FIVE RIDERS VS KING DARK/HANUMAN AND THE FIVE RIDERS (1974)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*

It's not often that a thief makes better use of his ill-gotten goods than the original owner. But such seems to be the case-- in an aesthetic though not moral sense-- regarding what the Thai company Chaiyo did with respect to the property of the Japanese Toei Studios.

Readers of this blog may recall my recent review of THE SIX ULTRA BROTHERS VS. THE MONSTER ARMY. This tokusatsu movie was a legitimate inter-company collaboration, in which the Japanese company Tsuburaya contracted to loan out its Ultraman franchise to Chaiyo, who crossed over the six brothers of the title with a Thai super-being, Hanuman, based upon the monkey-god of Asian mythology. As I noted in the review, Chaiyo eventually attempted to use that collaboration to make a legal claim upon the Ultraman property, but I believe that came some years later.

Apparently BROTHERS made money, so Chaiyo reached out to another Japanese company, Toei, and asked to do the same sort of project with the company's "Kamen Rider" franchise. But Toei turned the Thais down. Toei had enjoyed years of popularity with that property-- which, like Ultraman, brought in a new protagonist each season, keeping only a tenuous connection between each show through the overriding concept. In 1974, the current "Kamen Rider" show was titled KAMEN RIDER X, and Toei was confident enough in the franchise's moneymaking power that (from what I can glean) they released a half-hour special to movie theaters. This was FIVE RIDERS VS. KING DARK, which featured Kamen Rider X but also had the previous four Kamen Riders of other seasons as guest stars. 

I've watched an unsubtitled Japanese YouTube featurette that may or may not be the same release seen in theaters in 1974-- though I speculate that at most that show might be missing a few short scenes. King Dark, the regular opponent of Kamen Rider X, sends forth his "Myth Cyborgs" to capture ordinary Japanese citizens so that the King can drink their blood-- even though he's a giant robot who's usually seen lying on his side like a Buddha-statue. For reasons not clear to me, the other four Riders join Kamen Rider X to beat down the King's assorted monsters, including "Frankenbat," who looks like the Frankenstein Monster in a Man-Bat suit. In the end the King gets away, just as he would in a regular TV episode.

According to this review, Chaiyo decided to ignore Toei's refusal and made their crossover film anyway, in part by pilfering some of the footage from FIVE RIDERS. Most of this footage appears in the first thirty minutes of HANUMAN, and in later sections, the company used its own actors wearing replicas of the Kamen Rider costumes. The most one can say of the film's use of the Riders is that the heroes are pretty dull both in their original forms and in these unflattering imitations.

The writers for HANUMAN, however, interpolated scenes taken from ULTRA BROTHERS (solely scenes dealing with the Thai creation Hanuman) and devised new scenes in which King Dark also manifested in a human-sized form, garbed in armor and a big helmet. This version of King Dark rants like a maniac about feeding on virgin blood, and the viewers (some of whom were surely kids) see many victims, mostly female, being exsanguinated for the corpuscles. But the Riders begin cutting off the King's supply of blood-banks, so he demands a solution from one of his subordinates. Said flunky says that there's a scientist, Doctor Wisut, who can create new monster-pawns for the King. Yet the flunky asserts that for some vague reason, the only way to capture Wisut is to free a dead man from Hell.

This is where the recycled footage from ULTRA BROTHERS comes in. In that film, three bandits killed a young Thai boy. "Ultra Mother" brought the boy back to life by fusing him with the monkey-god Hanuman, who for whatever reason only appears a skyscraper-sized fighter. Flashbacks show how the giant hero avenged his murder by finding the three bandits, whom he slaughters mercilessly. These three men's souls end up in Thai Hell, and it's the head bandit, Kaan, whom King Dark's flunky claims to be the only one they can use to obtain Wisut.

There follows a brief tour of the tortures of the wicked in Hell-- very gory stuff for a kids' film-- and then we see the King of Hell railing at the three bandits, who I guess are new arrivals. One of King Dark's agents infiltrates Hell and rescues Kaan. The Hell-King's okay with that, because he knows Kaan will end up in his hands sooner or later.

Kaan is apparently given new powers by King Dark, for he spies on Doctor Wisut and his cute girlfriend Julie. Kaan then transforms himself into the image of Julie and lures Wisut into a trap. The continuity is jumbled-- we next see both Wisut and the real Julie in King Dark's realm. After Kaan fails to force Wisut to cooperate by tickling his feet (!), the evildoer threatens to drain Julie's blood. Wisut caves and creates Frankenbat, who, according to one line of dialogue, supposedly has powers superior to the Riders. Nevertheless, the heroes beat the monster. Wisut obligingly creates a bunch of less memorable monsters, leading to more fights between monsters and riders, with Hanuman eventually joining for his only new scenes. Kaan practically takes over as the main villain, chewing the scenery over and over until he's finally killed and sent back to Hell. There the Hell-King merrily cuts off the heads of all three bandits at once, maybe just for symmetry's sake, and King Dark escapes once again.

Though I'm not making any great claims for the HANUMAN film-- which I've heard only circulated in grey-market copies-- it is a lot more visually stimulating than the original RIDER featurette. That doesn't excuse the outright theft, of course. I can't speak to the overall quality of the Kamen Rider property, as I've barely seen any of the shows, but I'm sure there are a lot of Japanese tokusatsu that can equal the Thai movie for demented-seeming visuals. But the second (and probably last) appearance of Hanuman is still memorably bizarre, especially in comparison to the rather so-so first film.