Starman : Sci Fi Royalty.... or not-an incoherent ramble.

 Today's pick from the public domain vault is the first in the Starman series "Atomic Rulers". Originally the first two installments in the Japanese made Super Giant franchise circa 1956, America bought up the films a number of years later and combined 'em into one movie, dubbing the dialogue into English and renaming the hero Starman, finally releasing the finished product in 1965. Super Giant was Japan's very first superhero to grace the silver screen, taking a cue from the superman serials of the late 40's and building their own superhero brand to the delight of thousands of happy lil' Japanese children.

"Hi, I'm Starman, and I'm gonna kick your butt."

This being the first entry in the series, it lacks that danger from outer space element that makes the series so great, the writers instead opting to go for a much more realistic threat, atomic weaponry. The saga begins with the narrator talking about how some alien dudes made Starman out of the strongest steels and sent him to Earth to stop the use of nukes, as even the alien dudes from the far away Emerald planet fear the almighty power of the split atom. After that the movie is pretty much your standard espionage movie, just with people in ridiculous outfits on occasion, and one guy who can fly, repel bullets, bend a gun like it was a toy, and withstand a small nuclear explosion. There are some great 'roll the film backwards to make cool stuff happen' shots in the movie, that are so pointless that they're highly laughable, but the shots of Starman flying still put the late 90's Sunday afternoon show Night Man to shame. Seriously, did you ever see Night Man?  The visual aesthetic of the show was somewhere between late 90's era Skinemax and Days of Our Lives. Garbage.

Atomic Rulers, not unlike Gojira (released the same year in Japan), is a bit of a parable for U.S.- Japan relations of the day. In 1956, the atomic bombing of Japan just 11 years earlier was still a very fresh wound, and the writers of the movie had a bit of a chip on their shoulders about it. Nearly all the bad guys in the movie were American, and their mission was to conquer the world via nuclear blackmail, evil nuke wielding white dudes...... I guess it's a little more in your face than a mere parable....

Starman (Super Giant) really set a precedent, paving the way for the super hero genre in Japan, setting in motion the course of events that lead to the invention of the likes of the Ultraman, Kamen Rider, Metal Heroes and the Super Sentai Franchises, without all of which I would be a lost soul today. Being one of the oldest  showcases of the Tokusatsu genre should make Starman cinema royalty, but alas the Starman series has been banished to the bargain bin at your local (insert superstore name here), but that's also how I discovered the greatness that is the likes of Atomic Rulers, Invaders from Space, Attack from Space and Evil Brain from Outer Space, ranking high above the likes of Ricky Jones and company. Damn you world.

"We should be more famous than we are, and not just used as stock footage on 'Through the Wormhole With Morgan Freeman', Agreed?" 

Gammera the Invincible : Turtles kicked ass before TMNT.

Back in 1965, looking to capitalize off of the monumental success of Toho's Godzilla, Daiei film Co. went about creating their own fearsome giant reptile, a flying, fire eating, turtle of mass destruction known as Gamera. In '66 the Americans got ahold of the film, splicing in American made footage and over-dubbing the soundtrack and released the picture stateside as Gammera the Invincible (yes they misspelled it, hah). Nearly half a century later, Gamera is a household name in Japan, as one of the most popular giant monsters in cinema history, spawning multiple sequels, toys, comics, and tons of other miscellanea, surpassed, fame-wise, only by Godzilla (Gojira) himself. But I'm here to talk about the beginning, not the end result:
                                                             

"You call that fire?"

  Gamera, not unlike his more famous counterpart, is awakened by a nuclear bomb explosion, and proceeds to smash on everything in sight, stopping his rampage only once to save the life of a young boy. The world gangs up to fight back against Gamera, shooting, electrocuting, and bombarding the gargantuan beast with missiles to no avail. At one point they even resort to using dynamite to flip the giant turtle onto his back (you know, the classic I've fallen and I cant get up routine), figuring if they can immobilize the beast they can buy some time and figure out a way to destroy it  Somewhere along the line we find out Gamera just gets a little pissy when he's (it's?) hungry, his preferred dietary staple being fire. Eventually the warmonger gathering (the american added scenes, which oddly enough give the movie a kind of Doctor Strangelove quality) decide it's time to put them huge nuclear stockpiles to use, but are stopped in their tracks by some Japanese doctor dude, who everyone keeps insisting is such an important dude throughout the movie, and his plan. In the end they trick ol' Gammy into stepping into some kind of closing bubble thing on the tip of a missile and shoot him to mars, oh the oddities of film making.....
                                             

Ey! I'm Gamera, and I'm coming fo' that ass.

Honestly the special effects in the movie far surpass modern CGI, one of the many examples being the classic 'run the film backwards to make amazing things happen' trick which allowed for some cool shots of Gamera eating fire. In a lot of ways Japanese special effects artists of today still use a lot of the same techniques, opting for live actors in suits instead of computer generated characters, model cities and rural areas instead of green screen cut/paste landscapes, and scaled to size model what have you's (cars, planes, animals, machinery) which in the end makes for a much better result, and allows the mind to be slightly more convinced of the reality of the situation, rather than the obvious lack of depth and proper coloring employed by the available computer generating programs of today. Now that is not to say that some of this movie isn't just utterly ridiculous at points, I mean the plot alone is laughable, and some of the effects make no sense (Gamera flying by shooting flames out of his shell and spinning like a top the entire time) but the quality of the effects employed are top notch.
                                     

Gamera having a dance, mid-mass-destruction.

Be sure to pick this flick up, it's available in many of those 50 movie packs you find at your local Target or Walmart, which are a hell of a deal in of themselves, (50 movies for 8 bucks? Are you kidding me?) Or you can find it online in a singular title form, but it's gonna cost ya a bit more. This movie is one of the all time classic Daikaiju (giant monster, although literally translated as great monster) films, and the last one filmed in black and white, and is a must own for even passive fans of giant monster movies. (Pssst, its on youtube for free too) Also of note, the OG Japanese version, sans American actors is also available wherever the hell you can find a damn DVD store nowadays.