Most people figure the Japanese are just ga-ga for giant robots or coo-coo for kaiju, but to bad movie lovers who expose themselves to this stuff like skinny nerds in comic books expose themselves to every form of radioactive element on the Periodic Table, they know that the Japanese used to have a pretty big boner for guys in spandex and capes too.

It seems like just a few weeks ago I was reviewing a Starman movie, now here I am matching spandex with the Golden Bat. I don't know if I was mentally masturbating over this summer's superhero blockbuster movie line-up (Iron Man, The Dark Knight, Hellboy II and The Incredible Hulk) when I was putting this “52 Project” itinerary movie together or if I'm just a huge geek who can't take his dick out of a comic book long enough to realize he's covered in paper-cuts both figuratively and literally. Whatever my major malfunction, at least today's obscure Japanese superhero guy feature stars Sonny Chiba! Can I get a “What what!” for Mr. Street Fighter? Thank you, that'll do nicely. I won't ask you to raise the roof, but if you should feel so inclined, then by all means help yourself while I get this review down to the brass tacks and cobalt nails. Starman fans who caught that one, give yourselves a round of applause... or a round of applesauce, your choice. Everybody else? Olé!

As with any Japanese movie worth it's weight in uncooked fish, Golden Bat has a catchy theme song! The music is appropriately actiony and it's fun listening to the singer chant what sounds like “Dumkoff! Dumkoff!” for the chorus, but I'm a little disappointed with the uninspired lyrics. Something about how GB has to beat off the alien monsters with his baton. It's no “He is filled with turtle meat”, but what can you do?

Amateur stargazer Akira Kazahaya spots that “Planet Icarus” (yeah, I don't remember that planet fitting into the MVEMSNUP line-up either) has broken its orbit and is headed on a collision path with Earth! The local observatory tells him in so many words to go use his telescope as a sexual aid and leave the planet peepshow to the experts, but much as you'd expect from EVERY MOVIE EVER MADE, the experts don't know mucus from Muselix and the junior Copernicus is the only guy who knows what he's doing. But why is a planet named after an shithead kid who deserved to drown suddenly going into a fiery nosedive into the big blue marble? Dude, I reiterate, this is a Japanese superhero movie. If I told you it's being aimed at the Earth by an evil outer space supervillain dressed in a giant four-eyed hamster suit with a metal claw for a hand, would you be surprised? I didn't think so.

A group of nondescript Asian guys (I'll leave that joke up to you) in black coats, hats and sunglasses kidnap the nosy youth and take him to their secret hideout where they subject him to tortures the likes of which have only been experienced by fresh-faced school girls on the business ends of giant tentacles! Okay, so the violent sexual assault part isn't true, but Akira is kidnapped by the Japanese Blue Brothers and taken to a remote location in the mountains. Here he meets Yamatone (Sonny Chiba!) and his top secret UN funded group of underground astronomers who confirm Akira's story about the fall of Icarus (heavy-handed symbolism if I've ever seen it). In fact, the group has estimated that the Earth only has 10 days left to exist if something isn't done immediately. Will they fire Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck into space to stop the plummeting planetoid, or will they seek help from an alien species of people dressed up like giant starfish? Nope, somehow this wiener kid with his sensible haircut is going to be the key to rescuing the world from vaporization... or they could just use their super destruction death ray beam launcher and it's “power of 1000 H-Bombs” to blow up the damn glorified cannonball, provided they can find that all important super lens material that can only secured in the movie's final act...

Receiving a distress signal from the crew tracking down the necessary material, Yama, Akira, and a group of people all dressed in Jiffy Pop uniforms board their Supercar (propelled by flames and suspended by wires...) and rocket off to be of aid. Tracking the signal to a strange, uncharted island, they find their associates all dead. The assumption (because when you make an assumption, you make an “ass” out of “u” and “mption”...?) is that the island may be a remnant of fabled Atlantis, but suddenly everything goes batshit and the island starts to fall apart! Up from the depths rises a giant drill bit tower thingy that looks like a squid wearing sunglasses. Controlled by the evil space hamster, the squid's shades blast at the heroes with it's own destruct-o beam, sending them into a nearby cave to hide. Unable to zap 'em to death, Doom Hamster sends his space ninjas down to take care of the astronomers who now threaten his master plan. Fortunately it's mandatory for all UN sponsored scientists to wield laser guns while on missions, and space ninjas come with a lag time of no less than 7 seconds while in action, so they don't offer the good guys much of a threat.

Amidst the half-empty paint cans, incomplete ratchet sets, broken televisions, and woefully neglected foosball table of Atlantis's basement/temple, the crew does find something interesting: an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus! According to the heiroglyph graffitti on the lid, the coffin contains “The Golden Bat”; a hero who has slept for 10,000 years and will return to defend the Earth from a great crisis. Of course there's no greater threat to our planet than total atomization by a big fireball (take THAT Global Warming!), so it looks like it's time for GB to stop smacking the snooze button and get his cape wearin' butt to work!

Sure enough, the lens material for the Super Destruction Beam Cannon™ is inside of GB's casket. As for the Egyptian Superman, he looks like a mummified ghoul wearing one of Liberace's old stage costumes. The space ninjas' rays are useless against the ghoul wonder as they just bounce off of him while the hero pummels the fiend fodder with his mighty head-thumping scepter of justice. All the while, GB laughs and bobbles his head like one of those automated clowns they used to put outside of funhouses at carnivals. To add to the wackiness, GB has no eyes (I imagine they rotted out centuries ago) and his face is a rubber mask so his mouth never opens while he's talking. The whole face just kinda shakes and jiggles. You know... like... a rubber... mask...

Because he has to catch up on 10000 years worth of soap operas, Goldie doesn't plan on hanging out with the Jiffy Pop brigade 24-7. Instead he gives Emily (the group's criminally under-aged child laborer member) a golden bat broach to to call him with whenever there's trouble... and to make all the Goth kids at her school jealous. Before leaving though, Batty busts out the eyebeams on Hell Hamster's giant squid butt plug so the crew can escape safely. Before he retreats to his exercise wheel and giant novelty water bottle though, the quadcloptic rodent introduces himself as Nazo and makes known his plans of global destruction. Get in line pal, there are at least 7000 other guys in much better costumes vowing to do the same thing this afternoon.

With the SDBC now complete and ready to pop some planetoid ass, Nazo has to send in a trio of agents to put a stop to the UN putting a stop to his plans... I think. I'm a little confused. Anyway, the trio are a furry lupine type character in a fur coat named Jackal, a sinister she-dragon wearing a scaly costume named Piranha, and a scar-faced guy named Keloid... what the fuck!? Okay, so you have an elite trio of super agents you plan to strike terror into the hearts of your enemies, two of which you name after vicious animals and one you name after A FRIGGIN' SKIN CONDITION!? What the hell does scar tissue that's, and I quote, “benign, non-contagious, and usually accompanied by severe itchiness, sharp pains, and changes in texture” have to do with striking fear into those who oppose you?! I mean, yeah, the guy's competition for Freddy Krueger in the Mr. Fucked Face contest, but what the hell!? Here's a tip: if you ever find yourself being employed by a despotic space hamster, make sure you include a bit in your contract where he doesn't get to choose your codename.

Flying in a spaceship stolen from Flash Gordon, the trio of evil (or rather duo of evil and their embarassing friends with the bad skin) swoop down on the Super Astronomers' mountain base, sending in more space ninja fodder. So, I guess that would mean that the trio aren't so much deadly super assassins as they are the assistant-managers for Nazo's army... and now that I type his name again, it makes me think of a goose-stepping clown performing at Hitler's birthday. “Guttuntag children! Look at me, I am Nazo ze Clown! Heil Nazo!” Creepy for so many reasons.

As Jackal and the space ninjas are about to kill Yamatone and the crew, GB shows up cackling his evil robot clown cackle, pimp cane of ultimate ass-whopping in hand, cape of velvety softness comforting him from behind, and his gold lammae jumpsuit of undeniable homosexuality clinging to his body. Fortunately for Goldie his opponents mostly just stand around waiting for their turn to get pimp slapped by the Bat Rod (something Catwoman's familiar with...), so it's not hard to save the day. Unfortunately, that wall of prone, easily beaten space ninjas was just enough to slow down GB so Jackal could escape with the group's leader and the group's Super Destruction Beam Cannon... but not its special lens. Though you wouldn't think this to be an issue since Naz still has Icarus heading for the Earth anyway, the only difference being that the good guys no longer have a way of stopping it, the lack of lens still pisses of the villain as he was hoping to shoot the big death ray himself. Some brats just aren't happy until they've got all of the other kids' toys for themselves.

Setting himself up to botch everything he's worked for, the Hamster of the Apocalypse sends Piranha and Keloid into the research facility disguised as the old man and the lead female agent of the group in search of the missing lens piece. Nazmeister must've opted for the cheap-o model of the transformation machine though, as Kel's disguise is short fused while trying to strangle the old man's granddaughter. Good thing he didn't trip over a snag in the carpeting or get a bad case of gas while the good guys were around, otherwise they would've had his ass in a sling post haste. To break up the always unnerving visual of an old man strangling a little girl, Kel opts to just zap her with a sleep ray from his eyes after he's been revealed and escapes with her back to Nazo's big squid tower dildo base... if they can prevent the world from exploding, the UN might want to invest in a better security system. Sure, squirrels can't get in (as noted in an earlier, pointless scene), but deformed space mutants seem to have no problem coming and going as they please!

When even the death threats on the life of his grandchild aren't enough to convince the old man to tell them where the lens is, the reject from the cosmic pet store decides to fuck it all and just speed up Icarus, sending it crashing through the moon(?!) as it topples faster toward the planet. In other words, even if anyone can stop Icarus, our fucking moon's been blown to shit so the planet's going to be fist-fucked anyway!

Convinced that the lens must be in the possession of Golden Bat if it's not at the base, Nazo suckers Emily into summoning the hero into a trap at Nazo Tower... which drills right up through downtown Tokyo! Nazo better be careful though, he doesn't want Mothra coming along and using his headquarters for her new nesting spot. To further bait the trap, Naz starts tossing UN agents from the top of his tower. It's actually Yam you gives in first, asking the GB give up the lens so no one else has to die... except for THE REST OF HUMANITY... Desperate to regain the Beam Cannon before Icarus makes Earth an uninhabitable cloud of space dust, our climactic finale feature Goldie duking it out with Jackal and most space ninjas aboard Nazo's flying submarine (funny if you think about it, since the term “submarine” means “below water” and it's flying through the air...), then kamikaze-ing the purloined craft into Nazo Tower like it was Ming the Merciless's wedding day! Then, with only ten minutes before it's too late to save the world, Yam and Akira storm the fallen tower to save their captured comrades and get some of that sweet sweet Beam Cannon action. Between Batty's chuckling fits and Keloid's always gut ticklingly over-acted facial expressions, I only wish their final battle had lasted longer! Anyway, Icarus gets planet popped, Golden Bat flies off in victory, and the world is safe... except of course for that little problem with THE FUCKING MOON BEING BLOWN UP... oh well, you win some, you lose some.

Of the movies I've reviewed since starting this “52 Project” thing, Golden Bat is by far the most fun I've had up to this point. Unlike Starman's adventures, this wasn't a massive clusterfuck of unwatchable tripe! All the fun elements of a movie about a super powered mummy fighting a four-eyed space hamster with a steel claw for a hand? They're right here! They're done in full blown cheeseball fashion, but done in the correct full blown cheeseball fashion! Good example? Keep an eye on GB and see just how many times the bottom of his rubber mask pops out from the collar of his cape. Even better? The old professor guys is played by an elderly white guy and it's obvious that all of his lines were originally read in English and then dubbed into Japanese (ironic). The funny part comes from the voice he was dubbed with, as it makes him sound like a very large and angry Japanese guy when in reality he's a fairly frail looking white geezer. Oh the laughs.

It's sad that there's so much crap out there flooding the DVD market in abundance while hidden gems like this turkey are hiding under rocks where no one will work up the ambition to look for them. Then again, we here at the Tomb of Anubis hope to fix that problem in the near future... keep it under your hat though, I'm not sure exactly how legal this is...