Attack of the Super Monsters (RiffTrax)

Film Year:  1982 (edited from a 1977 TV series)

Genre:  Science Fiction, Anime, Kaiju

Director:  Toru Sotoyama, Tom Wynter

Starring:  Dan Waren, Robin Levinson, Cam Clarke, Joe Perry, Mike Reynolds, Tom Wynter

RiffTrax Year:  2019

Riffers:  Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett

The Movie

Roger Rabbit, eat your heart out.

It turns out that dinosaurs didn't go extinct millions of years ago, they've just gone into hiding and spent time evolving so they can conquer the world even though they had already conquered it when they left.  It's a plot point totally ripped off by the Super Mario Bros. movie, but Attack of the Super Monsters did it first, people!  Anyway the Lord Tyrannus has unleashed his Super Monster dinosaurs on the Earth and they also enslave random animals like dogs, bats, and rats to do their bidding.  It's up to the Earth Defense Force, comprised of Jim, Gem, Wally, and Jerry, to fly to the rescue with their mech vehicles to stop the Super Monsters from destroying civilization.  And when the chips are down, the cybernetically enhanced Jim and Gem have the power to combine themselves into Gemini!  They have the power to attach a drill onto the front of their vehicle and...that's it.

I love tokusatsu, but this one is a doozy.  Attack of the Super Monsters is actually the first four episodes of a television series called Dinosaur War Izenborg edited together and dubbed for the children's direct to video market.  This series was made by Tsuburaya Productions, the same production house that brought us Ultraman as well as MST favorites Mighty Jack, Army of the Apes (Time of the Apes), and Star Wolf (Fugitive Alien), and while Tsuburaya has always been upfront about the influence of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson marionette shows like Thunderbirds on their work, it very much feels like Izenborg was their attempt to put their unique spin on it.

This show isn't entirely a toku show, but it's a toku/anime hybrid.  It feels to me like the intent of this series was to not bother working with live actors or sets and just work with miniatures and animate on top of it to create this hyper-reality so actual reality doesn't clash with the effects work.  It's a swing, but it's also one that doesn't connect.  The reason why shows like Thunderbirds work is that the marionettes blend well with the model work, while the anime style just feels way too different from the effects to fully merge with it.  Live action actors in other Tsuburaya productions tend to work better because the sets and costumes they inhabit usually are made to match the effects, while Izenborg struggles to find a bridge between the two worlds.

I'm not saying that it can't be done.  It probably could happen, maybe with a more inspired premise.  Izenborg's storyline is fairly rout and there is little interesting about it.  Sure, dinosaur puppets grumbling out cartoon villain threats incoherently is fun and all, but to an extent a lot of the dinosaurs tend to blend together.  They do offer different dinosaur types, though throughout the episodes seen here we see three different variations of a T-Rex and I often found myself confused which one was supposed to be Lord Tyrannus.  The model work is lacking as well, as a lot of the vehicles seen during their sequences just kind of swing about, looking more like toys more than any episode of Power Rangers ever did.

On the animated side, the lore behind Gemini is strange and ill-explained.  Granted it seems to be better related in the uncut Japanese series, which had Jim and Gem (Ai and Zen in the original) nearly being killed in an explosion and having to be revived by becoming cyborgs, of which the whole combining thing was just a bonus.  None of this is explained in the English Super Monsters cut which just has them able to do it because with all the other crazy shit happening, why wouldn't they?  Jim and Gem are non-characters though, stoic and brave with little character traits other than being brother and sister.  Their sidekicks Jerry and Wally are at least comic relief and have something close to character growth in that they often have to overcome their own incompetence, but the closest thing Jim and Gem have to a storyline here is Jim is angry that Gem didn't bitch out a dry-cleaner after he ruined her blouse.

Minor note:  Later in the series Jim and Gem were apparently able to create an Ultraman style superhero to combat the monsters one-on-one, but unfortunately we didn't get that far into the series.

Still, I respect what Izenborg is trying to do even if it fails at it.  There is a nugget of an idea here that could be nurtured and maybe done better if someone else wanted to take a crack at it.  But as is, it's an awful but unique entry in both tokusatsu and anime.   It seems to have a following of some sort, so much so that a company in Saudi Arabia produced a documentary about this strange little series from Japan.  I'm actually dying to watch it if I can find some English subtitles somewhere.

The Trax

"Cartoons like this prove you don't need drugs to trip your ass off."

I've said it before and I'll say it again, if we're going Japanese then you'll have to pardon my gushing.  I love how crazy Japanese genre programing can get and it's hard to get crazier than Attack of the Super Monsters, so I'm totally here for it.

What's unique about Attack of the Super Monsters is that RiffTrax doesn't tackle animation all that often.  Up until this point they have done a motion capture animated film in Beowulf and also a animated short on Dinosaurs, but Attack of the Super Monsters is the closest they've come to just sitting in front of a Saturday morning cartoon and letting loose.  It's interesting to see what jokes they can make at the art style's expense, in which they dig deep with how it can be wildly expressive in one moment and inexpressive the next (one riff that sticks with me is a riff on Gem's deadass expression at one point to which Kevin just says "Whatevs.").  They also take note of the animation cutting corners, with one hilarious moment where Kevin notices a sequence of citizens running for their lives but all look exactly the same, prompting him to quip "It's the running of the Ernest Borgnines!"

But you also get tokusatsu in the same movie, so it's really the story of two riffs.  To an extent the toku scenes are less interesting as they tend to ride on some well trodden grounds such as toy models and fake looking special effects.  The dinosaurs do tend to lure more inspired work, as they all growl their lines like Goldar on Power Rangers and tend to do so incoherently, inspiring many impressions and much confusion as to what is going on.  Rampages do inspire some excellent material, like a T-Rex setting fire to the forest with Mike warning "Mecha-Smokey-the-Bear will tear him to pieces."

One line of note:  "Oops!  She killed Bat-Ra, friend to all children!"  I'm sure Mike neither knows nor cares about this, but there is a Battra.  He isn't a giant bat nor is he friend to all children however, just a dark and evil version of Mothra from Godzilla and Mothra:  The Battle for Earth.  Sorry for the toku knowledge drop.

Attack of the Super Monsters is a one-of-a-kind RiffTrax experience and I was rolling with laughter.  If you tend to love how Japanese movies fuel these comedians as much as I do then this is well worth adding to the collection.

Classic

Gem-Jim-GEMINI!

The DVD

Attack of the Super Monsters hit DVD through RiffTrax's website as a part of their Toxic Box collection.  Audio was good, though video was rough, likely because the source video wasn't in great condition in the first place.  Unlike other RiffTrax DVDs, Attack of the Super Monsters doesn't feature an unriffed audio track likely due to the fact that the film was edited down from its original version.  There is a roundtable discussion on the film called Talkin' RiffTrax as a bonus feature though.