STARMAN (Vols. 1 and 2) An early contender for one of the strangest and best DVDs of 2003, this concentrated blast of mid-1960s Japanese insanity all but demands to be shown at parties or any gathering of culture vultures who think they've seen it all.
Jaw-droppingly surreal but mostly by default, the Starman movies comprise patched-together bits from unrelated episodes of a superhero serial that appeared in Japan beginning in the late '50s. Starman (or Super Giant, as he's known to the Japanese faithful) is a caped, cowled superhero in skintight spandex, with a doughy bulge around his gut and another in his pants (the films' producer reportedly had a fetish for exaggerated codpieces). Our hero's powers are vague, to say the least — Starman can fly, detect radiation and is said to be "made of the strongest steel" — and the stories' logic is fuzzier than fuzzy, but that's all part of the fun.
The two Starman DVDs put out by Something Weird Video/Image Entertainment feature more than seven glorious hours of Starman and assorted superhero, sci-fi and Asian esoterica. Vol. 1 includes Evil Brain from Outer Space, in which Starman confronts a radioactive threat by some comically fiendish, reptilian aliens with oversize fangs and even larger ears. There are even more dastardly aliens in Attack from Space, except this batch looks like gangsters out of a '40s crime movie and are trying to get a shipment of weapons of mass destruction to Earth. Only Starman and his preteen pals can stop them. Dirty nukes and adorable kids — an unbeatable combo.
Vol. 2 is even more deliciously deranged, beginning with Atomic Rulers, which features evil alien agents carrying nukes around in suitcases (beginning to see a pattern here?). The highlight of the entire series is Invaders from Space, a deranged fantasy about a race of salamander men from planet Kookamon who pose as an avant-garde dance troupe whose performances cause their audiences to drop like flies (supply your own metaphor here). More trench-coated gangster aliens show up, this time with radioactive breath.
Starman spends most of his time looking very serious and hopping around delivering ineffectual- looking karate chops at aliens. The movies all mix lame martial arts fights, papier mache sets and astonishingly primitive special effects with some wonderfully atmospheric black-and-white cinematography that seems lifted whole (along with the gangster aliens) from an old Hollywood film noir. One second the films seems cheerfully cheesy and inept; the next there's something genuinely disturbing happening (as in the primal moment a witch in a surgical mask melts into an oozing puddle a la Oz's wicked witch).
The picture quality leaves a bit to be desired as far as stray scratches and speckles, but, overall, the digitally remastered image is crisp, with surprisingly strong contrasts (and certainly a major step up from the old Something Weird video of Invaders from Space). Extras are copious on both discs, with an episode of the proto-anime Prince Planet cartoon on each volume, scads of rare, oddball trailers, and very strange shorts on everything from the "world of tomorrow" to the benefits of drinking milk.
This article appears in Feb 19-25, 2003.