| Spectreman
By Jeffrey Couto
The Story
Dr.Gori, a genius with an intellect superior
to that of most living creatures has failed to take over his
planet and has ventured out into outer space. While drifting
aimlessly through the cosmos Dr.Gori comes accross a blue
and pristine planet, Earth. In it he sees great potential
and beauty, however, there is one problem, this small planet
is benig destroyed by its inhabitants and its pollution. Dr.Gori
decides that it would be best to destroy humanity and rebuild
the planet so that it may reach its full potential, but first
he'll have to defeat Spectreman, who was sent by the Nebula
71 to stop Gori's plans and protect Earth from his giant pollution
monsters.
How Good is it?
This show is excellent, undoubtedly
one of the bestto come out in Japan during the "second monster
boom" of the seventies. Despite the very rough start of the
first 3 to 5 episodes it gradually becomes better and better
with each episode.
I bet that the first thing anyone
notices or points about this show are the special effects,
which to the casual observer would appear to be accomplished
with a budget of $20 per episode, this can be a misleading
observation however. Take a closer look and you'll notice
that the sets used in the production of Spectreman are quite
detailed. One of the best ones that I caught was about halfway
through the series when Spectreman is fighting a monster in
a Japanese airport, the buildings, airplanes, and other structures
where some of the best I seen in a non-Ultraman show.
This is not to say that all the
effects are good, there are some pretty farfetched moments
too, like whenever a person falls down a hill or building
and the FX people employ what is clearly a stand-in dummy
that bends impossibly in the air. These moments however dont
detract and end up adding to the charm of the show.
The monsters that Spectreman
fight are also some of the more creative that I've seen in
one of these shows. Initially (first half of the show) the
monster are mostly based on different types of pollution,
like smog and contaminated waters, but as the shows progressed
the monster started to come from a variety of other sources
(like other planets, transformed people etc). This second
half of the series is incidentally referred to as the worst
group of episodes in Spectreman's run, a notion with which
I must disagree.
Spectreman's character is also
of great interest and well developed as the series progressed.
One of the things that first caught my attention was that
he doesn't have the freedom to transform whenever he wants,
he must first request permission to do so (this by the way
seems to be done away with closer to the end of the show,
when it seems that our hero can transform whenever he wants).
Spectreman also has several different weapons including the
Spectre Flash, a gun (!?), a sword & shield (which appear
out of nowhere and he only uses once) and shurikens (check
out the episode 50 where he fights a fake Spectreman, they
throw these at each other with impossible results).
Conclusion
All in all a can't miss show!
Not your typical Ultraman imitator from the seventies.
Jeffrey Couto |
