K14-Mighty Jack

Film Year:  1967
Genre:  Spy, Adventure, Science Fiction
Director:  Kazuho Mitsuta
Starring:  Hideaki Nitani, Hiroshi Minami, Jiro Yanaga, yet nobody named Jack
MST Season:  KTMA

The Movie

MIGHTY JACK!  A Real Japanese Hero!  Mighty Jack is there!

Maybe it’s just me but Mighty Jack always reminded me of GI Joe crossed with Atragon.  Mighty Jack is a super organization designed to do battle with terrorists Q, just like the Joes and Cobra.  Only with a giant battleship sub, like the good old Gotengo from Atragon (and the steroid version from Godzilla:  Final Wars).

With that mindset, Mighty Jack is mildly amusing in its incoherency.  Unfortunately that has all to do with the Sandy Frank edit of the TV series that was imported, in which the first and last episodes are used and leaving the viewer behind in transition.  But to be fair, the show didn’t really look that interesting anyway, so who wants the episodes that came between?

Special effects are by the great Eiji Tsuburaya, creator of Godzilla and Ultraman.  Mighty Jack was a television series by his very own Tsuburaya Productions (much like Time of the Apes and Fugitive Alien), which at the very least means we have some dynamic miniature work to look at.  Mighty Jack might not be one of Tsuburaya’s greatest achievements but at least he gives it some energy.

The Episode

The theater work is fairly workmanlike.  There’s not a lot special going on here.  That said, occasionally the crew gets in a good punch, so laughs are had.  I particularly enjoyed the crew’s random reflection on Gilligan’s Island about halfway through the episode (“You know after all those years on the island, why didn’t they just eat Gilligan?”).  Unfortunately there’s too many low points for it to be considered a great KTMA episode, with Josh speaking gibberish while reading the Japanese cast list probably being the lowest.  It’s about as amusing as Wild, Wild World of Batwoman chanting “WANG CHING CHONG CHOW!”  They also straddle the lackluster line when they get into a lengthy “Big fat worm” gag, going back and forth to get Joel to say “I eight the big fat worm.”  Pretty lame.

The host segments keep a fair amount of flavor going, The unofficial theme seems to be “What’s funny?”  Tom and Crow try to figure out what humans find funny, only to find out what robots find funny is a bit different.  I especially like the segment where Crow and Tom ponder whether or not killing Joel is “funny” (the answer is yes).  Joel playing games with the bots was remade in the first national season for The Crawling Hand, with a much smoother presentation.  It all ends with Servo getting a love letter from a MAGNIFICANT PAGAN SHE-BEAST!

This first venture into the wacky mess of Mighty Jack on a whole is entertaining enough, but nothing special.  The third season take on the movie is definitely the laugh-getter.

Average