Original title: Tie chao ren
This hilariously incoherent giant robot movie is of uncertain parentage. It has a plot of sorts though it’s hard to discern. Indeed any attempt to relate what it’s actually about is probably doomed to failure but we start with a potted history of the ill-fated Flight 19 which disappeared over the Bermuda Triangle in 1945 before seeing what might have caused it – a giant robot of course, next seen destroying a passenger ship, the only survivor of which grows up harbouring an understandable resentment against the robot and sets out to help destroy it. After that the plot takes off in half a dozen different directions, none of them making any sense (and none of them having anything to do with the Bermuda Triangle which is completely forgotten about after the first couple of minutes) but it has something to do with a race of aliens led by the Coordinator, a man with extraordinary, gravity-defying, colour-changing hair, and their plan to invade the Earth with a whole army of different robots.
The reason for all this incoherence is that The Iron Superman is a cut-and-shunt job made up from bits and pieces – mainly big action scenes, all that tedious story nonsense having been cast to one side – from the Japanese tokusatsu television series Super Robot Mach Baron (1974-1975). The first clue comes when the “super weapon” spoken about in hushed tones in the opening minutes turns out to be a large plastic robot piloted by a team of good guys which has the letters MB emblazoned on its “belt buckle”. These youthful adventurers are fighting the increasingly belligerent aliens though if it’s ever explained who they actually are, how they’re funded or where they got the robot from it passed me by completely. The main bulk of the story begins with two characters discovering the “super weapon”, “them” and how to kill them but doesn’t bother to explain what the hell’s going on – and by the time the film just stops abruptly with no end credits in sight we’re still much the wiser.
It’s not clear who was behind this ransacking of the original television series. Various sources suggest Thailand, Taiwan or, the most likely culprit, Hong Kong. Whoever it was simply snipped out all the action scenes, shot some new material featuring vaguely lookalike local actors to stand in for the characters in the Japanese actors and hoped that no-one would notice. They probably got the footage cheap as it’s not the best known of tokusatsu (live action films and television shows that make extensive use of special effects) shows despite being a sequel to the earlier Super Robot Red Baron (1973-1974). Certainly the original show looks like it was shot on the cheap with terrible special effects and goofy looking alien robots. The effect of the “super weapon” going into action is bizarre and hard to describe – it’s shot through a sort of prism that makes multiple copies of the machine appear on screen as it goes through strange and inexplicable contortions before its head spins around to allow it access to huge arsenal of weapons.
The operator’s favourite fighting technique however is the seemingly never named robot’s detachable fist that flies through the air and clobbers its opponent. This must have been quite the regular feature in the show as we see it over and over again throughout the film version. And it’s not the only thing that gets over-used – the various directors are madly in love with their zoom lens which must have been completely worn out by the time the 26 episodes were all shot. The music too is repetitive, mainly consisting of a single piece of guitar, horn and synth heavy jauntiness that gets trotted out with minor variations every few seconds.
There’s a noticeable Gerry Anderson feel to the effects sequences – Anderson’s shows were always popular in Japan – with their almost ritualistic launch sequences and emphasis on technology. The effects are nowhere near as good as even the 60s Anderson shows like Stingray (1964-1965) or Thunderbirds (1965-1966), both of which are extensively mimicked throughout The Iron Superman. But looking forward, one has to wonder if the makers of Pacific Rim (2013) were familiar with the film and/or television incarnation as there are marked similarities between the two. The Iron Superman may be utter rubbish but it’s still a lot more fun than Guillermo Del Toro’s hugely disappointing blockbuster.
The newly shot footage is a riot of mismatched film stock and ridiculous attempts at humour. The alien forces are represented as American footballers, complete with exploding balls and the main good guy, Inspector Chang (Paul Chun) is assisted by a comic relief sidekick who flies into battle aboard a motorcycle suspended from a small hot air balloon.
The Iron Superman is utter madness from beginning to end, a film that leaps about all over the place like a sugar-overdosed toddler, making a lot of noise but never giving its baffled audience a chance to work out what’s going on. But it’s certainly never dull. Never knowingly coherent either, but it’s certainly not dull. The version available on Amazon Prime as of Autumn 2019 is curiously dubbed into German and carries the title is translated as Super Rider (though the actual title card reads called Roboter der Sterne) which just adds to the weirdness. The English subtitles are a riot in themselves (“You’re a meany!” the robot pilot shouts at the bad guys at one point and later it’s observed that “this guy must be lubricated”) though it’s likely that you’ll give up reading them and trying to make sense of all this very quickly. In Spain the film was shown as Mazinger-Z, el robot de las estrellas despite having nothing whatsoever to do with the Majingâ Zetto (1972-1974) animated TV show or its many spin-offs and sequels.
The EOFFTV Review 