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Robotic, but in a pleasant way.

I talk about video games, scifi, old anime, and robots.
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I like it when a story makes a villain really relatable.

A curiosity out of Thailand's Chaiyo Productions, Hanuman and the Five Kamen Riders reminds me of midcentury Mexican luchador cinema (the El Santo and Blue Demon movies) but instead of being headlined by famous athletes/personalities, Hanuman etc crosses independently produced footage with video from the Toei film Five Riders vs. King Dark (which is all of 28 minutes long).


An escaped ghost from hell pressures a postgrad to create monsters.

The evil King Dark sends his monsters out to try and kidnap women and children to feast on their blood only to be stonewalled by the Kamen Riders (or "Ant Men"). King Dark seeks to even the odds by making a lieutenant out of a sinner stolen from Hell, kidnapping a scientist and his girlfriend, and producing ever more bizarre monsters. After all efforts fail, King Dark grows huge and engages the Kamen Riders personally — only to be defeated by actual Hindu deity Hamuman.

Yes, its terrible, but there's a surprising bit of charm. There's an incongruous mixture of top shelf tokusatsu monsters next to Chaiyo Productions commendable-but-clearly-worse imitations. (The difference between Toei King Dark and Chaiyo King Dark is stark.) There's an off putting diversion into Hell where the tortures of sinners are detailed, a comical murder of a child (!) who resurrects as a henshin hero take on Hanuman and who gruesomely revenges his own death, and inexplicable drama about a grad student and his girlfriend.

The effect is eccentric.

The same postgrad laments his career.

Unfortunately, it's maybe a little too gruesome? There's a surprising amount of blood. While it's mostly cartoonish, seeing blood gush out of a rubber tube into a clay jar while a woman swoons can be surprisingly grody. So is the final scene, where the King of Hell has some dead sinners decapitated. The loose heads, painted with blood, mug for the camera. I don't have a problem with movie gore in-and-of-itself so much that the imagery is really at odds with the mood.

Like, I can't even describe it as tonally inconsistent, because as far as the movie is concerned, the gallons of blood is just lighthearted cartoon Dracula stuff.

That said, the most wildly objectionable thing is probably the 30 seconds of bare titties in the hell segment. There's a time and place for that, and the Kamen Rider team up movie for kids ain't either.

King Dark looms over Kamen Rider X, in a shot so fantastic that it must be from the Toei footage.

All in all, I kind of dug it. Centering the film around King Dark and his outrageous demands for the blood of women and children (it's good for his brain!) actually does a lot to keep things entertaining. It's doesn't really make the best use of its run time but no worse than most luchador films. The fights are terrible. Hanuman is horrifying.

Pair it with a good wine and when you get 13 minutes and 45 seconds in, skip forward 35 seconds.


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