KAPOW! EXPLOSIONS! PUNCHING MONSTERS! IT’S A NEW B-MOVIE ENEMA!

Welcome back, dear readers. This week, we have a bit of a treat. We’re going to look at 1975’s The Super Infra-Man! This comes to us from Hong Kong and is also known as just Infra-Man or literally translated from Cantonese as Chinese Superman. Now, you might think that literal translation means this is a Shaw Brothers Production ripoff of America’s avatar of DC Comics (no, Batman, not you), Superman, right?

Wellll… It actually isn’t. This is much more influenced by the Japanese TV shows that use tokusatsu. Tokusatsu is the term given to Japanese productions that are live-action AND use a great deal of special effects. The term had been part of Japanese theater dating back to the early 20th century. However, it went big time in the 50s. That’s when the mega superstar, world-famous Godzilla stomped into Tokyo and theaters all over the world. Eiji Tsuburaya was more or less the godfather of tokusatsu techniques. He designed many of Toho’s early monsters, including Godzilla. He then launched the television series Ultra Q, which borrowed costumes from Toho. That would later lead to the various Ultraman series. Ultraman then gave birth to another tokusatsu classic, Kamen Rider.

The Super Inframan is more inspired by those tokusatsu series than the fella in the blue tights and red boots.

Shan Hua directed this film. The Super Inframan is only the second film he directed. But that launched him into a career of many more action films for the next 20 or so years. The writer of the film was incredibly prolific. Kuang Ni was already a 10-year vet of Hong Kong films. He was a staunch anti-Communist. This script came near the first half of his career, but he had already had dozens (many times over plural) scripts turned into films. In all, Kuang Ni wrote over 230 films. Probably the most recognizable names involved with the movie are, of course, the Shaw Brothers. They produced it under Shaw Brothers Studio with monster costumes provided by Ekisu Productions, who were pretty well known for the Toei superhero flicks on TV around that same time.

Then, The Super Inframan got released. About a year later, Joseph Brenner came along and bought the rights to distribute it in the United States. Once it was brought over here and began running the circuits, posters with the Superman S logo could be seen on some posters. A tagline mentioned “bionics,” which was a direct reference to the popular TV show The Six Million Dollar Man. It found a lot of admiring fans – one you might be surprised to hear treats this as a wonderful guilty pleasure.

I had no idea what this movie was until I saw James Rolfe feature it in one of his daily Monster Madness videos one October. I then went out and found clips of this bonkers flick. This is one of those movies you’d think would be too strange to be consumed lovingly by anyone. Well… as Hunter S. Thompson once said, Inframan may just be one of God’s own prototypes – too weird to live, yet too rare to die. That guy I mentioned who called this one of his guilty pleasures? It’s not Quentin Tarantino (because, of course, he loves this movie). It’s none other than Roger Ebert.

Ebert wrote about how the movie looks good. I mean, it looks silly, but it looks good for the silliness of this movie. He loved the preposterousness of everything on screen. He almost looked at this as a celebration of what you should want out of these movies – over-the-top fun and action and explosions, and just a great time engaging with a movie. He even went so far as to praise the Shaw Brothers by stating that a little light will go out in the world if they ever stopped making movies.

I don’t think I can add anything to that, so let’s get weird, baby!

The movie opens with a bus full of school children on the road. Everything is going great until suddenly a strong wind kicks up. Then, a giant winged creature flies overhead and lands on the road ahead of them next to a cliff. The creature merges into the road and cracks it wide open to the point that the teacher has to hurry the kids out of the bus before it and the driver fall into the crack. In a city elsewhere, a giant explosion and fire rock the whole place, destroying it utterly.

Later, at Science Headquarters, a place that surprisingly took four years to come up with a name for, world-renowned Professor Liu Ying-de arrives to a bunch of reporters asking him about the recent strange things that have occurred. They wonder if these sudden appearances of monsters mean the world is about to end. Professor Ying-de is no reactionary. He doesn’t have enough information to make a guess at the cause of all these monsters.

Worse, inside Science Headquarters, communications are being blocked. This cooould be because their high-tech communication technology is just a bunch of blinking and beeping plastic spheres that I’m pretty sure means that 1) the Nestene Consciousness is going to dispatch a shitload of Autons to track down but 2) the Third Doctor just has to get his brain bits back to working right after his forced regeneration so 3) we should be in pretty good shape.

(Look at me flexing my Classic Doctor Who knowledge by dropping a Spearhead from Space reference.)

The Professor gets a printout about the monsters and looks it over. Just then, Mt. Devil, a volcano that hasn’t erupted in thousands of years, erupted. Just as the Professor is about to figure out what could cause a dormant volcano to suddenly erupt, an earthquake strikes, rocking the Science Headquarters, uh, headquarters. Now, I want to propose that maybe the reason why Mt. Devil erupted is the fact that it’s called Mt. Devil, but what do I know?

Actually, I’m not too far off from that truth. Mt. Devil is the home to the above freaky chick’s home castle/base place. Blondie with the horny helmet is Demon Princess Elzebub. She beams out a message saying that she’s taken over the Earth. Thus, if she’s in charge now, she says all the humans will be her slaves. Demon Mommy also says that she’s not going to give us weak humans any more notice. She’s spoken, and it would be in our own best interest that we just surrender and let her step on us. She said that the tragedies that she’s already visited upon the surface world are pretty weak shit compared to what she can do.

What does the Professor do? He asks for a computer printout about Demon Mommy.

I fucking love that. No, I’m serious. Somewhere, there’s a computer that has data about this woman who, before this very day, hasn’t been seen to have any data collected on, but, you know what? That one fuckin’ computer at Science Headquarters has all her backstory, what shampoo she uses, her favorite color of lip gloss, how high her heels are, and what the cone size is for her titty bra.

But I know you might be thinking, “Oh, Geoff… Maybe she has been seen somewhere before! And there is more data about her than we know!” And to that, let me say that fuck you, no there isn’t. I know this because the Professor goes to a room with some leaders and authorities and shit and tells them that Demon Mommy is, like, 10 million years old. She commands monsters, most of which roamed the Earth before the Ice Age.

That boggles the mind even further. Somewhere, there exists data and historical accounts of Demon Mommy and her monsters from MILLIONS of years ago. It’s been stored, and it got spit out through a printer at Science Headquarters. He then presents this information to this table of people and they all just sit around nodding and saying shit like, “Yeah that sounds about right.” We didn’t even know dinosaurs had stupid looking feathers until, like, I dunno, 17 minutes ago. How the hell would we get anything out of a “computer printout” about Demon Mommy?

Anyway… Demon Mommy calls her goons together to basically tell them that she gave us pathetic humans a choice: be slaves or be dead. The monsters are excited because she said she’s opened the Earth up. That means it’s time to go out and do some monster business.

The Professor says they need some extra science to finally win the day. He leaves the headquarters under his trusty Lieutenant Zhu Qi-quang’s command. He orders Lei Ma to follow him to the Professor’s underground lab. Lei Ma was seen in a brief scene earlier when superhero man by going around and saving people from burning buildings and whatnot. He got recalled to Science Headquarters, seemingly, for a massive request. The Professor shows him what he’s been working on with the Inframan technology. Basically, it takes a guy and puts circuits and shit into his body as well as replace some of his organs with machine bits. Realizing that he’s a hero guy, the Professor wanted to show him this stuff. The Professor doesn’t have to ask the awkward question if Lei Ma is willing to undergo the process to become Inframan. He just steps up and volunteers for it – even if he dies or never gets his humanity back.

Well, that was easy. That could have been a real awkward situation, right? Like, what if you asked and whoever you brought down here just looks at all the controls and responds, “I ain’t for no robot shit!” He then says, “Deuces!” He then throws up the deuces and walks out.

What if he did say no, though? I mean it. Was Wei Ma the first guy ever asked to become Inframan? If he wasn’t, what did the Professor do when he buried the lede on what he’s been working on for so long, brought the candidate down into the basement lab, and asked only to be rejected? Is this the kind of secret lab that requires death if you aren’t going to be useful to the Professor? Is there a pile of dead Science Headquarters hotshots over in a corner from rejecting the Professor? Is there a cell they are kept in and made to battle each other for sustenance while the Professor goes out to find the next rube to try to get them to agree to this transformation?

If any of the above is accurate, does that mean that Lei Ma is kind of a shit Science Headquarters guy because it took him this long to find a guy who would agree to be Inframan? Are we doomed because Inframan is a moron? Eh, whatever.

While Lei Ma gets made up to become Inframan, Demon Mommy gets a look at her soldiers and picks two, Muckman and Melty Tentacle Head, to go out and strike against Science Headquarters to kill the Professor. These two just love their jobs. They skip away together while Melty Tentacle Head bops about and waves his tentacles around. Muckman just seems to be loving life. He’s so ready to kill someone for Demon Mommy.

Muckman first attacks a guy named Zhu Ming. He tosses the guy’s car over, causing it to explode. However, Zhu Ming got out first but was quickly found and knocked out by Muckman and captured. Meanwhile, Melty Tentacle Head burrows into the ground and takes root. He then grows his tentacles into giant vines and starts wreaking havoc on Science Headquarters. He’s picking guys up and tossing them around, smashing consoles, pushing guys up against electrified fields and frying them, the whole nine yards. The attack knocks out the power at the Science Headquarters, nearly making it impossible for the Professor to finish the operation on Lei Ma.

But it all works out and Inframan is born!

Luckily, one of the MANY powers of Inframan is the ability to see through walls and hear things happening one room over. So he is quick to realize some nasty shit with tentacles is going on in the control room. Knowing tentacles is for the Japanese and this is some Chinese stuff, he goes into battle to beat that tentacle motherfucker into nothingness. That handy dandy X-ray vision allows him to find where the creature’s heart is and attack it, making it grow back to normal size. In the ensuing battle, there’s teleporting by the monster, the monster has explosive acidic blood, and grenades from Inframan.

Elsewhere, Zhu Ming is delivered to Demon Mommy. She wants this guy to do what she says, but he’s not entirely into the idea. So, Demon Mommy orders her sexy ass #2 to brainwash the poor son of a bitch. They release him back to the Science Headquarters. They all can see he’s got darkened eyes and something is clearly wrong with him. I mean… They knew he was captured. His ability to escape and return acting strange seems a bit too convenient. The Professor is just like, “Nah, let him sleep this off. I’m sure he’s fine.”

He is not fine. He wakes up, attacks a guy, and then snoops around for Demon Mommy. Zhu Ming finds the Professor’s super secret safe and nabs the blueprints for Inframan. Luckily, Zhu Ming is found by Sgt. Lu Xiao-long, played by motherfuckin’ Bruce Le. Zhu Ming runs away but is chased by Xiao-long, and the two get into a bitchin’ 70s motorcycle chase and fist fight. Unfortunately, Xiao-long runs into Man-Spider and some of Demon Mommy’s goons.

And would you take a look at that guy? Man-Spider is so fucking rad. I want a figure of him right now. Right now. Come on, Bandai! Where’s the Inframan vinyl figure line? This shit is glorious.

Bruce Le has to fight some goons and Man-Spider while Zhu Ming and some other goons return to Demon Mommy. There’s a bunch of Science guys trying to ride to the rescue of Xiao-long. They get there just in time to join the fray. Man-Spider has a power to throw explosive (by the way, every fucking thing in this movie is explosive) webs that encase people in web bubbles (that’s amazing). He spits yellow piss out of his mouth that also explodes. Lei Ma transforms into Inframan and starts laying the smackdown all over the place. He even uses some of his own explosive powers to free his comrades from the web bubbles of Man-Spider.

But, then, all of a sudden, Man-Spider is gone, and in comes Harry Bull. Harry Bull has horns that fire explosive lasers and hands that fire, uh… explosive lasers. He even gets a hit on Inframan’s face. His explosive lasers are so explosive, he can even make water explode. But Inframan gets the best of him. He knocks Harry Bull into the water and explodes him with his own explosive lasers.

That’s when we find out that Man-Spider is still fighting other Science guys! So, Inframan goes back over there to help them out. But, again, Man-Spider is the best. He’s like, “Fuck all y’all!” and grows super giant!

Now, you’d think this is a problem, but Inframan also has super-growth powers too. Like Ultraman, he rises to the occasion and starts tossing Man-Spider around until he chucks the arrogant arachnid into a building that explodes and reduces him back down to normal size. While Inframan is still super large, he squishes Man-Spider into a messy pile of red bits and green goo.

Demon Mommy is none too pleased about Inframan constantly killing her monsters. So, she takes a look at those schematics that her evil spy stole. As her sexy sidekick flips through the pictures of the blueprints, she suddenly sees something that is promising… Yes… She can attack Inframan’s hands, and that will be what will give her the upper hand. See what I did there? His hands are his weakness, I guess. And attacking them would give her the upper hand. Yeah?

Anyway, the Professor might be pretty smart, but his kids are idiots. Mei-mei is his oldest daughter. She seems to mostly have her head on straight. Lin-lin is a little girl who wants to someday be Infrawoman, and won’t shut up about it. The middle kid, a brother named Xiao Hu, is the biggest idiot of them all. He notices a cave near the base of Science Headquarters and decides to just go inside and explore. He gets captured by Muckman and Zhu Ming. This forces Mei-mei to go in after him. That gets them both captured, and tied up to be blown up by the dynamite they’ve left to try to knock out the power to Science Headquarters.

It’s not so much that I find these characters stupid and annoying. Mostly, they aren’t, except for that dumb guy going into the cave when he should have listened to his sister and not gone inside, but they kind of just appeared out of nowhere and became part of the movie. Anyway, despite being foiled by Inframan, who comes to save the day for the two teens, Demon Mommy orders Muckman to capture the Professor. Muckman breaks in just after the Professor installed these “Thunderbolt Fists” onto Inframan. Basically, what they are is a pair of gloves that can shoot out and deliver a massive blow to whatever they are aimed at.

Now, you’d think Muckman would not fuck this up. He’s been pretty much the most successful monster Demon Mommy has. He’s also one that Inframan has not yet destroyed. So what does he do? He kidnaps Mei-mei and not the Professor. I guess that part of the script where she gave a direct order to kidnap the Professor doesn’t really matter. It all works out, though, because Demon Mommy tells the Professor she has his daughter and he needs to show up at her place tomorrow… alone. Annnd he does so.

So… yeah. Don’t worry about fucking up that direct order now, Muckman. You got the Professor after all. As a quick aside, too, check out that design work on the outside of Demon Mommy’s lair. That looks so freaking cool.

Demon Mommy flexes a bit to the Professor. She allows him to reunite with his daughter. To basically prove she means business, she uses this thing she has on Zhu Ming to basically lasso him with an energy rope thing and toss him into a hole in the floor that drops him into molten lava. She tells the Professor that his daughter will be next unless he does what she wants him to.

When she demands an answer from the Professor, he’s like, “Yeah, nah… Fuck off, freaky chick!” He is standing his ground by saying that she has to be stopped. It’s foolish for her to keep on thinking that she can conquer the human race.

Demon Mommy reveals that she has all his old plans for Inframan, but he tells her that’s just what she has… old plans. He’s improved Inframan since those plans were drawn up. He is invincible and can’t be destroyed by her monsters.

And that’s when Inframan arrives to bring the battle to Demon Mommy and her monsters and goons. She sends Muckman out to destroy Inframan. But Inframan doesn’t even need to turn into Inframan to get past Muckman, he just runs him over with his motorcycle.

The next monster to try to stop Lei Ma from getting into the lair is Mustache Dragon. He mostly just shoots fire and has a cookie duster that would make Ned Flanders envious.

He jumps and lunges and flips around while trying to slash at Lei Ma. Muckman returns to help his 70s porn star buddy out with this pesky human. Finally, Lei Ma decides to Inframan out and really starts to get down to business. Something we were never told about Inframan is that he apparently needs sunlight for his full power set to work. That certainly was not something I was aware of when Demon Mommy decided to join the fray to help her monsters. She makes the proud declaration that she will now take away Inframan’s power and does a thing that blacks out the sun.

But it really doesn’t matter because he ends up defeating the monsters anyway and gets into Demon Mommy’s lair.

Inframan ends up kicking the shit out of Muckman to the point that he melts into, well, muck. He then gets past Mustache Dragon by using his X-ray vision to spot him when he melts into the ground and reappears elsewhere. When he gets into the lair, he is immediately trapped by Demon Mommy’s laser lasso and chucked into the lava pit. Thinking she has defeated her enemy, she tells the Professor that he’ll make a new Inframan, but not one that serves humans, one that serves monsters. When the Professor says he will never assist her, she puts him and his daughter “on ice” which is simply a room that gets super fucking cold to force them to assist her.

Now, of course, Super Inframan is not dead. He stopped his descent into lava and crawled his way out. He starts fighting goons and Demon Mommy’s sexy sidekick, whom I will refer to as Eyeball Hands. She’s trying to shoot him with lasers while He’s tossing goons around that make them explode (of course there are explosions here). She also tries shooting him with her eyeball hand lasers. People are flying around everywhere… It’s a madhouse.

When Eyeball Hands attempted to shoot Inframan with her eyeball hands, he counters, which causes her hands to be severed. He then kicks her into the lava pit to her death. I always said she was hot, now she really is.

Basically, Inframan has gained the upper hand here. He uses those nifty X-ray goggles of his to find out where his friends are so he can free them from the ice. However, as he tried to kick his way into the ice that had them both trapped, a pair of robots with morning stars for hands and retractable heads that they can use to headbutt things attack. Their opening salvo? One of them headbutts Inframan in the dick.

Eventually, Demon Mommy arrives to tell Inframan he can’t defeat them, so he might as well join up. They have cookies and a pretty decent dental plan. Inframan thinks about it for a second and then continues on with kicking ass. She does trick our hero, though, by luring him into a corridor that blasts him with extremely cold air that freezes him to the point that he can only move very slowly. Demon Mommy once again offers he join her or he will remain locked in ice forever.

Inframan is able to thaw himself out thanks to something he remembers the Professor telling him that must have been removed from the final cut of the movie – if he uses five missiles, he will be able to break out of a deep freeze. That’s handy. He does it and then destroys the two robots that headbutted him in the dick. He then resumes fighting Demon Mommy in her demon form.

He slices her head off. Another one grows back. He slices her head off. Another one grows back. He slices her head off. Another one grows back. This goes on for about 25 minutes before he takes a step closer and fires again, completely destroying her. He frees the Professor and his daughter, and they escape as Demon Mommy’s lair explodes and collapses. As they sail away from Mt. Devil, Lin-lin asks her papa if the monsters will ever return. Mei-mei says that as long as they have Inframan, they will always be protected. Lei Ma gives a strain smile as he stares off into the distance as if asking, “Holy shit, what did I get myself into with this gig?”

This movie is goddamn amazing. It’s terrible in all the right, fun, perfect ways. It knows it’s bonkers, and it takes the wheel and yanks it over to steer into that dizzying spinout that leaves you chuckling and cheering for what happens in front of your eyeballs. This is the type of movie that would be just randomly on the TV in some scene in a completely different movie, and some guy is just watching it as if he’s watching some great piece of art. It’s the type of thing that would then distract the viewer of that movie, trying to figure out what the hell is on that character’s TV. It’s the type of movie that you could just have playing on a loop during a party. You have your friends over. You’re engaged in drinking, or conversation, or listening to music, but you have the TV on, and you just let Inframan play. When the recreational herbs break out, then you tune in more deeply and are just swept away by the insanity of this movie.

The greatest thing about this is that it’s a full ass movie. It’s not some cheap, 75-minute movie. Oh no. It’s nearly a full 90 minutes. One of the things it does is front-load the movie with a bunch of monster stuff. Inframan doesn’t make his first appearance until just under 30 minutes in. We don’t see him a second time to do more heroic shit until another 12 or so minutes later. All that leads to a frenzied final 20 minutes and a final non-stop battle in Demon Mommy’s lair that lasts a full 10 minutes. And that final battle is insane. Like I said, it’s all explosions and flips and lasers and goons and Inframan fucking shit up. It’s glorious and really saves some energy earlier on to really give those final 20 minutes, the 10 outside the lair and the 10 inside the lair all the energy left in the tank of the movie. It’s truly a masterpiece.

If you want to see that full, crazy, 10-minute action scene, I got you covered.

So I’m pretty much exhausted after getting 90 minutes of Inframan shoved down my eye sockets. The only way I can think about that is to watch something that is surely quite boring. Turns out I have just the remedy that will help lower my heartrate. Join me next week as I finally conclude the Xtro “”””trilogy”””” with Xtro3: Watch the Skies.

Yay.