The Super Inframan (1975)

The Super Infra Man (1975)
aka Inframan
Chinese Title: 中國超人
Translation: Chinese Ultraman

 

Starring: Danny Lee Sau-Yin, Wang Hsieh, Yuan Man-Tzu, Terry Lau Wai-Yue, Dana, Lin Wen-Wei, Chiang Yang, Bruce Le (as Huang Kin Lung), Lu Sheng, Fanny Leung Maan-Yee
Director: Hua Shan
Action Director: Tong Gaai, Yuen Cheung-Yan

 

Throughout most of the 1970s, the Shaw Brothers were the biggest studio in Hong Kong and commanded the highest budgets for their films. As a result, all of their movies--from wuxia to horror, from exploitation to soft porn--tended to look extremely polished compared to the competition. Costumes, sets, lighting, etc. looked great and contributed to their films’ followings to this day. Their budgets also allowed them to occasionally branch out into truly epic productions, including a handful of science fiction and fantasy movies. The most famous of these is The Super Infra Man, a uniquely Hong Kong take on the Japanese tokusatsu genre that had taken television by storm in the mid-1960s, and showed no signs of abating in the 1970s. Indeed, the 1970s saw dozens of tokusatsu shows get produced, including the Kamen Rider and Super Sentai series, which remain perennials to the present.

While The Super Infra Man comes across as a Chinese version of Kamen Rider, it is not the first attempt for Hong Kong (or Taiwanese) producers to cash in on the popularity of tokusatsu. The previous year saw the release of Iron Superman, a Taiwanese production courtesy of Chang’s Film Company, which spliced in footage from the “Red Baron” series. Concurrent with The Super Inframan, Taiwan produced no fewer than three Kamen Rider films: Super Riders V3; The Five of Super Rider; and Super Riders Against the Devils. In 1976, a Taiwanese company made Mars Men, which borrowed special effects footage from the Japanese-Thai co-production Jumborg Ace and Giant. Nonetheless, The Super Infra Man stands out as the first Chinese film to present an original tokusatsu character, complete with original special effects footage.

The movie begins with a school bus driving near Mount Devil--I can’t imagine anything bad coming out of a place with a name like that! The bus trip is interrupted by a large dragon landing on the highway in front of them, which followed by an earthquake. We learn that the earthquake let of an “electric wave” that set the city (Hong Kong?) on fire and (presumably) killed hundreds, if not thousands. Professor Liu Yingde (Wang Hsieh, The Lady Hermit and The Devil’s Mirror) is brought in to investigate these freak phenomena with the help of his organization, analogous to Ultraman’s Science Patrol.

They receive a message from the aforementioned dragon, who has transformed into Princess Dragon Mom[1] (Terry Liu, of Dragon Lives Again and Killer Snakes), a hot, whip-wielding blonde woman with a cool dragon helmet and a throbbing desire to conquer humanity. She gives the human race an ultimatum: surrender or be destroyed by her monster army. Professor Liu responds by subjecting his most-trusted agent, Rayma (Daniel Lee, of The Killer and Untold Story), to an experimental procedure that will transform him into the superhero Infra Man. Once that happens, the film becomes a succession of effects-heavy action sequences as Infra Man fights one monster opponent after another until he and the rest of the Science Patrol raid Princess Dragon Mom’s skull-shaped castle at the top of Mount Devil for a final battle.

The film plays like a succession of four or five episodes of an unreleased Tokusatsu series. The first forty minutes play like a two-episode pilot, complete with an origin story and a mini-climax where Infra Man must fight his first enemy: Plant Monster. “Episode Three” introduces some human drama: a member of the Science Patrol, Zhu Ming (Lin Wen-Wei, of The Flying Guillotine), is captured and brought back to Dragon Mom’s palace, where he is brainwashed by her first lieutenant, Eye Demon (Dana, of Storming Attacks and Bruce Le in New Guinea). He then sneaks back into Science Patrol headquarters to steal the blueprints to Infra Man. This episode climaxes with a fight between Infra Man and a web-spitting bug monster. The next episode has Zhu Ming and another monster, Mutant Drill, sneak into the lab with the intent of blowing it up. It ends on a cliffhanger of a major character getting kidnapped. The fourth and last episode is the all-out assault on Dragon Mom’s palace, with Infra Man fighting an army of skeleton henchman and several other monsters, before facing off with Princess Dragon Mom herself.

One of the interesting things about Japanese science-fiction and fantasy is that their writers have long since mastered the art of making pseudo-scientific babble sound plausible and even realistic. And even when it doesn’t, the writers generally tend to be good about establishing a consistent internal logic, like ins most of their sci-fi anime. Super Infra Man completely fails in that regard, although always with hilarious results. Writer Ni Kuang was great when it came to screenplays for wuxia and kung fu movies—the man penned 300 novels and 400 film scripts over the course of his career—but science fiction seemed to be a bit beyond his grasp[2].

The script suggests that Ni Kuang received the scripts for several episodes of “Ultraman” that had been translated from Japanese to Chinese via Google Translator to use as inspiration. Being unlearned in pseudo-science, he wrote the story as a modern day wuxia film, but with monsters standing in for demons and fox spirits with zany wuxia superpowers. He then garnished the writing with talk of secret weapons and electrical waves and bio-hormones. Later on, the subtitles—which have always been questionable when dealing with Chinese cinema—were born of the script being Google translated from Chinese into a Ural-Alatic language and then into an Indo-European language closer to Ancient Greek before finally being translated into English.

Thankfully, director Hua Shan has no illusions that he’s making 2001: A Space Odyssey and embues the film with a breakneck pace and lots of action and effects. Hua Shan would direct a few more kung fu films for the Shaw Brothers, like The Flying Guillotine Part 2 and To Kill a Jaguar. He also directed Crystal Fist and Sun Dragon, a pair of kung fu movies starring Indonesian actor Billy Chong that have strong fan followings today. Sun Dragon is particularly interesting, as it was filmed in Arizona and is supposed to take place in the Wild West, but has scenes set in front of modern mining companies and all. The man apparently was completely blind to budgetary overreach and in the case of The Super Infra Man, it only serves to make the film a lot more fun to watch.

The action choreography was mounted by Shaw Brothers regular Tong Gaai, with Yuen Cheung-Yan being credited with the stunt direction. I’m guessing that Yuen was responsible for orchestrating the frequent wire stunts: super jumps, flying jump kicks, monsters getting kicked dozens of yards through the air, etc. The fighting itself is a lot of fun, even if it works on the level of a typical early 70s basher movie. The fact that all the stuntmen are wearing garish outfits or silly rubber monster costumes adds a lot more color to the fights. Tong Gaai’s extensive experience in the genre, including the seminal The Chinese Boxer and the earliest films in Chang Cheh’s “Shaolin Cycle,” means that he can do hand-to-hand combat with a lot more authority than his Japanese counterparts could do at the time. In fact, The Super Infra Man has some of the best action Tong Gaai’s lengthy career.

Some of the monster designs reflect Tong’s preference for wuxia movies and exotic weapons. For example, during the end fight, Infra Man fights a pair of robots whose arms are actually just spiked maces at the end of giant slinkies. Moreover, said robots’ heads can also extend in a similar manner. While a Japanese tokusatsu series might have said accessories put the hero in a chokehold that only a special weapon can break, Tong choreographs a complex fight where the hero must fight off multiple opponents while simultaneously ducking and weaving through the robots extendable weapons. We also have dozens of henchmen wielding exploding spears; a sexy Eye Demon who fights with a dagger, but can also fire lasers out of the eyes growing out of the palms of her hands; and much more!

Experienced viewers will note that Rayma’s best friend, Xiao Long, is played by Burmese actor Huang Kin Lung. Huang Kin Lung had come to Hong Kong from Burma to find his fortune in the movie business. He had found work at the Shaw Brothers, including playing the Chinese folk hero Ghost Foot Seven in the Wong Fei Hung movie Rivals of Kung Fu. In this movie, his character, Xiao Long, shares the name with Bruce Lee (whose Cantonese screen name was Lei Siu-Lung). “Xiao Lung” is the Mandarin equivalent to the Cantonese “Siu Lung”, meaning “Little Dragon.” Huang Kin Lung does indeed imitate Bruce Lee in his limited fights. The following year, Huang Kin Lung would adopt the moniker Bruce Le[3] and become one of the most important names in the Brucesploitation business[4].

There is no way not to have fun while watching The Super Infra Man. The frequent fight scenes, low-grade monster costumes and optical effects, inane dialog, and childlike sense of whimsy pervade very scene. It feels like a Japanese tokusatsu character filtered through the mind of a 10-year-old with an overactive imagination, realized by a bunch of people better suited for kung fu movies. And the film is all the better for it!

---

[1] - That’s her name in the English dub. In the subtitled version, she’s called Princess Elzibub. Subtle.

[2] - He apparently did write some science fiction in the 1960s, though.

[3] - Known in the West as Bruce Le, his screen name in Chinese was 呂小龍. In Mandarin, it reads as Lu Xiaolong. In Cantonese, it reads as Lui Siu-Lung.

[4] - Despite Bruce Le already making inroads on the Brucesploitation train while still working for the Shaw Brothers, the role of Bruce Lee in the Shaw Brothers film Bruce Lee, His Last Days and Nights (1976) went instead to co-star Danny Lee.