A quick detour in my Kamen Rider writing to an older, and far stranger, entry in the series. Sort of.

Allow me to throw in a little back story. In 1974 Tsuburaya Productions, the makers of Ultraman, teamed up with the Thai studio Chaiyo to make a movie featuring the Ultraman characters meeting a Thai hero. The new hero was called Hanuman, after the Hindu monkey god, and his origin was tied directly to Ultraman continuity. The movie was called Hanuman and the 7 Ultramen in Thailand, and The 6 Ultra Brothers vs. The Monster Army in Japan. The discrepancy in the number of Ultramen comes from the Thai movie counting Mother of Ultra. I can’t imagine the movie went over well in Japan (and decades later it became central in a bizarre legal saga that resulted in Tsuburaya losing the rights to Ultraman for a while), but I guess it did well enough in Thailand that Chaiyo went ahead with a sequel. That sequel featured another popular Japanese superhero group, the Kamen Riders.

Wikipedia is of the opinion that Chaiyo didn’t get the rights from Toei to make a Kamen Rider film. I have no reason to doubt that, but damn, that must take guts. Even worse, Chaiyo’s film features chunks of the real Kamen Rider film Kamen Rider X: Five Riders vs. King Dark (1974). Between this theft and the Ultraman rights fiasco of later decades I get the impression that Chaiyo’s management philosophy falls somewhere between Enron and Latveria.

The movie opens with the five Riders (Kamen Rider 1, Kamen Rider 2, Kamen Rider V3, Riderman, and Kamen Rider X) leisurely driving their motorcycles around Bangkok, occasionally passing in front of local landmarks to convince us that, yes, this is Thailand. My favorite part is that the local traffic doesn’t seem to be very impressed by these superheroes, and twice they get passed by Volkswagen Beetles. That’s just funny on so many levels.

This goes on for a while. A long while. With Thailand firmly established as our setting we cut to the secret headquarters of King Dark. King Dark was the villain of the Kamen Rider X series, and as I understand it he only appeared as a giant reposing statue. For example, here he is from some of the stock footage.

But in the Thai production they must have wanted a villain who could interact with his underlings a bit more, so King Dark appears most of the time as a guy in a costume that is literally coming apart at the seams. His henchmen are guys in ski masks, complete with pompoms on top. Except one guy didn’t get to the store in time to get a ski mask, so instead he’s got a luchador mask.

I should mention that I watched this movie with subtitles, so I’m guessing when it comes to things like names of characters and finer plot details. So from what I can tell King Dark spends his time drinking blood sucked out of women using an amazingly complicated machine. In stock footage he also sends a bunch of monsters out to kidnap children, though all these kidnappings are foiled by various Kamen Riders showing up and delivering a heaping helping of kung fu to the bad guys.

After this setback King Dark has his henchmen shove one of their number in a cage with three cute dogs. The shovee fights like his his life is at stake, but I’m not really sure why. Lookatthepuppies!

After this bizarre scene the movies progresses through an even more bizarre progression of scenes, especially for what I assume was supposed to be a kids movie. We see paintings depicting what I assume is the Thai/Hindu version of hell, with men and women being mutilated by demons. Then it jumps to live-action versions of such scenes, including naked women being chained to thorny trees and men being boiled in oil. Finally we arrive in what I assume is the throne room of the god of the underworld (Yama, perhaps?). Three men are being judged for their sins and OMIGOD it’s the three temple robbers from Hanuman and the 7 Ultramen!

The movie treats us to another chunck of stock footage, this one from the previous Hanuman film. We see the thieves steal a head off a statue and shoot the orphan boy who tries to stop them. Then a hand reaches from the sky and resurrects the boy as Hanuman, the giant monkey god. In the previous movie the hand was Mother of Ultra’s, but that’s left out here. Hanuman chases the thieves down and kills them all in gory ways.

Now that any children watching are guaranteed to never be capable of feeling human emotions again, we go back to the underworld. Things aren’t looking good for the thieves, but as they are about to be judged an earthquake strikes hell! In the confusion the head thief escapes. He then magically appears in King Dark’s throne room, sporting a really fashionable purple outfit and inexplicable magical powers. I need a name for him, so I guess I’ll call him… Prince. Yeah, that works.

Prince was either working for King Dark all along, or he’s decided to now. Prince teleports away, and, using magical disguise abilities, kidnaps a scientist and his girlfreind. The scientist, I note, is the same actor who played the scientist in Hanuman and the 7 Ultramen, though I’m pretty sure he’s not supposed to the same character. For the sake of simplicity I’m going to call him Doctor Khan, which I’m fairly sure was his name in the earlier movie. I’ll call the girlfriend Tulip, because that’s close to the Thai name they say in the movie.

In more stock footage we see Kamen Rider X fighting Gengis Khan Condor and Toad Goemon (oh, if only Starfish Hitler had made this movie!), and King Dark uses his high tech computer to analyze the fight.

Now King Dark wants Doctor Khan’s help in making a new monster to fight the Riders. They torture him in various ways, including tickling him, but he won’t capitulate until Dark’s henchmen start draining Tulip’s blood.

In the only example of the characters from the current movie being integrated into the Five Riders vs. King Dark stock footage in any way, Doctor Khan works some computer consoles while in the stock footage we see the creation of Bat Franken, a bat/Frankenstein’s monster combination.

The new monster doesn’t fair any better against Kamen Rider X than the previous monsters.

More attempts are made to kidnap children, again stopped by various Riders. After one these attempts the Riders have a confab, and then Rider X drives off into an ambush by Bat Franken and ton of monsters. Then the other four Riders show up, and a big fight breaks out. (This is all still stock footage from Five Riders vs. King Dark.) The Riders drop kick all the monsters into a big pile which, unsurprisingly, blows up.

That’s about the end of the stock footage. Now we get to see the Thai versions of the Rider costumes in action. It’s pretty easy to tell the difference, especially with Riderman.

Now Prince blackmails Doctor Khan into making more monsters. This time the monsters are made using a booth sitting out in the middle of a field.

Oh, the suspense! After an hour of all the monsters being from Japanese stock footage, we finally get to see the full creativity of the Thai filmmakers given life! How cool will these monsters be?

You have got to be fricking kidding me. Guys in breech cloths and paper-mache animal masks? And I wonder why Toei didn’t want to work with these guys.

The scientist manages to get a radio message to the Riders, and when Prince tries to move all the various prisoners Dark King has collected in a cart (for reasons I can’t figure out) the Riders ambush them. Prince and the new monsters have a long fight with the five Riders. Um, don’t ask what’s happen in the next screencap.

The monsters defeated, the Riders confab with Doctor Khan. The Riders then run off, and immediately get blown up.

King Dark appears on the scene and recaptures all the prisoners and resurrects his monsters. The Riders are left behind, apparently dead.

Wasn’t Hanuman supposed to be in this movie? Oh, there he is, at a temple, doing what Hanuman loves most: dancing.

Hanuman teleports to the Riders and does a dance that resurrects them.

Hanuman hugs each of the Riders in turn. Then the Riders ride off, and Hanuman stays behind to dance some more.

The Riders raid King Dark’s headquarters, and there’s a big fight between the Riders and the monsters, Prince, and King Dark.

The monsters are defeated and Prince Flees. King Dark grows to gigantic, Tokyo-stomping size.

Not to harp on this,but are we supposed to be able to see Riderman’s face? How lazy were they in recreating these costumes?

One of the Kamen Riders (V3, I think) absorbs his compatriots and and attacks King Dark with his flying motorcyle, with not much effect. Luckily, Hanuman shows up in his giant form.

Hanuman stabs King Dark in the throat.

Hanuman then chases down Prince and sends him back to hell. Evil defeated, Hanuman waves to the Riders and dances some more.

Back in hell we see that the temple thieves have been decapitated, ending this delightful romp for children on an appropriate note.