He
has the looks of the Red Skull and the flamboyance of a Lucha Libre
wrestler. The Golden Bat is Japan’s
oldest superhero, dating back to at least 1930, nine years before Bruce Wayne
re-purposed his dungeon, so show some respect.
This Thursday, Brooklyn’s Spectacle Theater pays homage to the strange, caped
avenger, who has constantly saved our butts in manga, anime, and motion pictures,
with Hymns of the Golden Bat a
special one night only program of the Ōgon Batto’s greatest hits, culminating
with Hajime Satô’s impossibly manic seventy-three minute live-action epic, The Golden Bat (trailer here).
Right,
the Earth is pretty much in for it. The
planet Icarus (dig the mythological reference) is speeding towards us on a
collision course, but the scientific establishment is too snobby to heed the
warnings of Akira Kazahaya, a teenaged factory worker who dabbles in
astronomy. Fortunately, the Pearl
Research Institute has been on the case.
Led by Dr. Yamatone, they too have tracked Icarus, developing a Dr.
No-certified laser canyon to blow-up Icarus in the nick of time. They just need a lens strong enough to
withstand the laser’s force, which is ironic, considering Pearle can usually craft
your lenses in under an hour.
Seeking
a natural lens, Dr. Yamatone and nearly the entire Pearl staff is lured to the
long lost island of Atlantis, where the evil Nazo has the drop on them. Ah, but not so fast. Within the temple of Atlantis, they find the
Golden Bat’s Egyptian sarcophagus, where his is re-animated by Emily Pearl, the
granddaughter of the Institute’s founder.
Good thing they thought to take a fourteen year old along on such a
dangerous mission.
Needless
to say, the Golden Bat pops-up and lays a proper beatdown on Nazo’s henchmen. Of course, they are not out of the woods
yet. In fact, that is just the first ten
minutes of Golden Bat’s mayhem. There will also be multiple doppelgangers to
contend with and laser battles galore, accompanied by the Ōgon Batto’s ominous
sounding laughter and big, brassy chorale theme music.
The Golden Bat is the kind of
film that can make pedantic fussbudgets’ heads explode. You just have to toss logic to the wind and
hang on as it careens from one spectacle to another, like a pinball. Where else
will you find a super villain decked out in a fuzzy-wuzzy rat costume with four
eyes? The plot rather defies description
and the laws of science, but fortunately the title caped crusader constantly
reappears to pummel bad guys with his Scepter of Justice.
Oddly
enough, a young Sonny Chiba is present, but largely not a factor in the
smack-downs as the Picard-esque Yamatone.
Frankly, Emily Takami is much better than you would expect as her young
namesake, hardly cloying or annoying at all as the teenaged world-saver. Whoever was sporting the Golden Bat costume
was certainly physically energetic, while Osamu Kobayashi’s voice-overs are
bizarrely distinctive.