314-Mighty Jack

Film Year:  1967
Genre:  Spy, Adventure, Science Fiction
Director:  Kazuho Mitsuta
Starring:  MIGHTY JACK vs. Q

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, stitched together, and leave 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

Most of the films in Sandy Frank's catalog are ideal for the series, though Mighty Jack is a bit trickier for them.  The film is talkier than their average Japanese cheesefest, and the film almost demands its audience's attention.  Watched through a layer of film riffing, the experience is too much targeting the audience member from every direction as both the movie and the riffers are at war for our attention span.  I feel a little tired while watching this episode because of that, though I don't think it's a poor episode by any stretch.  I get some good chuckles from a lot of the riffs, and the movie is moderate toku fare, which is up my alley.  So when I give up on following the movie or listening to the riffs, I'm usually pleased with the episode.

"I was just watching Mighty Jack and thinking 'This would make a great movie!'"

I find that the host segments are amusing, though a bit on the light side.  "Slow the Plot Down" is a fun song, and the opening disaster segment is wild.  A lot of the mid-segments are fluff pieces, though the episode does some fun stuff with an aquarium to make the set look flooded in the third segment.  The Invention Exchange has the Mads play with today's spy theme with Formal Flippers, while Joel's Ear-Shaped Earmuffs are a fairly single laugh gag done well enough.

I like this episode, though I can't really debate with anybody who thinks it's a lesser one.  It's a rather non-impressionable experience, as it mostly feels like just another episode of the series.  That might be enough for most to feel that this falls under the "average" category, but the enjoyment that I do get from the episode is pushing me to be more forgiving of it.  Mighty Jack is solid fun, even if there are wackier corners of Japanese cinema to explore on the series.

Good

The DVD

Mighty Jack came to the rescue in Shout Factory's Volume XXII set, with solid audio and video, as well as a few bonuses to spice things up.

First we have a little interview with Japanese film historian August Ragone, author of Eiji Tsuburaya:  Master of Monsters, talking about this series from Tsuburaya's production house.  He talks about it's inception as a spy/flying battleship movie that was adapted into a weekly television series, and how it was later revamped into the much wackier and child-friendly Fight Mighty Jack later on.  August is pretty fond of the series, and loves to describe it's crazy sequel show, so this is worth a look.

Up next is The Menus of MST3K, which is an interview with DVD menu designers Robert Guillory and Dave Long.  Guillory discusses how he started work at Rhino and how he thought it would be fun to have menus where the Bots interacted with the movie, and how in the switch to Shout Factory he asked Long for assistance, who tried to veer them more toward sketches.  It's interesting to hear about this thought process, though this concept petered out in latter sets in favor of new puppet menus.  I'd be curious to hear about what the thought process was in changing over to those, since I felt it was for the worse.