31 Days of Cheese Day 17 - Super Infra-Man

You may have gathered that my taste in films does not tend towards introspective character studies, or a quiet indie films about domestic life in the suburbs. Hell I lived that. Watching that just does not appeal to me in the slightest. My taste is a just bit different.

I can’t give a better example of that than today’s slice of cheese – 1975’s Super Infra-Man.

This 1975 production by Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers (makers of countless kung fu films during this era) was an attempt to do a super hero film in the style of Japan’s Super Ultraman, Starman and the Kamen Rider series.

And oh my do they ever. This film is gleefully over the top, featuring absurd looking monsters, elaborate but at the same time cheesy sets and manic fight scenes which are, after all, main order of business in a film like this.

The story has the suddenly attacked by one Demon Princess Elzebub. (called Princess Dragon Mom in the English dub. I’ll be talking about the original Chinese version mostly. I like my crazy straight up.) who is, and it’s not really clear here, a 20 million year old entity from the ice age, a space creature or some kind of demon/devil the film doesn’t really make it clear and obviously doesn’t care in the least. Suffice to say the at the start of the film the world is menaced by a Chinese woman with long blonde hair, a gold helmet with horns, insanely long fingernails, wearing what looks like an a bra made of metal carrying a whip. And when necessity arises she can turn into a rubber suited flying dragon that Breathes fire. Got that?

To aid her in her conquest of the earth are Witch Eye (a woman with eyes in her palms which is pretty disturbing to look at) and a number of monsters with names like Mutant Drill (he has a drill on one hand) The Plant Monster, Fire Monster (Breathes fire nach), the Spider Monster along with some guy that looks like the Addams family’s cousin It as imagined by someone on acid, and two robot looking things that shoot their heads and a mace like arm at their foes because they are connected to the robots by some sort of advanced slinky spring set up. In addition, she has scads of Skeleton Warriors who wear black with a sort white vest thing that looks like ribs, along with black motor cycle helmets with horns and a skull face. They are all armed with spears that have a globe just below the spear point. It turns out that the globe is explosive – we find that out mostly by their foes grabbing the spears and tossing them at the Skelton warriors and then they blow up. It’s kind of a stupid idea really.

Opposing them is a super science research institute run by one Professor Lui (the army which you think would be all over something like this is nowhere to be found the entire film). The staff all wear silver and blue jumpsuits and ride about on motor cycles and are, in general, utterly useless except at getting their ass kicked by the invaders. Realizing that the human race has less than a snowball’s chance in hell as things currently stand, Professor Lui asks one of the staff, Rayma, to undergo a complicated, if confusing, procedure to become Infra-man with powers and abilities and the rest. He does and well off we go.

The rest of the film consists of fights, kung fu yells and things blowing up, as events lead up to the final confrontation between the Infra-man and the forces of the evil princess on Mount Devil (you know just once I’d like to see the evil villain headquartered in fluffy bunny meadow or something like that, just for variety).

One of the conventions of kung fu films is that the hero yells out the name of the attack he is using, as he uses it and we have that here. The Infra-man goes about yelling things like “lethal kick!:” “Solar Ray!” “Lightning Fist” and so on as he does such things. It’s a hoot.

Also they use the same transformation sequence each time Rayma becomes Infra-man. While this does save filming costs and such, at about the 3^rd time it comes one you’re like “we GET IT, just get on with the kicking okay?”

One of the reasons I love this film, aside from its amazing silliness are the weird side touches, for example, as part of the plot twistings, the Professor is taken to Mount Devil, and part of this journey is by boat. The boat, a fairly large Cabin Cruiser is tricked out with demon horns, skulls, flags and other evil entity what not. When I see this in the film, I always wonder, did they bring that with them? Or did they get it as a special order after they started to conquer the world? “Why yes Princess, your boat will be ready Tuesday. Yes, I think you’ll be pleased, it looks just the way you ordered it.”

Don’t worry too much about details when watching this, cause this film doesn’t . Just sit back and experience the madness. A wonderful guilty pleasure.

Enjoy with your favorite Chinese takeout.