Inframan

When I was a kid, the cable television show that fascinated me the most was "Night Flight." "Night Flight" was a couple of HOURS of music videos, rare movies (condensed), interviews, short films, animation, oddities, and what-have-yous that detailed the best and worst of 1987 or thereabouts. (It actually ran from the early Eighties to the early Nineties in various forms, and is still streaming.)

"Night Flight" had one comic show called "Dynaman," which was a Japanese superhero-and-rubber-monster series that had been re-dubbed with hilarious, ironic, high-camp dialogue. I don't know if the equally great Chinese "Inframan" ever played on "Night Flight," but if it didn't, it really should have.

"Inframan" is a wonky Chinese kiddie film based on Japanese tokusatsu live-action superhero rave-'em-ups wherein kaiju-style guys in rubber monster suits stomp around phony-looking sets battling with live-action effects that are dated, obsolete, and utterly laughable. In other words, it's great.

A little Chinese woman in a big silver helmet with horns, the undeniably dominating Princess Demon Elzebub (Terry Liu), walks around her underground comic-book lair cracking a whip and commanding black-suited, skull-faced mutant minions in biker helmets (with horns) that put me vaguely in the mind of "Psychomania."

Much like every other villainous comic-book baddie fronting the invasionary force of an evil empire, she is setting out to destroy the Earth—or at least Hong Kong—with her retinue of environmentally devastating rubber-suited monster freaks, all of which look exactly like what they really are: paid stunt guys wearing heavy costumes that wouldn't pass muster at a mall opening in Des Moines. (Of course, malls, much like this movie, are now obsolete relics of a largely forgotten past, but I just thought the line was kind of funny. So chaw on that, Doodles Weaver!)

A scientist, not specifically mad, has developed a super suit or super man or super robot or something super that flies and looks mysteriously like the exterior of whatever toy they were trying to pawn off back then to impressionable little kids wowed by all the high-flung action, color, costumes, sets, bad dialogue, and absurdist charm of this camp cult cinematic atrocity.

As this film has no plot upon which to hang much analysis, I'll have to defer, for a few moments, to an unimpeachable online source that can always be relied upon for fairness, accuracy, and truth as to what actually occurred here. (I've slept and slipped into a psychogenic fugue state since then.)

Princess Elzebub (a.k.a. Princess Dragon Mom) was lying dormant for ten million years. She must have woken up with a helluva hangover because, right away, she emerges intent on destroying mankind, rendering several Chinese cities flaming wrecks.

Scientist Professor Liu Ying-de (Wang Hsieh) creates the bionic superhero Inframan as an antidote to all of this destruction. Inframan, played by Danny Lee, is a silver-and-red-suited kung-fu superhero mangaka's wet dream of stylized chop-socky superpowered fighting abilities. He quickly flies to the rescue, defeating slavering reptilian and robotic super-monster surprises such as Long-Haired Monster and Fire Dragon.

It's all zany Godzilla-level goodness: high-octane high kicks and low-tech special effects, with armor-clad robot no-goodniks doing such things as spinning their heads off their bodies and other wondrous sights. Destruction, devastation, chop-socky arm-fu, and other neato tricks erupt from the bowels of this peanut-gallery sci-fi unmasterpiece.

The Prof, along with his daughter, is kidnapped by Princess Elzebub Dragon Mom, and she tries to force them into creating her very own Inframan to add to her collection. No dice, and so she freezes both of them. Or attempts to. Or something. I'm having trouble remembering all of this because, as noted previously, there was all sorts of action and, as Joe Bob used to say, "Absolutely no plot to get in the way of the story." Or the fun.

In the end, Inframan wins. I know you're shocked and shaking your horned, helmeted heads in utter disbelief.

Life can sometimes be that way.

Inframan 1975 (The Super Inframan) HD *Full-Length, updated

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