Gekko kamen - Zekkai no shito

As part of his nefarious efforts to extract the secrets of the HO evaporation bomb, the evil Skull Mask and his expendable masked-henchmen kidnap the inventor (Junya Usami) and his daughter (Hiroko Mine), only to be repeatedly thwarted by the heroic 'Moon Light Mask' (?). I found this relic on-line while researching early Japanese sci-fi TV. It appears to be the second of the 'Moon Light Mask' movies to come out in 1958 and is the conclusion of the story begun in the first film ('Moon Light Mask', a recap is helpfully provided). As the films were adaptations of the seminal Japanese TV-superhero series, this 58 minute adventure is sufficient to get a sense of the popular kid's small-screen tokusatsu. The series' premise is very similar 'western' masked hero series (The Lone Ranger, Batman, etc) as the mysterious masked hero appears out of nowhere and saves the day (meanwhile handsome young detective Juro Iwai (Fumitake Omura) is inexplicably absent). Little effort is made to explain where the hero keeps his costume, which always seems nearby when needed and, if Juro Iwai is indeed Moon Light Mask, his various colleagues are as oblivious as Lois Lane and Jimmy Olson are to a Kryptonian übermensh in their midst. The 'modern' super-powered (or at least super-competent) masked hero has a long history in Japan, starting with the kamishibai (paper theater) hero Ogon Bat (Golden Bat) in 1931, but Moon Light Mask was the first of these characters to appear on TV ('Super Giant' flew into theatre screens a year earlier). Although the old series can be enjoyable in a retro-charming way, they likely won't be much in the way of entertainment to anyone not either interested in, or nostalgic for, the earliest years of Japanese fantasy TV. I have had little luck in finding examples of the old shows, so quite pleased when a search popped up this fun B/W relic.

Which wasn't bad but in terms of "plotline" (if you can call it that way, we're talking of tokusatsus here) it was more scattered than this time around and there was some stuff in the way that didn't made any sense (understandably so, it was the first Toei tokusatsu thing ever). Here everything is better: the action scenes from the titular protagonist as well as his suggested civil persona are more hazardous, the plotline is more gripping, skull mask evolves into a manipulative villain able to exploit people's weaknesses to his own gain while also being a real threat who would not stop to anything (including murdering entire cities) to achieve his personal goals, and so forth. Also, if you're a Kamen Rider fan like me, you will notice several elements that made its way to that IP like the prototype of henshin belt, some locations which are reminescent of those typical of the Kamen Rider - particularly the Heisei species - and other stuff like the titular character driving on the motorbike used for the intro. All in all, a very enjoyable flick that has aged better than 99% of the modern/contemporary movies from the big american corporation$ and the entirety of the Showa Kamen Rider era prior to Kamen Rider Black IMHO. I just wish the other movies in this series were available with a fansub, but whatever.