Showing posts with label 42nd Street. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 42nd Street. Show all posts

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Infra-Man: the Man BEYOND Bionics!

Through my formative (read "teen") years, summertime was when I would head for 42nd Street in Manhattan for double and triple-feature afternoons at a tacky grindhouse theatre! (yeah, I was [and still am] a nerd)
One of my favorites, which kept rotating into the second and third-run theatres for years, was Infra-Man!
Here's the American trailer for it's 1976 release...

Since such live-action rubber-suit superheroics had been limited to tv (Particularly UltraMan and SpectreMan) up to this point, it was a real treat to see it up on the big (or at least larger than my tv) screen!
It was the height of the '70s kung-fu flick craze,  so the hero was not only armed with weapons and powers, but could kick monster as with fists (and feet) of fury!
Plus, the villain of the pic...was a villainess (an extremely cute one) called "Dragon Mom", which I suspect was a mistranslation of the character's original name "Elzebub"!
As for the plot, I'll leave it to the kool guys at BadMovies.Org to describe it...
Make sure that you are sitting down for this. 
...after sleeping through the last ice age Princess Dragon Mom wakes up.
She is dismayed to find what was once her kingdom is now absolutely infested with humans and sets out to make them her slaves.
Lucky for us that Professor Chan just finished developing the Infra-Man and Rayma immediately volunteers to become a super hero worthy of most French fashion shows. 
Battling through dozens of monsters with kung fu, laser beams, and explosive kicks is what being Infra-Man is all about.
Some of the fight scenes are absolutely priceless and the really fun thing is this: when not destroying stuff the evil mutants all stand around in a room dancing (badly)...
(Read the entire review for much more snarky fun)


The 42nd Street of my youth is long gone, Disneyfied into a California-style tourist trap.
But, to relive the memories my wayward teens as well as of this classic of weird cinema (and to add to my burgeoning tacky t-shirt collection), I produced a dark t-shirt for myself with the American release poster emblazoned on it.
My film-going buds wanted to know where I got the shirt, and this led to my setting up the first Atomic Kommie Comics™ t-shirt store, where Infra-Man can now be found in the Pop-Art Martial Arts™ section on shirts, mugs, magnets, iPad / messenger bags, etc.!
Recently, I branched out to create another on-line store using a vendor who could do bigger images on products. This led to the Summer SuperHeroes & Spies shop featuring (you guessed!) Infra-Man!

If you're into GREAT bad movies with good graphics...grab an Infra-Man goodie from either store (While I grab Dragon Mom)!