so far lesser seen, lesser
00:34:17
known films, less mainstream stuff.
00:34:20
And so while we invite people to come listen who have not seen
00:34:22
the films themselves, that kind of puts us in the role of like
00:34:26
illustrating it. It's like a it's like an audio
00:34:28
drama sort of where we have to paint the picture.
00:34:31
But I would say if anybody heard maybe like our episode way back
00:34:34
about Gamera, the like Godzilla style movie that has some
00:34:38
commonality with these types of films.
00:34:40
So if you went back and watched that one, you'd be pretty well
00:34:42
prepared. And even if you've never seen
00:34:44
one, I mean, just gave it a shot.
00:34:46
It's like fun sci-fi that will have a lot of genre hallmarks
00:34:51
that you might vaguely recognize from something else.
00:34:53
But like you said, Frank, it's not it's not a demanding watch.
00:34:57
This isn't like me telling you to go watch a foreign film where
00:34:59
you're going to have to like, read and learn things.
00:35:02
Well, you will have to read subtitles.
00:35:04
This film isn't Japanese. Oh good point.
00:35:06
Mine was dubbed so I didn't. I didn't even think about that.
00:35:09
Oh, interesting. OK, yeah, I watched a subtitled
00:35:11
version of this. But but I'm glad that you
00:35:14
brought up foreign film. Just just, I guess briefly on
00:35:17
this because like the season theme that we're going with here
00:35:22
is like forgotten superhero films.
00:35:25
And I feel like this is a great example of like, like if you
00:35:29
were to put this side by side with one of the previous films
00:35:31
we've done this season, like a Supergirl, Like Supergirl,
00:35:35
that's like a Western adaptation of a superhero.
00:35:38
And this is a very Eastern Japanese adaptation of a
00:35:42
superhero. So it's like you're getting a
00:35:44
very different cultural perspective on like the same
00:35:48
idea. And so I think that's
00:35:51
interesting. And I think it's an element.
00:35:53
A lot of these Japanese style films have an element of
00:35:56
superhero storytelling that I miss in a lot of Western stuff,
00:36:00
which is the emphasis on in many cases, martial arts and like
00:36:03
general action choreography. I mean, I think maybe the only
00:36:07
like Marvel Cinematic Universe movies that had interesting
00:36:10
action choreography to me were the the Captain America films
00:36:14
like The Winter Soldier movie, which are a perfect thing.
00:36:18
You can kind of transpose onto this because it's like elevated
00:36:21
martial arts with these characters who have like
00:36:23
superhuman strength and durability, which leads to a lot
00:36:26
of like wire stunts mixed in. It's really fun.
00:36:29
It's like my most, my favorite type of action choreography is
00:36:33
that I'm so much less engaged by just like Iron Man shoot a gun,
00:36:39
sure. Sure, there's ways to make that
00:36:41
other stuff interesting too. There's ways to make anything
00:36:43
look interesting, you know, if it's executed properly.
00:36:46
But yeah, I mean, again, I'm glad you brought up Winter
00:36:50
Soldier because that's that's possibly my favorite film to
00:36:54
come out of the entire MCU. And and a lot of it has to do
00:36:57
with the way that the action is like choreographed and shot in
00:37:00
that movie. It's so much fun.
00:37:02
And and that one just has like a fun spy espionage thing to it
00:37:05
too. Right.
00:37:05
That one's combining that with the espionage thriller.
00:37:07
But I would say the action in that film, to me reads heavily
00:37:11
as being inspired by the types of stuff we're talking about
00:37:14
today. Just dudes in super suits doing
00:37:17
crazy stunts and kicks and such. Yeah, exactly.
00:37:21
It's just fun. It's like fun.
00:37:24
It's just fun, all right? Do you hate fun?
00:37:27
Stand out Otherwise Mechanical violator is for.
00:37:32
You exactly the the last thing I'll say about about and this,
00:37:35
you know, ties into the Captain America and and these movies too
00:37:37
is that it it's storytelling through action, which I think is
00:37:43
extremely interesting and when executed well, extremely
00:37:49
engaging and just very visually pleasing too.
00:37:54
Again, especially like just to quickly mention that like final
00:37:57
fight again between Hekiter and and the character Michael, like,
00:38:02
you know, it's like a solid 6-7 minutes with like I said, no
00:38:05
dialogue, no music and it's just kind of these two going back and
00:38:08
forth but telling a story. You know, it's like they're
00:38:13
fighting and, and Hekiter's winning, but then Michael, he
00:38:16
has that secret weapon on his back and now he has the
00:38:19
advantage. And it's so, it's, so it's like
00:38:21
you're watching it and it's just visually telling you this story
00:38:25
through action and like body movement and, and that stuff to
00:38:29
me is, is really great. Yeah, it's physical struggle.
00:38:33
It's, it's akin to why people like sports in a way.
00:38:38
Like it's choreographed and it's, it's more deliberate
00:38:40
storytelling, but you can get invested in action choreography
00:38:43
the way you would care about, you know, a, a football game or
00:38:47
something. It's kind of just like the human
00:38:50
athleticism mixed with the I don't know, we're driven by
00:38:54
conflict. We're dumb, dumb people.
00:39:00
I mean, that's conflict is the heart of, you know, that's
00:39:02
that's film making. It's like you're looking for
00:39:05
what's the conflict of every scene.
00:39:06
I was also going to compare. I've always actually compared
00:39:09
action choreography, stage choreography, that kind of stuff
00:39:12
to dance as well. Like dance choreography.
00:39:15
It's, you know, it's it's story through motion of like the human
00:39:20
body, which is just very like base and very like something you
00:39:27
can easily connect with, I think, but not easy to tell or
00:39:34
demonstrate a story in an interesting way by doing that.
00:39:40
It's, it's certainly not an easy thing to do in, in, you know,
00:39:44
many cases, but you know, again, when it's done well and
00:39:46
especially in the format of like something like this, when it's
00:39:48
when it's shot in a way that highlights that too.
00:39:52
And that's just some of my favorite things to engage with.
00:39:56
Yeah, well, I feel like we've given the hard sell.
00:40:00
Do you like fun or dancing or sports or Final Fantasy 7?
00:40:05
Hopefully at least one that you might enjoy.
00:40:11
Still the weirdest title. Mechanical violator Akiter.
00:40:15
With that, Frank, I think we're we're clear to head into our
00:40:18
intermission and on the other side of the break, we'll get to
00:40:21
hear about the other side of this tokosatsu coin when I talk
00:40:23
about 1975's Super Infoman. So stay tuned for that.
00:40:27
Yep. Yeah.
00:40:31
Frank will be there. All right, little bit of late
00:40:41
breaking news here during our intermission segment.
00:40:44
The film that Frank Co produced that we have been talking about
00:40:47
ever since our podcast began is now finally available to rent or
00:40:51
to own through Amazon Prime Video.
00:40:53
That film is entitled Nate and Mariah in Venice.
00:40:56
It is an independent drama shot entirely on location in Venice,
00:40:59
Italy, about a dysfunctional couple that travels to Venice in
00:41:02
order to rekindle their relationship as sort of a last
00:41:05
ditch effort before things fall apart completely.
00:41:08
It is a fantastic film. I, of course, have seen it.
00:41:10
I might even be in the special thanks at the end.
00:41:11
You'll have to watch it to find out, but again, if you want to
00:41:14
see the film and you want to support independent creators, it
00:41:17
is available now to rent or to purchase through Amazon Prime
00:41:20
Video. And it's a sardonic motion
00:41:22
pictures production. And again, my Co host Frank was
00:41:24
the Co producer on it. So please go check it out.
00:41:26
Link is in the description for this episode.
00:41:28
Thank you. All right, it's coming back from
00:41:34
the other side of the break, Frank.
00:41:35
Now we turn things over to the movie you asked me to watch,
00:41:38
1975's Super Info Man. Remind us and the folks at home,
00:41:43
what was the inspiration for selecting Inframan?
00:41:47
Well, I think maybe both of us had a similar idea when we were
00:41:51
talking about the theme of this season.
00:41:53
I certainly knew going in I was like, I I'm going to try and
00:41:56
find something from this genre, you know, like a like a
00:42:00
tokusatsu superhero movie. And I don't remember exactly how
00:42:06
I stumbled on Inframan, but I do remember seeing a Roger and
00:42:12
Ebert review of it. And you say Roger and Ebert,
00:42:16
sorry. Siskel and Ebert, Yeah, it's
00:42:19
just like it was just. Roger Ebert, one man for those.
00:42:23
He was just, he was just doing that like golem thing in the
00:42:25
water where? He was talking to himself.
00:42:27
He stole it from us. Like one of them's like talking
00:42:30
about Inferman and then the other one's just like nobody
00:42:32
likes you. It was the review was funny to
00:42:41
me because you know, he's just like, he's like, this is crazy.
00:42:46
It's so wacky. There's never been anything like
00:42:49
this before. And then, you know, Siskel, I
00:42:52
think I might have been confused, but I think it's
00:42:54
Siskel. You know, he just jumps in
00:42:56
because they're always, they were always so sassy with each
00:42:58
other. And he's like, well, no, I mean,
00:42:59
there's Ultraman that existed already.
00:43:01
But anyway, just kind of like shuts him down.
00:43:06
But it's funny because neither of them, like even in that
00:43:09
retort where he's like, oh, Ultraman's a thing.
00:43:11
It's like, well, there's also a ton of other things too.
00:43:13
Like this isn't a whole thing in Japan that they had.
00:43:15
This was like their first time experiencing it.
00:43:18
That is interesting. I did find actually a different
00:43:21
point of reference about Roger Ebert's thoughts on Infra Man
00:43:24
after I was done watching the movie.
00:43:26
Because I guess it was one of the only like recorded instances
00:43:29
where he like revised a score for a film later.
00:43:33
And apparently like 20 years after he first reviewed it, he
00:43:35
bumped it up like half a *. Really.
00:43:38
Wait see. Like that's so funny to me.
00:43:43
That's why I think that this episode is a good idea.
00:43:45
And like I said, why I wanted to come in with one of these
00:43:49
because I feel like it's something where if like people
00:43:52
are only familiar with like Power Rangers to be like that
00:43:55
was a show for kids or that's a show I saw when I was a kid and
00:43:58
then stopped watching. But there's a lot of like,
00:44:02
entertainment value here. And so I, I, I, I think more, if
00:44:08
more people saw it, I think more people would appreciate it for
00:44:11
what it is. Yeah, I do think that Info Man
00:44:14
being from the 1970s helps that impression for Ebert make more
00:44:18
sense because I definitely would assume that like Japanese film
00:44:23
and TV exports had increased by the time he reached the mid 90s.
00:44:26
And it was more like, I don't know, like we had a better
00:44:29
understanding in the West of like, their kind of pop culture
00:44:32
exports. Whereas in the 70s, it would
00:44:33
have been probably genuinely baffling just sitting down to
00:44:36
watch a movie that had been localized for here and sing
00:44:39
Inframan because you think what on earth is happening?
00:44:42
Like, it's so unlike anything the West had ever created.
00:44:46
And it's also so different to now.
00:44:47
We're like, media is so globalized that, like,
00:44:50
everything feeds on it itself and turns into kind of like
00:44:53
hybridized content. It was so explicitly foreign.
00:44:58
You know, it was probably sitting down to watch this movie
00:45:00
in the 70s that I can only imagine Eber just being like wow
00:45:03
I've never seen this in my whole ass life.
00:45:08
Yeah, and I do wonder too if like, would it have been the
00:45:11
dubbed version of it then or I don't know if the dub came
00:45:17
later? I do have some some pre
00:45:20
production level context about in for man in the in the version
00:45:24
that I saw. I watched the movie.
00:45:26
I rented it through YouTube I think.
00:45:28
I think it's one of those ones you can rent for like 3 bucks
00:45:31
for 48 hours. And I didn't know when it
00:45:33
started that a. This is actually not a Japanese
00:45:36
production. It was made in China.
00:45:38
Like it's a Hong Kong martial arts film first and foremost.
00:45:43
Oh, OK, cool. All right, right.
00:45:45
Yeah, 'cause I didn't know that. Most of these are Japanese but
00:45:50
in the 70s in Hong Kong stuff like Ultraman and Kamen Writer
00:45:55
was so popular that they made their own and like copied the
00:45:58
style and essentially just created their own original
00:46:01
character. So Inframan stands alone.
00:46:03
It's like a Hong Kong produced movie that obviously shares the
00:46:07
same DNA but the original film was in Mandarin.
00:46:10
And then the movie that I watched the other day only
00:46:14
available as an English dub which was very interesting.
00:46:16
I thought nowadays it was more common to find original audio
00:46:20
with a subtitle option, which I would have used.
00:46:22
But instead I got literally the most stereotypical Kung Fu movie
00:46:27
dub experience that people used to make fun of all the time,
00:46:30
where you'd watch an old martial arts movie on TV and it would
00:46:32
just be this like horribly matched English dubbing.
00:46:35
So right away I was like, oh gosh, is this going to like mess
00:46:38
with my experience of the movie? And it did not because a, there
00:46:42
was a weird authenticity to it where like in a lot of examples
00:46:46
of this, they would change the character names to be like
00:46:48
really American. There'd just be this Chinese guy
00:46:50
named like Derek, you know, or like something that clearly
00:46:53
didn't fit. But in Super Infoman, the
00:46:57
characters all still have their Chinese names and they're also
00:47:00
pronounced correctly, which I was impressed by.
00:47:02
I was like whoa, they like tried to actually do this correctly
00:47:06
rather than just butchering it with some like terrible
00:47:09
localization. So it is dubbed, but it's a good
00:47:11
dub. Well, that's, that's good to
00:47:13
hear. I mean, it's also really good to
00:47:15
hear that this is a Chinese produced.
00:47:17
I actually never would have thought of that.
00:47:19
I just, I just saw it and assumed it came from Japan
00:47:23
because because of what it was. Rightly so, 90% of them do,
00:47:26
especially at that time. But it was made by like the Shaw
00:47:28
Brothers production company, which at one point in time is
00:47:32
like the biggest production company in China and is
00:47:35
essentially credited with like inventing the Kung Fu movie
00:47:39
genre. They made like hundreds of those
00:47:41
films for decades. And so this just kind of slots
00:47:45
right in alongside all of those, but with the added flavor of
00:47:48
being like a henshin Power Rangers esque story instead.
00:47:53
Oh, cool. All right.
00:47:54
That's great. I'm I'm right.
00:47:56
It's interesting. I'm more into it now.
00:47:58
Yeah. Yeah.
00:47:59
The other reason it didn't matter that it was a dub is
00:48:02
because much like the one you talked about Hakaider, very
00:48:05
little dialogue and virtually no story to tell.
00:48:09
I mean, this movie, nothing happens.
00:48:12
It's like outside of the context of why there's action on screen,
00:48:16
the setup is bare minimum. The movie begins, you're seeing
00:48:20
a a school bus full of children singing in Mandarin because they
00:48:23
didn't want to dub that part. And then a Godzilla pterodactyl
00:48:28
monster just like, crashes in front of the bus and like causes
00:48:31
an earthquake. And they're all like, ah, and
00:48:33
then we cut away from that. We never see those people again.
00:48:35
Presumably they all died. I don't know.
00:48:39
And then we cut straight from that to some city that is just
00:48:45
engulfed in flames, completely beyond saving.
00:48:48
Everything's on fire. People are running.
00:48:50
We cut away from that once again.
00:48:51
We never see that again. Just 20 seconds in, they're
00:48:56
like, you don't understand monsters.
00:48:58
That's all we need to communicate.
00:48:59
There's monsters now. And then, like the other 95% of
00:49:03
the movie takes place at this, like, scientific research base
00:49:06
in front of a big satellite dish.
00:49:08
And the whole time I was like, are we going to go back to those
00:49:11
people that were on fire? And I was like, Nope, That was
00:49:13
just just some set dressing, just to give you an idea.
00:49:17
Somebody like surrounded by fire like man, sure wish there was a
00:49:21
inferman around here. Yeah, now Inferman is not
00:49:24
helping anybody. Inferman does not save anybody.
00:49:27
He just fights people. It's just a hooligan.
00:49:32
Just a hooligan like this story becomes so narrow that it much
00:49:35
like the one I was talking about with you.
00:49:36
It feels like a kid playing with action figures who only has so
00:49:39
many resources. Because once we get that bizarre
00:49:42
hasty introduction to the concept that monsters have
00:49:46
appeared on Earth, the only two sets we ever really get are this
00:49:51
scientific research base that is just this cartoonish enormous
00:49:55
room full of like glowing lights and buttons.
00:49:57
And the Super villain base, which is this really cool, sort
00:50:01
of like he man Masters of the Universe looking set with like
00:50:07
skull face doorways and like a, a flowing like bubbling river
00:50:11
that's all pink. It's super cartoonish.
00:50:14
And those are kind of like our 2 ends of the spectrum.
00:50:17
We're just watching the villains try to attack the base and
00:50:20
occasionally the good guys try to attack their base and that's
00:50:23
it. So the villains are are new
00:50:28
here. They just showed up and started
00:50:31
causing havoc like. Yes, that's a good question.
00:50:34
So the villains, as is hastily explained by these completely
00:50:39
unintelligible job that the main characters have, like they're
00:50:42
wearing lab coats, sort of, but they almost look like
00:50:44
astronauts. And they work underneath a big
00:50:46
satellite dish. But the guy in charge is called
00:50:49
a professor instead of like, a commander.
00:50:52
Essentially, they're just like science Kung Fu fighting force.
00:50:55
And they awesome discover. Yeah, I know, right?
00:50:58
They discover that monsters have risen from beneath the Earth
00:51:04
that pre like predate all recorded history like they
00:51:08
quickly surmised that these things have been buried
00:51:10
underground since like before the Ice Age and have just
00:51:13
appeared for some reason and are here to like enslave humanity.
00:51:18
Cool. OK, that's great.
00:51:20
And it's a very, very amusing crop of characters that make up
00:51:25
the bad guy team because it really just looks like somebody
00:51:27
rated a costume store and just added everybody they could find.
00:51:31
Like, you know how in Power Rangers, like serialized TV
00:51:36
shows in this genre, there's like a monster of the week kind
00:51:38
of mechanic or just some weird like turtle monster guy shows up
00:51:42
with no background and we blow him up and then the next week
00:51:44
it's like a handbag monster. You know, just random nonsense
00:51:48
handbag monster. They do that if Power Rangers,
00:51:50
they're always turning like everyday items into creatures.
00:51:53
So it'll be like, Oh no, my purse is now personator.
00:51:56
Like Personator. I like that.
00:52:00
I like, I like personator. We should, yeah.
00:52:03
And they have the power to impersonate people.
00:52:06
Hear me out. Are you sketching?
00:52:10
Personator, That's going to be our new original tokazatsu
00:52:14
villain. Personator, I can I can
00:52:18
impersonate you or hold money. For you, I could be your bank.
00:52:23
I could be your bank. Yeah.
00:52:24
Anyway, Personator TM. So those are the villains in
00:52:29
Super Inframan. There's like henchman army of
00:52:31
like little skeleton guys in like party city outfits and then
00:52:35
there's like 8 or 9 totally unrelated monster dudes that
00:52:40
just hang out with the main bad lady who have no cohesion in
00:52:44
their designs at all but just kind of attack Super Inframan
00:52:47
one at a time. OK, Yeah, as you do one other
00:52:51
time. We got to play it fair, play it
00:52:53
fair. They got to play fair.
00:52:55
I think at the end they go for a 2V1, which they probably were
00:52:57
like we didn't want to do this but we're low on resources.
00:53:00
We're running out of time. Running out of time this movie
00:53:03
is 80 minutes long so the main main bad person is just this
00:53:10
human looking lady who has like an evil outfit on.
00:53:13
And the Doug did change her name.
00:53:15
I think in the original Mandarin she was called like Princess
00:53:20
Elzebub kind of in the line of like Beelzebub the devil.
00:53:24
But for some reason in the English dub, her official name
00:53:28
is Princess Dragon Mom. Dragon mom?
00:53:32
Yeah, she's she's Khaleesi. Good one.
00:53:41
Thank you. I I kept seeing that in the
00:53:43
captions and assuming that it was wrong because they were like
00:53:45
YouTube captions. I was like, OK, it's probably
00:53:48
like dragon ma, like MA. And I was like, no, no, no
00:53:51
dragon mom, Mother of Dragons, even though she's a dragon and
00:53:54
nobody else's. Anyway, Princess Dragon Mom is
00:53:59
just like your classic regular villain with no real motivation
00:54:03
beyond just being an evil person, and she has an army of
00:54:05
these like villain of the week monsters and then a henchman
00:54:08
army of little skeleton dudes. So that's the bad guy team.
00:54:11
The good guy team is the scientists who all know martial
00:54:14
arts, one of whom becomes Super Infoman and the rest of whom
00:54:18
still help. Oddly enough, it's not a one man
00:54:21
show. Oh well, because I mean, they
00:54:23
know martial arts and they're scientists.
00:54:25
They're. Scientists, but they're the
00:54:26
military, but they have martial arts abilities, but they're
00:54:31
astronauts. I don't know.
00:54:33
And with these these to rewind the skeletons, the little
00:54:36
skeleton people that that Khaleesi has, like those are
00:54:40
like putties. Would they be the equivalent of
00:54:42
that? They are the equivalent of
00:54:44
putties. They are the like boring foot
00:54:45
soldiers that you can easily dispose of and then the villain
00:54:49
of the week monsters are varying levels of power and throughout
00:54:52
the movie actually try to enact like a number of different
00:54:54
schemes to destroy the like science research base.
00:54:58
So it's like there's a tier system.
00:55:01
Cool. OK, great.
00:55:02
And so the scientists, they can help fight the skeletons.
00:55:05
They're like, they're, they're like science punch, like science
00:55:08
kicks. H2L.
00:55:15
Write that down. Write that down.
00:55:17
There's holding like beakers full of chemicals and just like
00:55:20
punching you with those. Yeah, pretty much.
00:55:23
So the thing that makes the story focus very funny to me is
00:55:26
that there's no reason why the villain should be so concerned
00:55:30
with the scientists. It should only be the other way
00:55:32
around. Like of course they observe
00:55:35
where the monsters came from under the underneath the surface
00:55:38
of the Earth, and they know where their base is.
00:55:40
But the only explanation we get for why the villains target them
00:55:43
is that they know they're observing them like Princess
00:55:45
Dragon Mom. It's like we don't want them
00:55:47
looking at us like that, so we have to destroy them before we
00:55:51
do anything else. Even though our ultimate goal is
00:55:53
to enslave the Earth, but we have to blow up this one
00:55:57
research base because they keep pointing that satellite at us.
00:56:00
I mean valid quick what you're looking at like mind your
00:56:04
business. Mind your business.
00:56:06
I just found that part so funny because like, there's a sort of
00:56:09
implication and given those bizarre scenes at the beginning,
00:56:12
that maybe like, there is other violence happening all around
00:56:15
the world and we're just not seeing it.
00:56:17
But the way the movie is depicted, it's as if everything
00:56:20
stops until this particular turf war between science fighters and
00:56:24
the villains can be resolved. Well, yeah, so the the monster
00:56:30
that like attacked the school bus in the other city that was
00:56:34
related to what Khaleesi is doing or no that that was.
00:56:39
It all happened at once, the monsters all spawned at once and
00:56:42
Khaleesi is in charge so presumably it's all connected.
00:56:45
But First off, that monster that crashed in front of the school
00:56:47
bus immediately despawns. He just disappears.
00:56:50
He was like dead but for no reason.
00:56:53
Oh, OK. So maybe the monsters fight each
00:56:57
other sometimes. It's completely unclear.
00:57:00
He got dropped off the battle bus and then he got sniped.
00:57:03
He got sniped from the battle, but he didn't even hit the
00:57:05
ground. He just was like he didn't stay
00:57:08
to watch the rest of the match either.
00:57:09
He was like, I'm just getting back in a matchmaking and then
00:57:13
it was just like Spider Dino 27 has left the game.
00:57:19
So that's I think an important piece of context.
00:57:21
This is technically a global catastrophe that will end life
00:57:24
as we know it, but really it feels like a gang war between
00:57:27
Team Science and Team Monster that only encompasses like 1
00:57:30
square mile of the Earth. It's very important.
00:57:34
I mean, they were looking at him funny.
00:57:37
They're looking at him funny. They're like, stop observing me.
00:57:39
You're going everywhere. Everyone's observing you.
00:57:42
But they're like, yeah, but they pointed that big dish at us and
00:57:45
I don't like. It I don't like that big dish.
00:57:47
Don't like that dish? So the rhythm of this is that at
00:57:51
the beginning of the story, Super Inferman does not exist.
00:57:54
But after the initial attack on the earth with the de spawning
00:57:58
Dinos, there's this professor guy.
00:58:01
For some reason, he's called a professor even though he seems
00:58:03
like he's more of like a science officer in charge of a research
00:58:06
facility. He in the classic fashion,
00:58:09
again, kind of like Mega Man again, he's been devising A
00:58:12
schematic to create a superhero called Inferman who?
00:58:15
Oh my God, hold on. I'm going to quickly look up
00:58:18
what he says powers Inframan, because I want to say Inframan
00:58:22
is powered by a nuclear reactor. Yes, nuclear man, it's just like
00:58:27
the quest for peace. It's just like the quest for
00:58:29
peace. That's a good point.
00:58:30
Let me make sure I have that right.
00:58:31
I'm. Just thinking about what this
00:58:33
guy could be a professor of, I'm imagining him as a professor of
00:58:36
karate. He's just like a professor of
00:58:40
these hands, and then he just goes out fighting people.
00:58:43
These hands, yeah, it's like, wow, he's so smart.
00:58:46
He punched me real good. Dang, now I'm Dumber than he is,
00:58:49
so I guess he is smarter than. Me now that's a good gimmick.
00:58:53
He takes IQ points off every time he lands a hit and you're
00:58:56
like quick cover up. Cover up, I forgot how.
00:59:03
OK so I was correct that Inframan is powered by robo
00:59:08
parts adrenaline. They specify adrenaline and
00:59:11
third thing a miniature nuclear reactor.
00:59:14
Nice. Oh, so it is also.
00:59:15
It's also like the Shadow where he's like, so you're talking
00:59:18
about some kind of nuclear bomb bomb when he said atomic bomb?
00:59:22
Yeah. I just found that really funny
00:59:25
that the key ingredients are miniature nuclear reactor
00:59:28
parentheses. Just regular adrenaline.
00:59:30
Yeah, he's got to drink some surge.
00:59:33
Surge, it's like also we need your testosterone to be like way
00:59:36
up. All right, you got to get high
00:59:37
tea and also a nuke going. To get your T so high it's going
00:59:44
to be a nuke. It's.
00:59:45
Going to be crazy. Your I QS can go crazy.
00:59:50
IQ is going to go crazy. It's like that's a little too
00:59:53
high. We got to knock him on the head
00:59:54
a few times. Bring that down a bit.
00:59:58
So that's the initial setup including a lot of extraneous
01:00:01
details, but essentially after the first attack on the research
01:00:04
base, right, The best Kung Fu science man that they have.
01:00:08
Is given the opportunity to become super Inframan and they
01:00:11
do the classic thing where they're like, this is going to
01:00:13
be a really dangerous procedure. You could die you're going to
01:00:16
feel extreme pain. And so this gives you this
01:00:18
extended sequence where the base is already being attacked while
01:00:22
they're trying to finish the procedure to create Inframan.
01:00:25
And then, like, the other scientists have to, like, fight
01:00:27
to keep the power on so that, like, they can finish the
01:00:30
procedure. And then lo and behold, Inframan
01:00:32
is born and immediately, like, turns the tide.
01:00:34
And that's kind of just the rest of the movie.
01:00:36
Well, that sounds great. I love that.
01:00:39
It's really a honestly the the first word I have to describe
01:00:42
that scene is adorable because adorable.
01:00:46
OK, first villain of the week monster that Princess dragon mom
01:00:51
Khaleesi sends in looks like somebody took the Statue of
01:00:55
Liberty and like halfway melted it because it's just this big
01:01:00
green tentacle plant monster with like a sunken in face who
01:01:04
looks really goofy. But much like in Kaider, when he
01:01:10
starts trying to infiltrate the base, he like digs into the
01:01:13
floor as like a plant root and then pops up inside the
01:01:17
building. But they do that using like
01:01:19
claymation, stop motion miniatures and it just looks
01:01:22
really cute. Yeah, OK.
01:01:25
I mean, claymation is is kind of adorable.
01:01:27
It's like you can't really take it.
01:01:29
It's kind of creepy sometimes, but like.
01:01:31
It's creepy, but it's really funny just watching him like
01:01:34
drill it to the ground and then he pops out again.
01:01:36
But that scene does kind of go bigger than I think it's going
01:01:39
to because he's like a human sized monster.
01:01:42
But then he shrinks down and then instead of him appearing,
01:01:45
you just see all these giant tentacle arms start showing up
01:01:48
that are like crazy big. Like he essentially envelops the
01:01:51
entire research base and he's like tentacle arms are like
01:01:54
shooting through windows and people are like holding on to
01:01:56
them and getting thrown around the room.
01:01:58
So it's this very chaotic scene that is juxtaposed with like
01:02:01
Inferman being born. So it's pretty effective.
01:02:03
Action beat in the first act before our hero even really
01:02:06
arrives. That's great.
01:02:08
I feel like, given that this was like China's first attempt at
01:02:13
like a tokusatsu superhero movie, I feel like they went all
01:02:17
out, You know, they, they, they put their whole personator into
01:02:21
it on this one. Like their?
01:02:23
Whole personator in it. I swear by the end of this
01:02:25
episode we're going to have artwork for Personator.
01:02:27
It's going to be awesome. Yeah, I mean, good for them.
01:02:31
That sounds great. It is fun.
01:02:33
That's probably my favorite of the villain attack sequences in
01:02:36
the movie because eventually Inferman is born, he comes out,
01:02:40
he starts helping them like beat all the tentacles.
01:02:42
And he, because we often talk about superpowers, he does have
01:02:46
X-ray vision. So he's able to see inside the
01:02:48
plant arms to where the like heart of the monster is and he
01:02:51
attacks there, which forces it to revert to like it's human
01:02:54
sized form. And then they can just have like
01:02:56
a classic kind of 1 V 1 martial arts fight.
01:02:59
Oh nice. Well that's because his T is so
01:03:00
high. That's how he can see through.
01:03:02
Testosterone is so high he can see through walls.
01:03:08
Wait, wait. And why did they pick him again?
01:03:10
Was it because he was the smartest scientist or the best
01:03:12
at karate? Best at karate.
01:03:14
These guys don't do any science, OK?
01:03:16
Don't let don't let them tell you otherwise.
01:03:18
There's no beakers, they just have buttons.
01:03:21
They got a bunch of glowing buttons that clearly don't do
01:03:23
anything. The bad guy also has a console
01:03:25
full of buttons that don't do anything.
01:03:28
They're starting to look good. They're just to have some sweet
01:03:30
LEDs. They're just there to look cool.
01:03:33
But to answer your question, yes, the main guy, who I believe
01:03:36
the character's name is Les Ma, played by actor Danny Lee, just
01:03:40
is chosen because they're the protagonist and they're the
01:03:42
best, and they're going to take on the mantle of being Inframan.
01:03:46
It's very much like a heroic moment where he's like, I don't
01:03:48
care if this procedure kills me, I want to save the world.
01:03:50
Or at least this one square block we're fighting over.
01:03:54
Did they name him like beforehand?
01:03:56
They're like, you're going to be Inframan.
01:03:59
Like this is the the name we voted on.
01:04:01
Or the Professor IQ man says that the design is for the
01:04:06
inframan, and even at the end of the movie The bad guy's trying
01:04:09
to get him to make another one and she just says make me a new
01:04:11
inframan. So it's like, if you're in the
01:04:13
suit, that's your name. OK.
01:04:15
And everybody just knows that everyone is familiar.
01:04:18
Instantly familiar. He never said his name out loud
01:04:21
but the bad guys see him and they're like ah he made an
01:04:23
inframan so I guess it's a known thing.
01:04:27
Yeah, he's got to go get his ID changed at the DMV.
01:04:30
Yeah, that. That's why he misses the first
01:04:32
battle. A long line A.
01:04:35
Long line, Yeah. So everything past this point, I
01:04:39
think, starts to line up with a Kaider story where it's like,
01:04:42
now that the action has begun, it kind of just never stops.
01:04:45
The rhythm of it doesn't make any sense because, like,
01:04:49
Inferman fights the the melted Statue of Liberty guy, and much
01:04:53
like the scene you were talking about, the music cuts out.
01:04:55
There's no dialogue. There's just these bizarre
01:04:59
abrasive sound effects constantly playing while they're
01:05:01
hitting each other, which maybe got better by the 90s.
01:05:04
In the 70's the sound design is atrocious.
01:05:07
It's so annoying. Oh yeah, yeah, I can see that.
01:05:11
Bells and whistles and alarms. I hate it.
01:05:14
So he fights that guy, he beats him, he blows him up and then
01:05:17
indeterminate amount of time passes and then the villain,
01:05:20
rather than just sending the whole army, just picks like one
01:05:23
other person. And he's like, now you go try to
01:05:25
break down the research base. Oh.
01:05:29
It literally is 1 at a time. They're just like, well,
01:05:31
alright, what's your best pitch for how we can do this?
01:05:34
Pretty much they're, they're outsourcing to contractors where
01:05:37
like the first guy is like, I'll sneak in with my plant powers
01:05:39
and then one of them is like, I'm going to blow up the base
01:05:42
from underneath with TNT, but not because I'm an exploding
01:05:46
monster, because I literally brought Dynamite with me.
01:05:51
So just a series of plans that fail and then like the next day
01:05:54
everyone just acts like nothing's wrong.
01:05:56
Like in between a couple of these attacks, we find the
01:05:58
professor's kids just like hanging out by the research
01:06:01
base, like having the time of their lives.
01:06:02
I'm like, hold on, the monsters attacked yesterday, they're
01:06:05
going to attack tomorrow. Why are you just hanging out
01:06:07
here? Yeah, well, it's funny because
01:06:09
this this sounds like the setup for an episodic series as
01:06:14
opposed to just one film. Oh, it does it.
01:06:17
This feels like 10 episodes of Info Man shoved into 80 minutes,
01:06:21
which makes the pacing just nonsense.
01:06:23
Like the lack of clarity for how much time is passing in between
01:06:27
each attack makes it sound like they keep forgetting the
01:06:29
monsters exist because they'll just be like back to normal.
01:06:31
And then it's like, ah, another one.
01:06:33
And it's like, you know, they have another one.
01:06:35
There's always another one. I don't know, keep that
01:06:39
adrenaline out. Man, your tea is going down.
01:06:43
It's going down, got to get it out.
01:06:45
Got to go work out or something, I don't know what gives you more
01:06:47
tea? That's what they're trying to
01:06:52
figure out. That's what all the science
01:06:53
speakers are for. They're like, I don't know how
01:06:54
any of this. Works.
01:06:56
I put the adrenaline in, I put the nuclear reactor as Jess.
01:07:00
He used to stop high enough. So that's really the rest of the
01:07:05
movie. It's just the next day another
01:07:08
monster shows up. Inframan eventually gets there
01:07:11
and beats him. The only wrinkle in the first
01:07:14
second act is that one of the other science people gets
01:07:18
kidnapped and brainwashed. So that's one of the like
01:07:22
attempts is that they brainwash a science dude and they sent him
01:07:24
back to the base to sabotage it. It's.
01:07:26
Just like the shadow, it's. Just like the shadow.
01:07:29
Exactly. The shadow might have been here.
01:07:30
And I mean, it really sounds like he was involved.
01:07:32
He was just off to the side. He was one of the other monsters
01:07:35
and like, what's your plan, Shadow?
01:07:36
And he was like, I don't really understand my own powers Even
01:07:40
so. I can't help you here.
01:07:42
Pretty dark out. I don't think I cast a shadow
01:07:44
out here. I got a gun.
01:07:47
Got a gun 2 guns. Hopefully folks at home heard
01:07:53
our previous episode about the shadow.
01:07:54
It's going to be really nonsensical.
01:07:59
So I will I will zoom into this thing with the saboteur because
01:08:03
it is pretty funny what happens to him.
01:08:04
He is specified to be in for man's friend among all these
01:08:10
totally like same looking people who work at the base and wear
01:08:13
the same outfit. That one's his friend.
01:08:14
And so he's sad that he got kidnapped, but then when he
01:08:17
comes back, he's just like, they're like, what happened?
01:08:19
We saw them kidnap you. And he's like, Nah, nothing
01:08:21
happened. I didn't even see him, which is
01:08:22
just obviously untrue. And they're like, they believe
01:08:24
him. They're like, OK, cool, back at
01:08:26
it. Go rest up, rest up.
01:08:30
And then a. Lot of science to do tomorrow.
01:08:32
A lot of science to do tomorrow. I need your tea.
01:08:35
The only person who's like suspicious of this guy is this
01:08:40
other character whose name I do not remember but is notable
01:08:44
because they're played by an actor called Bruce Lay, like LE,
01:08:50
who to my understanding made an entire career off of trying to
01:08:54
slot into Bruce Lee esque roles after Bruce Lee had died.
01:08:58
Oh my goodness. Like he's a knock off.
01:09:02
He's like a knock off Bruce Lee because Team Teamu Bruce Lee,
01:09:05
Teamu Bruce Lee and then imprimant's like, what's that
01:09:08
about T They're like, no, no, no, not that.
01:09:12
So Bruce Lee was very famous, obviously, but only really after
01:09:17
he died and he only made a certain number of films.
01:09:20
So like there was this huge market for reselling his movies
01:09:24
after he passed, but people needed to make more.
01:09:27
So I guess this guy Bruce lay with 1 E just started like
01:09:31
slotting in because he was also a martial artist.
01:09:33
He had a similar haircut. He just pretended to be the next
01:09:36
best thing and he gets slotted into this movie, but for some
01:09:39
reason he's not the main character.
01:09:40
He's like a supporting cast guy who's just somewhat involved in
01:09:45
this sequence where he realizes that the the one guy's been
01:09:48
brainwashed and then he has like a couple of fight scenes, but
01:09:50
nothing big. Wow, what?
01:09:53
Maybe that was before he started his.
01:09:55
Maybe this is where he came up with the idea and he was like, I
01:09:58
could be infra Bruce Lee. Yeah, something, I don't know.
01:10:03
I just found it very strange that they have this like
01:10:05
specific trendy knock off martial artist guy.
01:10:09
Not that he's a knock off, like he can't do it, he's good, but
01:10:11
he's donning A persona that's not his, but he's not the main
01:10:15
character. I'm surprised he would allow
01:10:16
that. I see.
01:10:18
Yeah, Yeah, That's interesting. I mean, I wonder if they still
01:10:22
like, you know, if that was the plan, like if his name was still
01:10:26
on the advertising, like on the the billboards and stuff, the
01:10:29
posters. I don't know I'd have to look
01:10:31
more into it but he is like the only other scientist martial
01:10:34
artist guy with any real screen time.
01:10:36
It's your main guy in for man. Your brainwashed guy and Bruce
01:10:40
Lee are the only ones who really have anything to do to quickly
01:10:45
recap the end of the saboteur story though.
01:10:48
So that guy's plan to infiltrate fails.
01:10:50
He gets found out by Bruce Lee, he runs away.
01:10:53
It leads to another fight scene with one of the other villains
01:10:55
who I don't know what this one's name is but like appearance
01:10:58
wise. Do you remember, do you remember
01:11:01
the first episode of Digimon where or land in the digital
01:11:05
world and there's this giant like beetle monster that shows
01:11:08
up who's like orange Kawagamon. Kawagamon.
01:11:12
I have that guy that I'm about to talk about in my notes as
01:11:14
Kawagaman because that's what he looks like.
01:11:16
OK, Fair enough. Yeah.
01:11:17
So we had melted Statue of Liberty, we had Kawagaman,
01:11:21
there's a drill claw man, there's some spring head robots.
01:11:25
It's very nonsensical group of people.
01:11:27
But the saboteur thing like fails.
01:11:30
Ultimately that guy just ends up having to hang out with the
01:11:32
villains for the rest of the movie because obviously now they
01:11:34
know he's brainwashed. And then they don't save that
01:11:37
guy. He just dies.
01:11:38
The villain just throws him down a pit and he's dead.
01:11:42
Down a pit. Where'd the pit come from?
01:11:43
You just had a pit on hand. She mentions earlier in the
01:11:46
movie while brainwashing him in her Skeletor base that she has a
01:11:51
bottomless pit that she's going to throw him into.
01:11:53
And then later on she throws him down a very much bottom, bottom
01:11:57
full pit that is only like 10 feet deep and has fire at the
01:12:01
bottom. And so he dies.
01:12:02
And I'm like, that really is not a bottomless pit.
01:12:04
I could see the bottom. He's at the bottom.
01:12:07
That's how that's how she tricks him.
01:12:08
She's like, you'll be fine. It's bottomless.
01:12:10
We'll just. Fall forever and then instead
01:12:13
it's essentially the pit from like Temple of Doom where you
01:12:16
just throw him to the bottom and then they burn up and die.
01:12:18
So that's it. The saboteur does not get
01:12:20
rescued, he does not break free of his brainwashing.
01:12:23
He just outlives his usefulness and then is killed.
01:12:26
Well, you know, he did a bad, bad thing.
01:12:28
He shouldn't have been kidnapped and then brainwashed.
01:12:31
That's kind of on him. I think the only thing he
01:12:34
accomplishes is that he literally takes photographs of
01:12:37
the blueprints for Inframan so that the villains can try to
01:12:40
like, find a weakness. That did they do that?
01:12:44
And this is very this, this part makes very little sense.
01:12:46
So to kind of keep moving while answering that question.
01:12:50
Inframan's finishing move for the first half of the movie is a
01:12:53
wrist laser thing, where like he's mostly doing martial arts,
01:12:56
like some pretty intense Kung Fu, but he'll sort of like cross
01:12:59
his arms and fire a little laser out of his right wrist.
01:13:02
That tends to be pretty effective.
01:13:04
He blows up multiple monsters with it.
01:13:06
And then the bad guy finds out that the way it's set in the
01:13:09
dub, he's powered by the sun, which is not true.
01:13:13
We just said he's powered by a nuclear reactor and a bunch of
01:13:15
testosterone, but apparently he's powered by the sun and
01:13:18
adrenaline and adrenaline. So then she blots out the sun
01:13:23
like 300 and it only disables the wrist laser.
01:13:28
Like that's it. He has one.
01:13:29
His finishing move is powered by the sun, but the rest of it is.
01:13:32
Yeah, well. And that's what she learned from
01:13:35
the blueprints that the brain controlled guy got for them.
01:13:38
Yeah, see, you're following the story.
01:13:39
Yeah, that's exactly what happened.
01:13:40
Yeah, OK. OK.
01:13:42
So yeah, that's fair. I so.
01:13:44
She does disable his finishing move.
01:13:46
He can't hit the Stone Cold stunner anymore because he's
01:13:49
blotted out the sun, but what's funny is he just invents a new
01:13:52
one on the spot. He's like, oh I can't do the
01:13:54
wrist laser anymore, I'm going to do a rocket boot dropkick
01:13:57
instead, which is obviously better anyway.
01:14:01
Rocket boot Dropkick. What it's got like Iron Man
01:14:04
thrusters on the bottom of his feet.
01:14:06
So he'll just jump at one of the villains with his both of his
01:14:10
feet up in the air and like turn the Rockets on and then just
01:14:12
like dropkick them in the chest and they blow up.
01:14:14
Oh. That's sick.
01:14:16
It's so much better, like if kung.
01:14:18
Fu, why was your original finisher?
01:14:20
I'm going to stand still and hit you with a laser beam.
01:14:22
That's just when he got like tired.
01:14:25
She's like, gosh, thank goodness the sun is here.
01:14:28
Keeps my new beer bomb moving. He had to build up his special
01:14:32
meter. He had to do enough combos to
01:14:34
get the the special laser attack and then I guess the rocket jump
01:14:38
attack. The rocket jump was like his
01:14:40
ultimate special. That's like where it turns into
01:14:42
like a cutscene. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:14:44
But you still got to do the combos to build up the meter.
01:14:46
To build up the special meter. Yeah, that makes sense.
01:14:49
That tracks. So that's like an awkward part
01:14:50
of the dub because they literally say he's powered by
01:14:53
the sun. This will disable him.
01:14:55
And ultimately all they mean is like, it'll turn off his wrist
01:14:58
rocket, which, again, it's so granular.
01:15:01
This villain is here to take over the whole world and yet her
01:15:04
plan for evil spooky monster plan is like steal a blueprint
01:15:08
so that I can analyze it for weak points.
01:15:11
You got to start somewhere, man. She's a small business, OK?
01:15:14
She's just trying to like. She's like I need data
01:15:19
analytics. OK, I need to be a change agent.
01:15:23
She's like, which one of you monsters can build me a website?
01:15:26
Like what are we doing here? We're trying shadow put.
01:15:31
Those guns away. Shadow put those guns away.
01:15:34
We need to influence sentiments. We need a bot network.
01:15:39
Yeah. It's bizarre.
01:15:41
None of the aesthetics in the movie like kajila to anything.
01:15:44
They all look very charming like this. the Super villain hideout
01:15:48
base is awesome. There's like an entrance where
01:15:50
you walk in through a staircase into like the mouth of like a
01:15:55
skeleton of a monster. It's so crazy cool.
01:15:59
I mean, that's that's right. Sounds like awesome.
01:16:01
Production design, it's awesome. Like it's so cartoonish and like
01:16:05
I said, kind of reminds me of like the He Man.
01:16:08
Like, it looks like a toy set. Like even at the end of the
01:16:10
movie, the last big action sequence, which covers the last
01:16:14
like 20 minutes, is that the professor is captured along with
01:16:18
his daughter. And so Inferman has to go rescue
01:16:21
them, but he brings his whole science squad.
01:16:22
And then there's just like a turf war fight with all these
01:16:25
putties that takes place in like a skeleton graveyard.
01:16:29
There's all these like unearthed monster skeletons that are
01:16:32
really big and they're fighting in this.
01:16:34
Like it kind of looks like the elephant graveyard from Lion
01:16:36
King I guess. OK.
01:16:38
All right. Sick.
01:16:40
And they just have this giant like 50 on 50 brawl that
01:16:43
Inframan is just in the middle of, and then he kind of moves on
01:16:47
from that into the base to go do his final series of fights with
01:16:50
the remaining villains. But that's maybe where the
01:16:53
action peaks for me because the first couple of bits, like
01:16:57
special effects wise, they were fun, but the actual martial arts
01:16:59
is pretty simple. This part at the end does
01:17:01
ratcheted up quite a bit just by going nuts.
01:17:03
They're just throwing people into stuff and off ledges.
01:17:05
This seems very like like loose kind of dangerous martial arts
01:17:09
choreography. Like, just go out there and have
01:17:13
fun, guys. So I'm like, shouldn't we plan
01:17:14
this? No, no, no, no, no, no.
01:17:15
Just have fun. Just kick the person nearest to
01:17:18
you and just see what happens. Just power of tea and Kung Fu
01:17:21
and you'll be fine. I will say as a point off and
01:17:26
for man, for some reason there's oddly repetitive fight
01:17:30
choreography in here. Like they clearly have sequences
01:17:34
that they know how to do and they'll repeat them way too many
01:17:36
times. Like the skull soldier dudes,
01:17:39
right? Just like the low level grunts.
01:17:42
Most of them have these little like Spears and there's a
01:17:45
sequence they keep doing over and over again where two of them
01:17:48
try to stab him for man at the same time and he grabs both of
01:17:51
the Spears and blocks them. And then kind of like karate
01:17:54
chops both dudes in the neck at the same time and they fall
01:17:56
down. And I swear they do that six or
01:17:58
seven times. Oh well, they had to reuse the
01:18:01
animations. It is just like the old He Man
01:18:03
show. You just do like the stock
01:18:07
animations, but it's a real man, so I just don't understand.
01:18:10
It felt like, again, they weren't choreographing
01:18:12
individual fights. They were just using their
01:18:14
general kind of like martial arts exhibition skills and just
01:18:19
plugging them in where they could.
01:18:20
He also does like a judo toss over and over again.
01:18:23
That's like really noticeable. I don't know why I draw so much
01:18:25
attention to it if he's if they're going to keep repeating
01:18:29
the same sequences, I. Wonder if this was intended to
01:18:33
be multiple episodes of a show that got stitched together into
01:18:37
a movie, because that would make sense.
01:18:39
That would explain a lot of it. If it's like once per episode he
01:18:43
does a judo flip, then you're like, OK, But if you're seeing
01:18:46
it six or seven times in one film, it's like, why does he
01:18:48
keep doing that judo? Flip.
01:18:49
Why does he keep doing that same judo Flip?
01:18:51
Yeah, I get he needs to build a special leader up, but come on.
01:18:54
Stop being lazy, Inferman. It would also explain why I
01:18:57
think we get the full super Inferman transformation sequence
01:19:01
like 4 different times where he like does the pose and he morphs
01:19:05
and then he does like a series of backflips and then like a bit
01:19:07
of a Superman flying pose. And every time they show the
01:19:10
full scene. Which also feels like a once per
01:19:13
episode staple of a series and not something you put four times
01:19:17
into a movie. Absolutely, that's that's the
01:19:20
vibe I'm getting here. Also real quick to since you
01:19:23
mentioned Superman, I did see one of the posters for super
01:19:25
info man has like a a Timo Superman symbol on the the
01:19:31
cover. Like it's like the Superman S in
01:19:36
the shield, but it's just like slightly off.
01:19:39
And so I assume that was like something in the marketing to be
01:19:43
like look, this is like Chinese Superman is.
01:19:46
Information maybe. I mean, Superman is the most
01:19:49
like obvious superhero imagery that exists.
01:19:52
And so I could see them even just for the American release of
01:19:55
the film trying to be like, look, you know, it's it's like
01:19:58
Superman. I do know that they gave him a
01:20:00
moniker for the American release in the advertising that was
01:20:03
like. The Super Bion, like the man of
01:20:05
bionics or something, which was supposed to capitalize on like
01:20:08
the $6 million man TV show or something.
01:20:11
So they did add aspects to him promotionally for an American
01:20:15
audience. So yeah, I don't know, like
01:20:18
we've covered a lot of the weird, strange elements of Super
01:20:22
Info, man. I feel like this one is less
01:20:25
accessible than the one you talked about, Frank, where if
01:20:29
you've never seen a tokasatsu movie and you start here, you're
01:20:32
going to be like, what? What is this?
01:20:34
Like? It's so it's so messy and odd.
01:20:39
It's very creative and the Kung Fu is pretty neat.
01:20:42
But it is mostly interesting, more so for Someone Like You or
01:20:46
I who has seen a lot of these things before and would be
01:20:49
curious to watch like, you know, the Chinese attempt at the same
01:20:53
idea or just like this character who never really came back and
01:20:56
is only in this one film. It's a novelty, but definitely
01:21:00
not as obvious of a crowd pleaser I think as the one that
01:21:03
you watched. Well, it's also really early
01:21:06
like I, I want to say, you know, common rider Super Sentai was
01:21:11
like late 60s, early 70s when it started.
01:21:15
So this one adapting that or, or, you know, being it it's own
01:21:20
interpretation of that it, it's a very early adapter as well.
01:21:23
So I mean, even if you were watching like early Japanese
01:21:27
tokusatsu, you know, it would be from like this the 70s.
01:21:32
So I imagine that's all very rough, you know, because it's
01:21:35
sort of like the foundation of of that that sub genre, which is
01:21:41
kind of why I picked this one though, almost because that was
01:21:43
interesting to me. I was just like right out of the
01:21:46
gate. What are they?
01:21:47
What are they doing with this you?
01:21:48
Know I liked it. I I liked having a chance to see
01:21:50
something this like comparatively unpolished and
01:21:54
also more tied to some of the aesthetics of like the 70s.
01:21:59
I found it very charming, not always super engaging.
01:22:03
It genuinely found a way to sort of drag despite being less than
01:22:07
90 minutes long just because there wasn't enough of that like
01:22:11
atmosphere to keep it engaging in the slower beats.
01:22:15
But it's still fun. Like if you like this kind of
01:22:17
thing you might enjoy super info man.
01:22:19
If you're really not that well versed, you'd be better off
01:22:22
sticking to something like more recognizable.
01:22:25
Yeah, between, I guess between the two, if we're introducing
01:22:28
them to a newcomer to this type of film, I guess the kiter would
01:22:33
be the better choice. But Inferman sounds great to me.
01:22:36
I'm I'm I'm going to order my Inferman action figure right
01:22:38
after this so. Oh, that's a good idea.
01:22:41
Yeah. It does not have a video game.
01:22:42
I don't even know if Inferman ever returned.
01:22:44
I I think the movie did well, but I don't know that it ever
01:22:46
spawned any other media. People liked it, but it is very
01:22:52
dated. And so you can kind of take that
01:22:53
what you will. I am trying to remember now
01:22:56
because I did look up a Roger Ebert quote about the movie.
01:23:00
And I think the context for why he changed his rating was that
01:23:04
at the time, he gave it like 2 1/2 stars out of four.
01:23:07
And he was like, this movie's crazy.
01:23:08
I can't believe it. And then like 20 years later, he
01:23:11
was at a showing of a different tokosatsu movie that was being
01:23:15
shown in the US, And he gave that one a three and wrote some
01:23:18
article where he was like, you know, what did he say?
01:23:21
He was like, not a month has gone by that I have not thought
01:23:24
about Inframan since I saw it, which is insane.
01:23:29
And then he was like, I guess for anybody who's ever curious
01:23:32
if I've ever like, revised a rating, I can't give this one.
01:23:35
I just saw a higher rating than Inframan.
01:23:37
So in retrospect, I'm going to bump Inframan up to a three out
01:23:40
of four. Oh my God, we found the true
01:23:43
love of that man's life. Was Inframan.
01:23:46
He knows nothing else about the genre, but he really liked
01:23:49
Inframan because it was. So I think he was often coming
01:23:53
from this perspective of like, it's not just about the like
01:23:56
academic structure of what makes a good movie.
01:23:58
It's about unique experiences told in film format.
01:24:02
And he felt that Super Inframan for that time was so daring and
01:24:06
unlike anything he had seen that it just kind of had to be seen
01:24:10
to be believed. And I totally respect that.
01:24:13
So I think it deserves its place.
01:24:15
It's also the first Chinese superhero movie, period.
01:24:18
Cool. Yeah, see Inferman.
01:24:21
He he has a place in history, which is good.
01:24:24
He's, you know, even to this day we could bring it back to sell
01:24:28
testosterone supplements if he wants He's.
01:24:31
Going to keep them all for himself.
01:24:33
He needs those or he's going to explode or something.
01:24:35
I don't remember the. Nuke the nuke goes off.
01:24:37
Impersonator is going to get him.
01:24:38
I don't know. Wow, that's so funny that
01:24:42
Inferman came like all the way around to being like high art to
01:24:46
Roger Ebert. He was just like, this is the
01:24:49
best thing I've ever seen. And I do this for a living.
01:24:58
So what Inferman says is he's shoveling testosterone.
01:25:03
You can't take that many total T pills in for a man.
01:25:06
Your heart's going to explode. And he's like with Justin I.
01:25:13
Don't know this. This all seems a little loose.
01:25:16
Funny. I don't know if you know what's
01:25:17
going on here. Oh, man, I mean, that's it,
01:25:22
right? That's the end of that part.
01:25:24
Yeah. Hey, Frank.
01:25:32
I think we've talked about both of these films in enough detail
01:25:35
to give people an idea of what each one is.
01:25:37
So let's move now into our final scores and then after that, we
01:25:40
will select our films or the other person to watch for the
01:25:43
next episode. I will throw it over to you
01:25:46
first since you did the first half of the show.
01:25:48
Final thoughts and a score out of 10 for mechanical violator
01:25:52
Hakaeder. As always, this is difficult to
01:25:58
score. This is always the hardest part
01:26:01
of the show. That's.
01:26:03
Why we do it? That's why we do it.
01:26:05
Yeah, I I enjoy to kiter. It was very simple and it's
01:26:16
execution. But as I mentioned in the
01:26:19
review, it just, it just evoked a lot of things that I was
01:26:23
familiar with and appreciated just like tonally, visually.
01:26:28
So it kind of falls into a weird place for me.
01:26:31
I want to say like 5 out of 10 for Hikaider feels about right.
01:26:36
5 out of 10, OK. Yeah, because it just, it was
01:26:39
good. I I really enjoyed it for what
01:26:41
it was. It just didn't, I don't know.
01:26:46
It didn't do enough to kick it up into a next gear for me where
01:26:50
I was like obsessed with it, you know, and and to give it like a
01:26:53
really high score, I would say. OK, that's lower than I thought
01:26:57
actually, but I could totally see why because I'm sort of in a
01:26:59
similar spot with Inframan. Like you and I are not novices
01:27:03
to the we're not Roger Ebert, who's never seen a a henshin man
01:27:06
in his life. And it's just like, what does
01:27:08
that mean? Like we.
01:27:11
Right. Exactly.
01:27:12
Yeah, totally. Because like, because like for
01:27:14
me, it's like I I almost don't want to give it a bunch of extra
01:27:17
points just because it's similar to other things I like, if that
01:27:20
makes sense. No, yeah, the rating is sort of.
01:27:23
I will compare against other things usually as a way to kind
01:27:27
of knock points off of a of a film, because it's like, if this
01:27:31
exists in similar format but better, it can sort of in
01:27:36
comparison make the thing we're talking about look worse, right?
01:27:39
Which is not always fair, but you know, it does.
01:27:42
Like like you said, we've we've been exposed to a lot of this
01:27:44
type of media and this I would watch it again for sure.
01:27:49
Like you might watch it like it's just a great thing.
01:27:52
To I really might throw on. You know, yeah.
01:27:54
So it's cool. It's definitely cool.
01:27:56
It's not, it's a, it's not a bad, it's not a bad 5.
01:27:59
It's a good. It's a good five.
01:28:00
It's a good five in case people don't know this 5 is a
01:28:03
commendable score. This is not your 5th grade math
01:28:06
test. For anything less than 80% they
01:28:08
have to call your parents. OK, they said.
01:28:11
That's not. That's not a personal anecdote,
01:28:13
don't read into that. 5 out of 10 is good.
01:28:17
That just means you made a movie, and it's a good, good,
01:28:20
solid movie. You didn't, you did more than
01:28:22
make a movie. If it's five out of 10, you, you
01:28:25
made a movie that like, yeah, it's serviceable.
01:28:28
People are going to like it. Like that's, that's a good
01:28:30
score. Just want to clarify that in
01:28:32
case people think we're being harsh or not.
01:28:34
Like would you recommend Akiter to someone who would be a fan of
01:28:38
that genre? Because I assume you would.
01:28:41
Absolutely. But to compare this to the score
01:28:42
I gave, like the Shadow last week, which I believe I gave a
01:28:45
six out of 10, that one got a little bit higher because for a
01:28:49
good portion of that movie, it was like I was like baffled and
01:28:53
and like confused and like, you know, like excited because it
01:28:57
was showing me things I felt like I'd never seen before in
01:28:59
that configuration. And Hekiter didn't do enough of
01:29:02
that. Not that that's always what you
01:29:04
have to aim for, but like, you know, just for my own kind of
01:29:07
understanding, like that's why that one scored a little higher
01:29:10
compared. To this well, it made you feel
01:29:12
something which, you know, that's harder to do almost if
01:29:15
you're really familiar with a genre to be surprised.
01:29:20
And I think that, yeah, kiter's just like solid, but not
01:29:24
groundbreaking, you know, like relative to your experience.
01:29:27
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's a good way to put
01:29:29
it. All right, 5 out of 10 for her
01:29:31
kiter. There's gonna be a close one.
01:29:34
Super in for Man coming in, I was kind of waffling between
01:29:37
scores in that kind of middle range because much like a kiter,
01:29:41
I was like, it's not the best example of this type of film.
01:29:45
It has some obvious flaws. There's like nothing to latch
01:29:48
onto character wise. The main character doesn't have
01:29:50
an arc. There's not like the supporting
01:29:53
elements that would take this cartoonish spectacle and kind of
01:29:57
ground it just a bit and make it more engaging.
01:30:01
But it's truly baffling. And I think especially in trying
01:30:05
to recount it to you, I was like, honestly, this thing's
01:30:07
going to be not a month is going to go by that I'm not going to
01:30:10
think about because it's so weird.
01:30:17
So my score, and I've written this down before, you scored
01:30:20
yours. I'm giving super info, man.
01:30:22
A six out of 10. Oh, wow.
01:30:24
OK. Which is exciting because that
01:30:27
is exciting. Frank.
01:30:28
That means you've won the episode.
01:30:30
Wow, this is such an unfamiliar feeling.
01:30:32
I don't. First time all season.
01:30:36
Your recommendation? Your blind pick scored higher
01:30:39
than mine, so that makes you the winner.
01:30:40
How do you how do you feel? This is my post game interview.
01:30:44
It's your post game interview. So you played the sport today
01:30:47
and you won this part because you did better.
01:30:50
But like, how did you do better? Well, see, we had more points
01:30:54
than than the points that. The points that we had.
01:30:56
OK, yeah. So are you going to Disneyland
01:31:00
or what? What are we?
01:31:01
How do we do this? Yeah, Next week we got to do, we
01:31:04
got to do that again. We got to get more points than
01:31:06
than they get. Yeah, do about that.
01:31:08
We're not focused on playoffs, all right?
01:31:10
We're just playoffs. Nobody 's going to get that
01:31:16
reference. Nobody's going to get that
01:31:17
unless you're watching Sunday Night Football in like 2008 and
01:31:22
just like, tuning into the commercials.
01:31:24
Anyway, Frank, you're the winner of Episode 3 of this season of
01:31:27
Meat and Double Feature. Congrats on that first win of
01:31:29
the season. What that means is that you get
01:31:32
to make the next pick or the 1st pick for our next episode.
01:31:35
So what would you like me to watch for next time?
01:31:38
You are going to want to watch 1990 twos sticking to the 90s
01:31:48
Doctor Mordred? Dr. What?
01:31:53
Doctor Mordred MORDRID. OK, this has not come up in my
01:32:01
research so far. Anything you want to preface
01:32:04
about Doctor Mordred? Yes, this to my understanding
01:32:10
started production as a Doctor Strange movie and part way
01:32:16
through I think they didn't have the rights or didn't get the
01:32:21
rights to Doctor Strange so they just changed some names around
01:32:26
and made the movie anyway. And that's why it's Doctor
01:32:29
Mordred. That is the superhero tradition
01:32:32
right there, copyright infringement issues.
01:32:35
But but the two leads of the movie stand out to me because
01:32:42
the main protagonist of the the film is played by Jeffrey Combs,
01:32:47
who you may know that name because he is Wei Yoon on Deep
01:32:53
Space 9 and. Who's?
01:32:56
Wait hold on, which deep space 9 character is this?
01:32:59
He's the actually, he might not even be a primary character at
01:33:04
the point of the show that you're at, actually.
01:33:06
I'm midway through my deep space 9 watch.
01:33:08
Is he? Is he there by season 4?
01:33:11
I feel like he's probably made an appearance by season 4.
01:33:13
He becomes more of a central character as the show goes on
01:33:16
because he's part of the Dominion.
01:33:18
Oh OK. I swear, one of these days if we
01:33:21
ever start like, supplementary content, it's just going to be
01:33:23
us talking about Deep Space 9 for six hours a day.
01:33:26
It's already what we do on this. Show so OK, so it's there's a
01:33:32
Deep Space 9 alone starring in Doctor Mordred.
01:33:34
I say no more, say less, I'm in. OK.
01:33:38
I was going to say more, but you go ahead.
01:33:41
Oh, sorry, who's the other actor?
01:33:42
Sorry I. Didn't say there was 2 but.
01:33:46
You cut me off. The other actor, who's the
01:33:51
antagonist of the film, is played by Brian Thompson, who
01:33:56
while himself has appeared in several 90s Star Trek episodes
01:34:01
as a Klingon. You and I would would know him
01:34:04
more as Shao Khan from Mortal Kombat.
01:34:07
Oh, OK, I was starting to. He's also Ian Lionheart, the
01:34:11
Jean-Claude Van Nice, nice, nice.
01:34:16
I'm completely sold on the cast for that one.
01:34:20
I don't know how that I I can't wait to see T MU Doctor Strange.
01:34:24
Yeah. That's exactly.
01:34:27
What it is so funny because nobody would have known that
01:34:29
character at the time anyway. Like he was not popular in media
01:34:33
outside of comics. So like, you know what I mean?
01:34:35
Like you wouldn't even know what you were getting.
01:34:37
And like, like audiences wouldn't know like, oh, this was
01:34:40
clearly supposed to be a this because unless it was like
01:34:42
Spider Man, you wouldn't know them anyway.
01:34:45
I I think there was a 1978 Doctor Strange movie, but again,
01:34:51
it it's not, that's not something that would have been
01:34:53
part of mainstream culture. Yeah.
01:34:55
So people wouldn't even know what they're getting The bootleg
01:34:57
version of you're. Right.
01:34:58
It'd be like if we released a film and we were like,
01:35:00
originally this was going to start Personator, but we had to
01:35:02
rewrite it to be like the same. But you know who star who?
01:35:06
I'm sorry, the what? What do you call me?
01:35:08
Personator, he's going to steal all the tea so that info man has
01:35:11
no power. It explodes.
01:35:14
We don't know. We don't know nuclear energy.
01:35:19
So OK Dr. Mordred 1992 we're a 90s podcast.
01:35:23
We can't escape it. I'm in I have I have a
01:35:28
controversial pick. I think because controversial we
01:35:32
listen, we might need to pull up our rules graphic again because
01:35:35
the premise of the season is OK boss, here's the. 1.
01:35:39
I'm the one making the graphic, all right, because of our season
01:35:43
is forgotten superhero movies. But I don't know if it's
01:35:46
possible to say that a movie has been forgotten if it released a
01:35:49
year and a half ago. Oh my.
01:35:52
Goodness. OK, I feel like you're not going
01:35:54
to. I really don't think you're
01:35:55
going to disagree with me when I say that your forgotten
01:35:58
superhero film for next Time is 2020 Fours Craven the Hunter.
01:36:04
Oh my gosh. Not true.
01:36:10
People will know that Sony, who owns the rights to like the
01:36:14
Spider man catalog but not Spider man himself, keeps
01:36:18
releasing movies about spider man villains as stand alone
01:36:21
films and a couple of them, they're all terrible but a
01:36:24
couple of them have been like memed into being notable.
01:36:27
We kept we've been talking off air all day about Morbius, which
01:36:31
was so bad but then turned into a meme and convinced Sony to re
01:36:34
release it 'cause they thought people would go for the lulls
01:36:37
and then it just bombed again. Even Madam Webb got a bunch of
01:36:43
Flack for it's like terrible trailer and for being like kind
01:36:45
of a bait and switch movie that didn't have any superheroes in
01:36:49
it. But have you heard anything
01:36:52
about Craven Hunter? Dude, honestly, like that movie,
01:36:56
so like nebulous to me. Like I remember hearing about it
01:37:01
a little bit before it came out and like maybe even watching a
01:37:03
trailer for it. But hearing you say that that
01:37:04
movie came out in 2024, like you could have told me that movie
01:37:09
has not yet come out and I would have like believed you see.
01:37:13
That's why I knew you would not disagree.
01:37:14
Maybe people in the comments and if you're mad in the comments,
01:37:17
let us know. It boosts our engagement.
01:37:20
I think this counts. It's a forgotten film.
01:37:23
It got forgotten in record time. But nobody's talking about it,
01:37:26
not even as a joke. And so that's why I need you to
01:37:28
watch it, because there's got to be a reason for that.
01:37:31
Wow. Yeah.
01:37:33
All right. Yeah, that's right.
01:37:38
We're not a 90s podcast. We're a 2020 fours.
01:37:41
Podcast 2020 fours yeah that's OK no that that that's in the
01:37:45
rules all right we got we got the rules up here that that
01:37:50
counts that counts rule #4 Craven the hunter is a loud yeah
01:37:55
specifically it's weird we wrote that in back in 2024 but.
01:37:58
Yeah, OK, great. I feel like that'll be fun.
01:38:02
We have not talked about, we have not covered a movie outside
01:38:05
of our bonus episode where we talked about the Neutron film.
01:38:07
We have not covered a movie for our main programming that
01:38:10
released this century, so this will be fun.
01:38:17
We can talk about stuff like digital cameras, color grading.
01:38:23
Yeah, yeah, we'll get into it. We'll we will.
01:38:26
Yeah, we'll get into. All that into it.
01:38:28
So stay tuned for that for now, that'll bring us to the end of
01:38:31
this episode. Frank, do you want to just roll
01:38:34
right into social media plug real quick and then we can just
01:38:37
bow out? Yeah, wow.
01:38:39
Sometimes I do this as a separate segment, but just
01:38:41
really quickly, first of all, thank you for listening to our
01:38:44
show. If you liked it, please consider
01:38:46
liking the video, sharing it with a friend, telling somebody
01:38:49
you know about our podcast. It is very helpful for expanding
01:38:52
our reach. Very much appreciate that
01:38:53
support. If you'd like to follow us on
01:38:55
social media, we are available in a few different places.
01:38:57
We're on Instagram at Meet Your Double feature, we are on Blue
01:39:01
Sky at Mydf Pod, and we're also now in Letterboxed so you can
01:39:06
find written review summaries of the films we cover on the show
01:39:09
by going to Letterboxed and searching again for Mydf under
01:39:13
score Pod. Basically just search Meet Your
01:39:16
Double Feature, you'll find all of our links.
01:39:17
Or you can go to our website, meetyourdoublefeature.com, which
01:39:20
will sort of serve as a link hub to reach any of those other
01:39:23
places. Again, thank you so much for
01:39:25
listening. Frank's going to close this out
01:39:27
today by finishing that explanation about who that Deep
01:39:31
Space 9 character was. It's morbin time.
01:39:35
OK, see you later. Coming up next, it's Doctor
01:39:52
Mordred, followed by Craven the Hunter on Meet Your Double
01:39:57
feature.