THE SUPER INFRAMAN
Starring: Danny Lee, Terry Liu and Hsieh Wang
Directed by: Shan Hua
Written by: Kuang Ni
Rated: PG
Running Time: 1hr 30mins
“You are bound, as this writer did, to laugh and stifle your disbelief at some of the scenes, but that is the whole point of such a daft concept and film, that to its’ credit has more fun per second than a lot of the modern high-concept and big-budgeted blockbusters have, where a lot of them try and take themselves a little too seriously for some people’s liking.” John Higgins – Starburst Magazine
When people talk about the film THE SUPER INFRAMAN (called only INFRA-MAN in the US), they like to refer to it as a guilty pleasure. As a matter of fact, the way I first discovered the film back in 1989 was while watching a rerun episode of AT THE MOVIES about guilty pleasures (Check it out here). Roger Ebert called the film a “berserk masterpiece,” while Gene Siskel agreed, describing it as “ridiculous” but in an extremely positive way. Now, the definition of a guilty pleasure, as I understand it, is something so bad that a person feels guilty admitting they enjoy it. With this in mind, I must now admit that I personally don’t consider THE SUPER INFRAMAN a guilty pleasure at all. Do I understand why people would categorize it this way…? Yes. But, for me, the film’s so-bad-it’s-good qualities are ultimately what make it so much fun to watch. Honestly, I believe that because it’s so entertaining, there’s no reason to feel guilty about enjoying it and I am proud to say, “I love this film and think everyone should watch it at least once… well, actually multiple times.”
It’s a film that wastes no time getting started. In the first ten minutes alone, a dragon-like monster swoops down from the sky, lands in front of a school bus full of singing children and vanishes into thin air. This is followed immediately by the earth splitting open and swallowing the bus and its driver; the kids narrowly escaping. Then, if that isn’t enough, the film cuts to a whole city in flames as the residents, many with suitcases in hand, flee to safety. If this feels like enough, there’s more… It isn’t long before the earth begins to shake, and the mountains begin to crumble, revealing a dragon’s head buried in the rocks. Almost immediately, the female villain, Demon Princess Elizebub (credited as Glacier Queen on some translations and given the more interesting name Princess Dragon Mom in the English dub), appears with all her threats. She claims she is the new ruler of the world and that she has caused all the disasters through her powers. Humankind must now submit to her or she will wipe them out. All of this in the first 10 minutes. Of course, it’s now that the plot really kicks in because this looks like a job for the new Kung Fu superhero everyone already knows, even though he’s never been introduced to them. He’s a creation of Professor Liu, who, using computer technology, transforms one of the Science Headquarters most reliable officers, Lei Ma, a man who, when first introduced, just happens to be saving a baby from a burning building, into Infra Man. He’s a hero with all sorts of special powers, depending on what the situation calls for and it’s now up to Infra Man to battle Princess Elizebub and her army of mutant monsters to save humanity.
If you’re thinking that all of this sounds incredibly ridiculous… You’d be right. Fortunately, while this can usually be a bad sign, resulting in a horrible, thrown-together, low-budget sci-fi mess, it just isn’t the case with THE SUPER INFRAMAN. It just works. Think old-fashioned Saturday morning fare… Sid and Marty Kroft stuff. There’s even a moment where one of Princess Elizebub’s monsters, along with a brainwashed slave, attempts to blow up a satellite dish with a heap of dynamite, big enough to make Wile E. Coyote proud. Everything feels specifically designed to be enjoyed in a campy sort of way. If you go into this film with a serious mindset, thinking you’re going to watch the next IRON MAN, you’d be heavily mistaken. You have to be willing to accept it for the campy fun that it is. From the crazy script that makes very little sense at times and the cheap, thrown-together costume design, to the lowest of low-budget special F/X and high school-play-quality sets, everything just works. Director Hua Shan and writer Ni Kuang seem to know what they are going for and how they want the audience to react… with a response of, “What the hell did I just watch?”… and they nail it.
The best characters in the film consist of Princess Elzebub’s army of monsters. There’s no CGI here… This film was made long before that was a thing, but even if they had the option, CGI would have really hurt the film’s entertainment value. There’s no attempt to create realistic monsters at all, allowing it to become the perfect example of mindless fun. Each monster consists of a group of talented stuntmen who have mastered the art of Kung Fu. They are dressed in rubber costumes that are no better than some you might see at an average 8-year-old’s birthday party. The heads are bulky masks with mouths that don’t move, even though the monsters are speaking in complete sentences. That’s right, the monsters are speaking in complete sentences. Go with it… I promise you’ll have a blast. The monsters, though described as coming from a prehistoric time and frozen by the ice age until Princess Elizebub brought them back, know perfect speech and, oh yeah, their incredible martial-arts moves allow them to go toe-to-toe with Infra Man.
The one aspect of THE SUPER INFRAMAN that is taken seriously is the action. The attack on the Science Headquarters by a plant monster and his giant tentacle arms is a lot of fun and really well done, but it’s the fight scenes that really shine. Incredibly well-staged by master martial-arts choreographer Tadashi Nishimoto, the stunt performers and lead actor, Danny Lee, hit every move. The most impressive aspect is how they can do it in full costume. Anyone who has ever been in an outfit like those being utilized here knows that just walking straight can be a chore. In this film, the monsters and Infra Man are involved in some complicated fight sequences. With that, they never stumble through their moves as they hit every punch, jump and kick with a perfection that Hollywood seems to have mostly forgotten (I’m not talking about you, JOHN WICK).
One last note. Usually, when it comes to foreign language films, I’ll recommend watching them in the original language; in this case, Mandarin. Infra-Man is a case where it’s just as much fun watching the English dub. The mismatched, out-of-synch mouths and forces VO performances only add to the craziness. Then there’s the fact that much of the dialogue doesn’t match between the versions, making them two different movies at times… good companion pieces to one another. Watch the English version with the subtitles on and you will be surprised by the differences. Some of the names don’t match at all. I already mentioned Princess Elzebub, but the lead character’s name is Lei Ma in the Mandarin version and Rayma in the English… Witch-Eye in Mandarin (named after the fact that she has eyes in her hands. That’s right, THE INFRAMAN did it over 30 years before PAN’S LABERYNTH) is called She Demon in English. The dialogue is also very different, and to be honest, the English dub is sometimes better. That being said, when deciding which version to watch, the viewer must know that either works; it’s just a matter of preference… I say, “Watch Both.”
Watch THE SUPER INFRAMAN
in Mandarin – in English
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