Rifftrax’s ATTACK OF THE SUPER MONSTERS
Rifftrax, a legacy group from Mystery Science Theater 3000 featuring Satellite of Love denizens Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett (amongst others), have provided running comedy commentary on films since 2006. The titles run the gamut from mega blockbusters to insanely obscure short films of yesteryear. But one of the more singular movies they’ve encountered is ATTACK OF THE SUPER MONSTERS.
Directed by Toru Sotoyama and Tom Wyner in 1982, ATTACK OF THE SUPER MONSTERS is a basic tokusatsu plot where Kaiju (in this case hidden dinosaurs awoken to cause devastation) must be stopped by an elite group of soldiers known as the Gemini Force. The wrinkle in all of this? The dinosaurs and devastation, including the various vehicles attacking the monsters, are all practical effects of puppets and man-in-suit smashing models. The heroes and civilians (and even a bunch of rats) are all animated. Sometimes the cartoons are shown against a cartoon backdrop and sometimes they are drawn onto the live-action scene in a way that is…pretty odd.
When stop-motion dinosaurs meet anime superheroes, only one thing is certain: things are about to get dumb as hell!
Mad Ruler Emperor Tyrannous lives beneath the earth and commands an army of supermonsters by shouting at them like late-career Al Pacino. Despite being gigantic fire-breathing dinosaurs, their main strategy is to hypnotize substantially smaller animals like dogs and bats, into attacking humanity. It’s not a very good strategy, but then again, this is not a very good movie.
Standing in their way is Gemini Command, which consists of two siblings and two idiots. The siblings, Jim and Jem, can bond to form the all-powerful Gemini, whereas the two idiots, Jerry and Wally, at one point lose track of their pet sloth. Can they save humanity? No, many people die horribly. Well at least they were just cartoons!
It’s actually not that hard to see a parallel to today’s Kaiju movies, with entire CGI cities and civilians plagued by mo-capped monsters. But ATTACK OF THE SUPER MONSTERS remains far too doofy in execution to really work. It may be better if it were made as a comedy or something weirder/more subversive. Rifftrax’s site has a trailer to sample the jokes before purchasing their version. Unfortunately, that trailer isn’t on YouTube. Fortunately, a fan made a trailer for it!
There’s another short bit from Rifftrax put up on YouTube below. Reminder once again that Rifftrax did make their own official trailer which you can watch (and purchase the riffed movie) at their website.
If you’re interested in watching ATTACK OF THE SUPER MONSTERS without the additional hilarity, you can find this gonzo trainwreck in full on YouTube, on Amazon Prime (with ads), and on Tubi. Until then, I’m working on the remake.