Infra-Man

This is a hoot and a half; a Shaw Brothers' gem. Add in a manga based story, the Shaw Bros. studio lot, sci-fi, and lots of amazing, kampy fighting surpassing even the staged corny fighting by the Bat in blue tights Adam West, and that's Super Inframan in a nutshell. According to production notes, Danny Lee did don the Inframan suit on and I loved the transformation sequences with really 70ish sound effects! There's 70s written throughout this one. I never knew a Demon Princess could dress and look so funky psychedelic! I thought she stopped by a Viking convention. Plus, best use of motorcycle helmets goes to the numerous black-clad skull minions who take turns getting an Inframan-ish beating and lots of well-timed body flips. This film is a very good homage to Japan's Kaiju. Please ignore the fact that the monsters are human-sized rather than several stories tall. The Super Inframan and the Mighty Peking Man should be shown back-to-back at Subway Cinema 2004 at the Film Forum in NYC!

Hard to rate a movie as bad as this that's so much fun! The key to this one is kung-fu fighting monsters, "thunderball fists", and of course, Princess Dragon Mom! Wielding a very long whip she plots to rule the earth and unfortunately only Inframan tries to stop her. Dig the fact that everybody in the film drives VWs. Shaw Bros' do Ultraman, and it's a pretty bizarre affair. Best scene -- Professor and the monsters on the motorboat going to monkey-skull island. Truly strange.

For anyone who has a soft spot for cheesy Asian action pictures, this one has it all; pseudo-sci-fi, kungfu heroes, kungfu villains, Skull Warriors by the thousand, and a villain with one of the most classic names in movie history: the dreaded. Princess DRAGONMOM! Stationed at the earth's core, she wakes up after a ten million year sleep (with her superscience still on the cutting edge and her minions still hanging around waiting for her to wake up), and becomes alarmed at the surface world's progress. She attacks with her massive resources and threatens a stunned world.

Naturally, the answer to this threat of millions of soldiers emerging from the center of the earth is to combat them with a handful of kungfu cops and their one leader, Inframan, a sort of early Cyborg created from a brave volunteer.

Clad in a (very) tight outfit, Princess Dragonmom makes demands to the world's leaders to serve under her. Frankly, I don't see how they could refuse. (Imagine seriously for a moment, the world's leaders having to go on t.v. and announce with a straight face that our world is in danger from.Princess DRAGONMOM!)

Princess Dragonmom has her own special henchmen, in the form of a half dozen of the oddest-looking rubber creatures ever created; one has tentacles for hands and speaks (I swear) in a tough New York accent (remember, this is dubbed); another has a drill-bit for a hand. How do they fight the kungfu cops? With kungfu, of course! The sight of a guy with tentacles doing kungfu blocks and chops (complete with loud THWACKS and POWS) is something I can't quite describe. I found myself rooting for the rubber monsters all the way through the movie.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film. The kungfu goodguys are in there kicking (literally), doing continual blackflips, frontflips and somersaults throughout the entire movie, the skull warriors outnumber the Stormtroopers from Star Wars (oddly, both are dressed in white) and are even worse shots (I think it's the glare from those white helmets), and Inframan kicks anyone's butt he comes up against, which in a way is a little anticlimactic. He's strange-looking and a walking special effect, but not really that interesting a character as say, a Chinese babe with an attitude.

By the end of the movie you may find yourself wishing that Dragonmom had won.

Seven stars.

Super Infra-man (1975) was the Shaw Brothers attempt to try and start a franchise super hero like Ultraman. Filmed in Shawscope (panavision) Super Infra-man is an enjoyable action film filled with cheesy over the top bad guys and a whole lot of sci-fi mumbo jumbo. Danny Lee is chosen to become Infra-man when Earth is threatened by a race of interstellar demons. To sum up the movie, just imagine an episode of The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers that was action-directed by Bruce Lee! That's because one of the Dragon's protégés was involved with directing the fight scenes. The whole cast seems to be in on the joke and no one takes it too seriously. Harmless family fun.

Highly recommended!

Factoid: For some reason, the Shaw Brothers like to recycle stock footage from their other films and reuse certain scenes over and over.

I saw this movie when it was first released to theaters in the US in 1975 as Inframan. The mid 70s were the days of Johnny Socko and Ultraman, so Inframan kind of felt like a souped up version of those.

The fact that I remember seeing this movie so vividly, even after 28 years have gone by, should be some indication that it's at least not humdrum. Sure, the monsters are fake, and the plot is ludicrous, but you aren't MEANT to take Inframan any more seriously than you did Ultraman (if you ever watched that show). This movie is nothing more (and nothing less!) than campy Japanese techno-samurai heroics at its Technicolor best.

Inframan does amazingly gymnastic things and defeats amazingly craptacular foes, and does so with great style and lots of intense colors. Though I was too young to have tried any hallucinogens back in 1975, I can say now, after more life experience, that this IS the kind of movie you would greatly enjoy while on hallucinogens; and even if you aren't tripping when you watch this movie, you'll get some of that same feel anyway. It's just that kind of movie. ;)