Weirdhouse Cinema: Hanuman vs. 7 Ultraman

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe consider the 1974 Thai co-production "Hanuman vs. & Ultraman," in which the hindu god Hanuman teams up with the Ultra Seven to defeat evil monsters and dastardly human plots.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (00:14):
This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
today we're going to be talking about a Thai kaiju movie,
or at least partially Taie. I think this is a
Thai Japanese co production. Am I right about that? Rob?

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yes, though it is. It's the Thai aspects of it
are definitely tie to the max. It's filmed in Thailand,
has Thai actors, and features the really stars the Thai
variation of the god Hanuman.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
Right, So this movie has a couple of different titles.
I think the English translation of the Thai title is
Hanuman versus Seven Ultramen. And then there's also an English
translation of a Japanese title I've seen it filed under,
which is The Dick's Ultra Brothers versus the Monster Army,
which I like out that the titles do not agree

(01:06):
on the numbers of ultras.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yeah, and then it can also be sometimes confused because
there's another film from the same year in the same
directors that I think is the follow up to this,
titled Hanaman and the Five Common Writers so that's a
different film but similar premise.

Speaker 3 (01:22):
Okay, so this is not only our first Thaie movie,
this is also our first false versus film false versus
because the title Hanuman versus the Seven Ultraman is entirely misleading.
Hanuman never fights the Seven Ultramen. In fact, Hanuman in
this movie is created by the Seven Ultramen and they

(01:43):
fight together against some bad demons that are released from
the earth by arrogant scientists who don't believe in the gods.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yeah, it's more like seven Ultramen en list Hanaman, yeah,
or team up with Hanaman.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
Yeah. But my one sentence review this this movie is
just a rush of endorphins. It's so good.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Yeah, this is a Oh it's a very colorful film.
I can't really stress that enough. Like when you think
of a Kaiju movie, there are certain things you expect.
You expect cool, kind of practical, sometimes goofy monster costumes.
This film has that. You expect model cities and structures
blowing up and getting crushed. Definitely, we have that. You

(02:26):
often expect children playing a major part in it, because
ultimately these are films for kids, and yes those are
present as well, But there are these mythological sequences involving
Hanoman and sometimes other deities. There are cosmic scenes that
are in play, and as we'll describe some of these
as we move along, but they are just so brilliant

(02:47):
and psychedelic at times that it's overpowering.

Speaker 3 (02:52):
I was actually going to point out that there are
parts of this movie, in fact, I would say, especially
the first few minutes of the movie, going from like
the studio logo through the opening narration, that feature some
film techniques that you don't usually expect to see in
a big monster fight movie. And it actually weirdly reminded

(03:13):
me of the experimental films of Stan Brackage, like the
Dog Star Man sequence, which have a lot of things
like extreme close ups of weird textures and color manipulation,
unusual manipulations of the film stock itself. It felt like
techniques that felt more at home in the realm of
you know, mid twentieth century experimental film, but here they

(03:37):
are in a big in a big Kaiju slam.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
Yeah, and it's it's often invoked in a way that,
especially in the space scenes, it depicts a thoroughly mythological cosmos,
you know, a cosmos that ultimately has more in common
with with with say, like like like Hindu astrology than
with you know, even nineteen seventies understandings of what the

(04:02):
cosmos actually consisted of.

Speaker 3 (04:04):
You Know, one of the funny things we were talking
about before we started recording is that I didn't quite
realize that this movie, in terms of themes, was essentially
going to be like one of those Christian apologetics movies,
like the Gods not Dead movies except for like Hanuman,
the Hindu Deities here and the Ultramen where an arrogant
scientist is punished for not necessarily punished, but an arrogant

(04:28):
scientist does wrong and releases a bunch of demons and
causes trouble basically because he doesn't believe in the gods. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
Yeah, there's a strong theme of that. There's some other
It's a film that's very forward with its themes, like yeah,
especially with some of the minor bad guys who we'll
get into. Like the minor bad guys are just super bad.
They're like tai and ladies to railroad tracks bad.

Speaker 3 (04:52):
Yeah, but they're also their major sin is that they
don't respect the gods either. I don't respect the temples.
They don't respect the Buddha. They try to cut off
a Buddhist statue's heads so they can sell it for money,
and they are they are mercilessly brutally punished for this act. Well,
actually they're they're punished for that and for shooting a
child in the face, so conventionally morally evil as well.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yeah, that's and that's another thing that I would say
about this film why it's worth checking out is that
it is it is kind of surprisingly violent at times. Yeah,
like with the with the terrestrial violence involving the you know,
these criminals who are defacing the temples, but then also
when you get to the big kaiju battles, these are
some brutal beatdowns. There are like moral Kombat style fatalities

(05:37):
that take place here that I don't recall really seeing
in the likes of Gamera and Godzilla.

Speaker 3 (05:42):
You're absolutely right about that. And there's another way in
which I thought this was different than many of the
other giant monster fight movies I've seen. This one had
much more of an element of dance in it, yes,
than I thought any other one I've ever seen. So
it's not just you know, people in giant minds costumes
doing wrestling moves at each other. There spend a lot

(06:03):
of time almost sort of dancing at one another. And
there are other dance sequences in the movie, like a
large part of the early third of the film is
like children dancing and playing music to make it rain,
because part of the plot is that the earth is
too hot.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yeah, you might find yourself watching this and thinking how
much of the dance sequence am I going to have
to watch? And the answer is you will watch all
of it. Yeah, it is an extended sequence. And indeed
Hanaman and in a minute will explain Hanaman for everybody's
not familiar. The Hanomon is depicted here is not like
some sort of like sci fi twist on Hanaman. For

(06:41):
the most part, it is Hanomon as Hanaman is depicted
in the art and culture of Thailand, both in terms
of visual depictions but also performance depictions and traditional Thai dance.

Speaker 3 (06:55):
Yeah, that's right, So you get a lot of monkey
dances in the movie. Now, another thing I wanted to
come back to is I was trying to think of
examples of other false versus movies. I know there are some,
I just couldn't call them to mind. I didn't know
if you could think of any examples. But the closest
thing I actually came up with is a trash DVD
that I like to watch. I think it's from the

(07:16):
early two thousands. That's a movie called Frost Portrait of
a Vampire. It has Gary Busey in a bit part
in it. But the funniest thing about it is actually
that there is a character named Frost in the movie,
but he is not a vampire.

Speaker 2 (07:33):
Yeah. I can't think of another film offhand where it's
something versus something and they don't actually fight. Now, there
are plenty of examples where the versus matchup is about
two good characters who will fight each other but then
ultimately team up against a greater evil. I mean that's
a common trope.

Speaker 3 (07:50):
Yeah, of course, you know King Kong versus Godzilla, and
then actually they have to fight Mecca Godzilla or something. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yeah, but in this I don't Yeah. Hahnaman and the
the Ultra team are pretty square from the get go,
like they're they're they're never in conflict with each other.

Speaker 3 (08:06):
Yeah, I don't even recall a minor disagreement. They're they're
absolutely in lock steps by side the entire time.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
Fine tune the machine.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
Well, maybe we should hit that trailer audio.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
Yeah, let's let's hear a little bit of the trailer
and and hopefully this is the right clip. You'll hear
some of the music in it, because there's a fabulous
Hanimon theme song in this that just as delightful, especially
if you if you enjoy like ty pop music of
this era, really good stuff. One easy Gone.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
La playing on.

Speaker 3 (08:58):
On get your Dumb Pig. Oh. I don't know if
we mentioned the year, we should say this movie is from.
What year? Is it nineteen seventy four?

Speaker 2 (09:09):
Is that nineteen seventy four?

Speaker 3 (09:10):
Yes, oh boy, that was a good year for tai kaiju.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
All right, so let's get into some of the connections here.
Normally we talk about the human connections of Note, and
we are going to get to the humans, But first
I want to talk about the god of Note here,
and that is Hanoman born. If we can really put
a data on this sort of thing, maybe fifteen hundred BCE.
But then again, Hahnaman is a god, so it's kind

(09:37):
of ridiculous to even throw that out there. So yes,
this movie heavily features Hanaman and it's it's it's not
actually the Hindu god Hanaman. It's actually a guy in
a suit. But I always love this aspect of the
film sci fi comic book hero teams up with an
actual god. And we're not talking Zeus or Poseidon, We're

(09:58):
not talking Cthulhu or Go. We're talking about a mythological
figure and deity that is hugely culturally and religiously important
to one of the world's major religions. So Hanaman is
a god that is still like very much in play.

Speaker 3 (10:12):
Now.

Speaker 2 (10:12):
Hanaman is a fascinating figure in Hindu mythology. And while
nothing is certain, I believe some scholars believe that the
Chinese figure of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, the Great
Sage equal to Heaven, may have at least partially emerged
out of traditions of Hanuman that flowed out of India
into China. But then again, Sun Wukong is very much

(10:34):
a separate mythological entity as well.

Speaker 3 (10:36):
Now sun Wukong, is this the figure who appears in say,
the novel Journey to the West, and yes, sometimes characterized
as the handsome Monkey King.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
Yes, yes, yeah, that is that is the Monkey King indeed,
and they have some shared characteristics, but again, each one
is very much their own character. So if there's you know,
it's it's not so much. One is the Chinese version
and one is the you know, the Indian or Thai version.
It's like they're really separate entities at this point. So

(11:08):
in getting into the Hindu origins of Hanaman, which then
of course are become important in Thai culture as well.
I was reading a book titled The Sacred Animals of
India by Nantifa Krishna, and the author points out that
the Sanskrit word for monkey is copy, but in the

(11:28):
Hindu epic the Ramayana, in which Hanaman and his soldiers
aid Rama in the rescue of Sita from the evil
king Ravana, the word copy is not used to describe
Hanaman and his soldiers. Instead, they are described as the Venara,
literally the forest men, the people of the forest.

Speaker 3 (11:46):
Oh whoa, So is is it possible this is something
more like a bigfoot kind of creature that they have
in mind?

Speaker 2 (11:54):
I mean, I imagine there are some interpretations that may go
in that direction, but there seem to be associations with
monkeys as kind of totem animals for the Vanara. So
the interpretation that Krishna is making in this book is
that perhaps the origins were like a like a people,
a tribe of the forest, like a culture of the forest,

(12:14):
and perhaps they had as their emblem the monkey, or
perhaps they worshiped a deity that they had that monkey characteristics,
a deity that might even be sort of the proto
Hahnaman I see. But in later literary traditions, writers increasingly
draw in monkey descriptions for the Vanara, deliberate monkey characteristics,

(12:36):
and so you see this transformation. Hanaman and his people
become the monkeys of the forest, like the noble monkey
warriors of myth. And it's also only over time that
the word Vanara becomes a blanket term for primates in
the real world as well. So chief among the Vanara
is Hanaman loyal friend and devote to Rama, like he's

(12:57):
just his loyalist supporter. In some interpretations, I think Hanaman
gets his power out of his devotion to Rama, Like
that's just how strong it is. There's the scene where
he like, you know, he opens his heart and you
see Rama inside his heart.

Speaker 3 (13:14):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (13:15):
So's he's also one of the ten incarnations of the
Lord Vishnu. He's the son of the Wind he's the
offspring of Anjana. He is fierce, immortal, he's unbeatable, but
he also has a certain humanity to him. There's something
about Hanaman that is relatable, like he's you know, he's bold,
but he's he's not stuck up. Now, there's a lot

(13:36):
more to Anaman. He's been a very popular figure in
Hinduism for a very long time, and he's also vital
in Thailand, where the Thai version of the Rama Yana,
the Ramakin, is one of Thailand's national epics, derived from
the Buddhist Dasaratha Jadaka. And if you visit the Grand
Palace in Thailand in Bangkok, you can explore these beautiful

(13:57):
murals depicting Hahnaman's war against the demon armies, where Hanaman
has this, he has this, this, this brilliant porcelain skin
and this fierce face and yeah, battling these these demon
armies with valor and magic.

Speaker 3 (14:13):
Now in this movie, Hanuman does in fact battle a
demon army. Did you notice anything from those murals or
artistic depictions coming through in the movie Hanuman versus the
Seven Ultramen.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
No, I mean not really, not to my eye anyway,
it seems like the the monsters that are battled in
this are very much more kaiju. Like the only combatant
that really has the you know, the feel of of
of Thai cultural tradition about them is Hanuman himself, and
he's just steeped in it.

Speaker 3 (14:47):
He might as well be fighting Rodin or something.

Speaker 2 (14:50):
Right, Yeah, Like just you know, for instance, there are
scenes where Hanaman flies across the sky and he does
so in this stylized pose that that is very very
much like the pose you see him taking in various
traditional artistic depictions.

Speaker 3 (15:04):
I noticed that, yes, similar to the style of flying
you see often in say Hindu art or Hindu iconography,
where they're not flying in the superman pose, or not
flying with arms out like they're like a bird or something,
but as if they're in sort of a levitating capsule.

Speaker 2 (15:22):
Yeah. So it's to me, it's it's it's interesting because
on one hand, it seems like a perfect fit for
Hanaman to pop up in a tie children's movie to
help superheroes battle giant monsters. But on the other hand, yeah,
there's there's nothing quite like like it, nothing you can
compare to it in Western traditions. You know, Like I
was thinking Okay, well, sometimes we have tales about Santa

(15:43):
Claus doing stuff, but you can't compare Santa to Hanaman.
It's it's not it's not at all the same. You know,
Santa is a mythological, folkloric character, but not one on
the same level as like Like you wouldn't say Santa
is like a cultural icon or cultural hero of for
the most part, I think, and likewise, I can't think
of another religious figure that you could imagine popping up

(16:06):
in a film like this.

Speaker 3 (16:07):
I mean, I guess maybe the closest is like Thor
or something in the Marvel universe. True, but yeah, I
mean especially not for like, religions that are still widely
followed today have huge, huge numbers of adherents. I know
there are people who have done some sort of Norse
religious revival, but like you wouldn't expect to see a
movie where, say, Jesus is wrestle slamming robots.

Speaker 2 (16:30):
No, though, weirdly enough, you do see in some of
the exported Santo movies they sometimes call them Samson if
I remember correctly. Oh, that's interesting, and they may do
that with certain other Strongman films that came out of
Italian traditions I think where you just go to, oh,
we'll just call them Samson, referring to the Samson of

(16:53):
Jewish and Christian traditions. But then again, I'm not sure
there's ever been an actual Samson film where Sampson is
taken out of the biblical world and is say, dropped
in New York City to battle monsters or something.

Speaker 3 (17:08):
I see some strange symbolic parallels between El Santo and Samson.
They have a similar thing where you could take away
their power by doing something to their head. Samson by
cutting his hairs, El Santo by unmasking him.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
Yeah, and actually it Hanaman reminds me a little bit
of Santo. As we explored him in the previous Santo movie.
We discussed that the Santo is so good that the
evildoers really don't stand a chance against him, see, and
Hanamon is very much the same way. So, in a
weird way, Santo is about as close as I can

(17:43):
come to imagining something like Hanamon in another movie.

Speaker 3 (17:47):
Yeah, I can see that. Okay, So who are the
directors of this movie?

Speaker 2 (17:52):
Okay, we have a couple of directors. First, there is
Sempote Sans director born nineteen forty one and famed tie
director who directed a string of really interesting sounding films.
There's some other clear ultraman and ultraman ask stuff in there,
but my attention was instantly grabbed by nineteen seventy nine's Crocodile,

(18:14):
which is a giant croc movie. Magic Lizard from nineteen
eighty five, which is I think a comedy or children's
movie about a roller skating lizard that fights aliens in Bangkok.

Speaker 3 (18:25):
Ooh sounds good, yep, I.

Speaker 2 (18:27):
Saw a clip from it. Looks interesting. And then there's
Fadda Rod Mary from nineteen eighty one, which is a
film about ogres. I was reading the synopsis and it
was twelve girls are abandoned by their parents because they
are too poor to take care of them. The twelve
daughters are rescued by an ogress in disguise who promises
to take care of them as their own daughters. And yeah,

(18:49):
and then it goes from there. So it seems very
steeped in some sort of folklore tradition and has like
a very cool looking, like tie style ogress on the
poster art that I saw, right, all right, Then we
also have Shohei Tojo is one of the directors largely
a special effects film director. He did a bunch of

(19:10):
ultraman stuff, but he also did some sintai stuff, which
was then adapted into Power Rangers in the United States.

Speaker 3 (19:18):
Okay, so this would be an example of what in
Japanese cinema is sometimes called a tokusatsu film, like a
special effects driven movie.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
Yeah, tokusatsu. So I guess you could say, like to
a certain extent, like who's the tokosatsu director in the
American sense, Michael.

Speaker 3 (19:37):
Bay Yeah, Roland Dimerick or something like that. Yeah, similar thing,
Girmo del Toro maybe, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
So both of these directors gave us this Hanaman movie,
the subsequent Hanoman movie from the same year, and they
worked together on a film titled The Last Dinosaur that
I'll get to here in just a bit.

Speaker 3 (19:55):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
So that brings us to the writer Boonzo wak Atsuki.
Active from the late nineteen fifties to the late nineteen eighties,
he wrote on a number of projects, including some that
fans of mystery since Theater three thousand might be familiar with.
Starwolf Fugitive Alien, Fugitive Alien two. These were films that

(20:17):
arrived at MST three K via the Sandy Frank distribution System,
which I think was headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, back in
the day when it was around. But anyway, these films
featured a character named Captain Joe. He was the one
of the ball cap On played by the legendary Joe Shashido,
who lived nineteen thirty three through twenty twenty. He was

(20:38):
the star of the excellent nineteen sixty seven assassin film
Branded to Kill all Right. What about the cast, Well,
the cast is largely These are largely taie actors. Most
of them are not people I'm really familiar with. There
is an actor by the name of Yodchai Metsuwan who
plays doctor Wissuit, who is going to be our sort

(21:00):
of our central villain in the piece. He seems like
he was a tie actor of possible note I'm not
familiar with him, but he has a number of films
attributed to him on IMDb.

Speaker 3 (21:09):
Now, probably the most memorable human characters in this film
are a couple of I don't know how to describe
them exactly. They really embody the monkey spirit of this movie.
A couple of sort of physical comedians who spend a
lot of the films sort of dancing and jumping around
in strange and obscene ways. And when we first meet them,

(21:32):
they're wearing the most glorious jumpsuits. But these are let's see,
I'm trying to remember their character's names. I've got them
written down somewhere here.

Speaker 2 (21:40):
Well, yeah, their names are shriep Polk and Shressuya I believe.

Speaker 3 (21:45):
Yeah, that's right. The version I had spelled it differently,
but I think it's transliterating the same sounds as seapuac
and Sesulia.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
Yeah. And on IMDb at least, which has especially given
you know that this is a tie film from the
nineteen seventies. I don't know, there might be something that
is not the information might be messed up in some way.
But on IMDb they are listed as playing themselves, which
leads me to believe that maybe they were Thai comedians
of note at the time, like they maybe they had

(22:13):
an act, because, like you say, they are very physical
comedic performers. If not I think clowns. We might even
that might even be an accurate depiction of the sort
of of humor that they display.

Speaker 3 (22:24):
Oh well, they're even wearing white face paint in some scenes,
that's right. Yeah, so they seem to be very much
in the in a kind of the clown school tradition.
They are enthusiastic performers, They're they're they're sort of a
handful for the eyes.

Speaker 2 (22:38):
Yeah, they are a lot, Yes, for sure. Various other
actors in this, many of which you know, do it,
do a fine job. But I'm just going to skip
over them here because I don't know that they really
have much import to the listener. But let's get to
the special effects, because after all, this is a special
effects movie. The special effects director on this was Cazoa Sagawa,

(23:00):
and Sagawa did ultraman special effects throughout his career, but
he also worked on a number of films and TV
shows you might have heard of. His first credit was
nineteen sixty eight's Mighty Jack TV show, a version of which,
like a movie cut of it, was featured on Mystery
Science Theater three thousand back in the day, and while
most of his credits are full Japanese productions, he also

(23:21):
did effects on nineteen seventy seven's The Last Dinosaur, which
was a Japanese American co production starring Richard Boone and
Joan van Ark who was in Frocks.

Speaker 3 (23:31):
Oh, I remember her.

Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yeah, so there's our connection to a previous film. The
Last Dinosaur was also a co production by Rankin in Bass.

Speaker 3 (23:41):
Wow. Wait was it rotoscoped?

Speaker 2 (23:42):
I'm not sure?

Speaker 3 (23:43):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (23:45):
But another interesting credit that Sagawa has he worked on
a TV series what was apparently a horror anthology TV
series in Japan titled Horror Theater Unbalanced or I think
it's sometimes translated as Unbalanced Horror Theater from nineteen seventy three,
and I was I was trying to find out more

(24:06):
about it. I couldn't find out much, but it looks
really interesting. Again, I'm generally interested in any kind of
horror anthology, but in nineteen seventy three Japanese anthology TV series,
it sounds really rad YEP, sign me up. And finally,
the music, which I'm only mentioning because we tend to
mention the music. Toro Fuyuki did the music on this.
It's nothing really to write home about. It feels very

(24:29):
old fashioned and very you know, sort of cliche adventure music.
But this guy did a lot of Ultraman music. Also
Inframan from nineteen seventy five, which starred Danny Lee who
was in The Oily Maniac.

Speaker 3 (24:51):
Or are you ready to get into the plot.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
Let's get into the plot of this movie.

Speaker 3 (24:55):
Okay, Now we start off with a once again a
beautiful film studio logo. I have to say, I've noticed
many times since we started doing Weird House Cinema that
I really love a lot of Asian film studio logos.
Love the Shaw Brothers logo, I love the Toho logo
of course, and I would say the Chaio Film Studio

(25:17):
here joins the list because it's just got these two
heavenly beasts, these kind of you know, like dragon tiger
type creatures cradling the studio name in a disk between
their paws while a kaleidoscopic supernova just roars behind them.
It is really gorgeous.

Speaker 2 (25:34):
Yeah, it's it's quite beautiful and eye catching and flows
nicely into the rest of the film because it's it's
not like we cut from this to just a city
street or anything.

Speaker 3 (25:42):
Like.

Speaker 2 (25:42):
We're right into the into the the the blinding, you know,
astrological world of the mythic cosmos.

Speaker 3 (25:49):
Yeah, the very first thing you see is the sun.
You are just right up in the Sun's business like
you're you know you're you can smell the Sun's breath.
And I also have to say a caveat on all
that follows. I can only judge the text content of
this film based on the English subtitles that I encountered,
which were maybe not professionally produced. I'm not sure so.

(26:11):
Of course, the quality of a film translation can vary
a lot, and any awkward qualities of the narration or
dialogue that I'm about to mention may well be a
result of the translation and not the film itself.

Speaker 2 (26:23):
Yeah, yeah, same here. I think we used the same
stream of this that had the imperfect subtitles, but it
was still an improvement over the original way I watched
this film, which was on a tie DVD that I
bought off of eBay, which had no subtitles, and I
just had kind of had to figure it out. I mean,
you can figure out most of this film by watching it.

(26:44):
It's not too deep. But there were a few things
that I just I had no idea how they were
supposed to have happened, and we'll get to those here
in a bit.

Speaker 3 (26:51):
So the very beginning, I wonder if you have some
insights into you might have some astrological knowledge that I don't.
But the opening narration and it's showing us the Sun
and space and planets, and it says, in our universe
there is the Milky Way, the galaxy where our solar
system is encircling the Sun. Nine planets were born Wednesday, Mercury, Friday, Venus, Earth, Tuesday, Mars, Saturday, Saturn, Thursday, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto.

(27:25):
Do you know what's going on there with the days?
And maybe something's lost in translation.

Speaker 2 (27:29):
I think it's perhaps a connection to Hindu astrology, Yeah okay, okay,
and the earlier associations of the of the planets.

Speaker 3 (27:38):
Yeah okay, or like days of the week on which
these planets were created. Maybe I was wondering, but I'm
going to go with yours. And then next it tells
us three million light years away there is the ultra galaxy.
Now brief astronomy note here. I was like, wait a minute,
what could that be referring to? So the distance from

(27:58):
our galaxy to the next nearest galaxy, which is the
Andromeda galaxy, is about two point five million light years away,
So that's you know, pretty clear ballpark of three million
light years away. But the funny thing about that is
it won't always be that far away. While most galaxies
in the universe are moving farther and farther away from
each other as the universe expands, the Milky Way and

(28:20):
the Andromeda galaxies are actually on a collision course. They
will probably slam into each other at least pass nearby
one another within four to five billion years. So if
the Ultra galaxy is indeed the Andromeda Galaxy, then then
you know, maybe we'll get more ultraman movies a few
billion years from now as they get I don't know, closer,

(28:41):
and that reduces the required budget for recruiting them. But anyway,
the Narration then tells us that there are sixty nine
planets which circle around something called M seventy eight. Now,
at first I was like, is that supposed to refer
to Messia seventy eight, which is sometimes called M seventy eight.
I think it's probably not, because this, it turns out,
is a planet, and Messia seventy eight is a hazy

(29:04):
nebula within the Milky Way that's about sixteen hundred light
years away. So we learned from the Narration that M
seventy eight is a planet full of light and happiness
and quote, there were born the Ultras. They have extraordinary
powers and are extremely intelligent. They guarantee the piece of
the galaxies.

Speaker 2 (29:23):
And the Ultras are of course, this is Ultra man
and his kin.

Speaker 3 (29:27):
Yes, his mother and his brothers. And then while we're
being told this, we're getting a pan over the surface
of M seventy eight. But it looks like a wall
on the satellite of Love. It's just a big old
mess of bike reflectors glinting in the stage lights and
Greebols on the loose.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
Yeah, a lot of Greebels.

Speaker 3 (29:47):
Yeah, very good Greebels. It's also really funny because as
we're being told that they guarantee the piece of the galaxies,
we see a close up on one of the Ultraman masks,
which don't necessar saraily look benign, and they look somewhat
evil with orange eyes, and we hear a sound that
is kind of like rats shrieking in the darkness. It's

(30:07):
not the most piece of the galaxy sound audio visual
combination you could imagine.

Speaker 2 (30:14):
Well, I mean, I guess it's a tough job at times.
I mean, clearly it involves combating monsters half the time.

Speaker 3 (30:19):
Uh huh. But then we get more facts delivered by
the narration. So talking about M. Seventy eight, we learned
that piece is eternal. There, that's good. We also learned
that Ultraman Taro watches over the three hundred cities that
in the cities without sunlight, warmth is provided by nine
hundred heaters. I found these numbers very funny. Then we

(30:41):
also learned that Ultraman Taro teaches the Ultra brothers how
to fight that Ultraman Zaffi leads his brothers helped by
their mother. And then we meet Mother Ultra. And Mother
Ultra is awesome. She is just a grand slam. I
love her costume. I love her movement. She's got this
big red cape that opens like bat wings. She holds

(31:04):
it open kind of like the Master and Manos the
hands of Fate. And we see her framed by an
Aurora when we first meet her. She's just awesome.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
Yeah, they have even though again we have we have
sci fi like superhero robot people you know, colliding with
with actual gods here, the Ultra men, the Ultra folk here,
they do have a mythic quality to the way they're
presented that ultimately makes things feel like they fit together,

(31:33):
I feel cohesive.

Speaker 3 (31:34):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this comes back to, you know,
something we've talked about on the podcast before, on our
core episodes, which is that I'm not sure the distinction
between gods and aliens is something that would have been
quite so well distinct to say, ancient people as it
is to us, because I think the main distinction that

(31:56):
we make in the modern world between gods and alien
is whether you're talking about something that is natural or
something that is supernatural. And I don't think the natural
versus supernatural categories held as firmly in the ancient world,
where you know, to many ancient peoples, the gods would
be not necessarily supernatural, but something that's defined by sort

(32:17):
of being of another place, maybe a place above in
the stars or a kind of pure land or something,
and then also being extremely powerful or being immortal. And
so if you were, say an alien from another planet
who had amazingly powerful technology, that I mean that seems
basically almost the same as being a god.

Speaker 2 (32:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (32:39):
Absolutely, But then we get an origin. So then we
cut straight from the ultras to an origin story for
Hanuman this all just sort of blends together. It's as
if it's all part of the same epic cycle.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
So it has always been.

Speaker 3 (32:52):
Yes, So you go so straight from the epica origins
of the Ultras. We go to narration that ten thousand
years ago King Panela was raining in India and you
see natural disasters. There's wind and black clouds blowing rocks
over the ground and tree limbs snapping in the wind,
water swirling, and the narration tells us that it was

(33:13):
under his reign that Hanuman was born from Ajana, pregnant
from the god of the Wind. And we see her
dressed in a splendorous outfit and a red sky background,
and there's wind being generated by the wind god and
she just vacuums it up into her mouth.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
Yeah. And this, by the way, is why Hanuman can fly,
because he is the offspring in part of the wind.

Speaker 3 (33:37):
Yeah. And then there's there's a very psychedelic birth sequence
for Hanuman. He's like, I don't know, again, it's very
experimental film. It has these dog star man like textures
and and Hanuman flies out of the ether toward the
camera with a fist extended. Then I guess that's all okay,

(33:58):
dust off the hands. Background round is done. Time to
roll the credits over, which plays an original theme song
about Hanuman, which I love it. I love it. It's like
green slime time, you know, green slime. Every sci fi
fantasy movie should get its own original theme song with
lyrics about the plot.

Speaker 2 (34:17):
Yeah, and this is a great song. I think we
probably heard part of it in the trailer audio earlier.
It just it has, you know, even even though you
know I, you know, I don't speak Thai, the Thai
language has this wonderful cadence to it, which which works
perfectly in songs like this.

Speaker 3 (34:35):
Let's get another clip.

Speaker 1 (34:36):
Of that.

Speaker 3 (34:40):
On pub one on okay, I want to cite some
lyrics of this song. Again. This is according to the
translation that I had access to, So this is the
best I could do. It says that Hanuman is invincible

(35:00):
with his incandescent trident. I don't know if I remember
a trident. Oh well, he's got his slicing weapon at
the Yeah, it looks.

Speaker 2 (35:07):
Like a sigh what we might think of as a sigh,
and that's traditionally Yeah.

Speaker 3 (35:12):
Yeah, yeah, okay, okay, I buy it. Now we learned
that he is immortal he is the Master of the
Wind against five monsters he fights aided by the seven Ultras.
Before a fight, he prays, that's why he is invincible. Uh.
And then finally the lyrics say, Hanuman and seven Ultramen
watch this great movie.

Speaker 2 (35:34):
Yes, there there are, there are some. I don't know
how much of it is the translation, but this would
be a couple of one of a couple of places
in the movie where they seem to be breaking the
fourth wall, like there's a part with the narrations like, hey,
this is our protagonist.

Speaker 3 (35:49):
Oh yeah, yeah, that happened. In fact, that happens almost immediately.
We meet a boy named Co who is at a
ruined temple with many other children, and they're praying and
dancing and playing music in order to get the gods
to make it rain because the earth is very hot
at the beginning of the movie, like the sun is
too close to the earth and it's very dry and

(36:10):
very hot and they need rain to cool the earth off.
So they're doing these rituals. And when we very first
meet Co, he's dancing around in a Hanuman mask, and
the narration just says, this is the protagonist. Yes, yeah,
But actually, before we meet Co. The first human characters
we meet are the clowns we were talking about earlier.
We see two dudes who were they're off roading in

(36:33):
a truck or a jeep or something that is spewing
these wonderful pink fumes, and they are wearing really good jumpsuits.
They're kind of Mario Super Mario Brother colors. They're red
and blue with white stripes. And their truck breaks down.
They're having car trouble and that turns into a bunch
of high jinks and tumbling around. And after they fail

(36:53):
to get their cars started and it spews a bunch
of smoke all over the place, they run away from
it and the car explodes, and then they laugh and
they dance. And I don't know if this is correct,
but in the version I was watching, there's a subtitle
annotation telling us that they are dancing like Hanuman in
order to receive better luck, though I don't know what
their luck could be now that their car has exploded.

Speaker 2 (37:17):
Yeah, I'm not sure either, but man, they are, Yeah,
they are. They are clowning hard in this, in this
scene and all subsequent scenes.

Speaker 3 (37:24):
Yes, And so we get more about how hot the
sun is like they witness birds falling out of the
sky on fire and smoking because the sun is so hot.
And so the two clown characters here, they run around
chattering and they're doing like monkey like dances and talking
about how hot they are and how they need water.

(37:45):
And I think the implication is that their car exploded
because it was so hot outside.

Speaker 2 (37:51):
Yes, I think so.

Speaker 3 (37:52):
Eventually the two clown guys shed their their awesome jumpsuits,
which is which is sad, but they shed them because
they see a river that they want to swim in
to cool off. So they take off the jumpsuits, run
and jump in the water. They're wearing like one piece
bathing suits under their jumpsuits. Interesting choice. But then while
they're enjoying the water, they explain that someone named doctor

(38:17):
we Suit has invented a way to make it rain
and so everything's going to be okay, And the narrator
tells us that these two guys are in fact famous pilots. Yeah,
and they do some really good camera mooning and such.
But we learn more about doctor Weesuit's plan that he's
going to shoot some rockets into the sky that are
going to make it rain and cool off. The world,

(38:39):
and so we go to doctor Wezut's lab to learn
about his plan. His lab set is really awesome. It's
part sort of green slime type set, you know, standard
sci fi rivets everywhere, but also it's part dangerous nineteen
seventies playground with metal equipment, which is my favorite kind
of playground.

Speaker 2 (38:59):
Yeah, it's really splendid to behold.

Speaker 3 (39:01):
Like the background really should have a rusty swing set
and a slide that just has blood all over it.
You know, it's like a lawsuit factory playground. But there's
an argument between doctor Weesuit and another character somebody else
who works in the lab named Melissa about whether they
need to ask the angels for rain in addition to

(39:22):
their rocket plan. Melisa is like, hey, you know, I
think we should appeal to the gods. That would be
a good idea, and doctor we Suit is like, no,
it is foolish to believe in the gods. Hanuman does
not exist, and I will not ask him for rain
because I am arrogant. So some very heavy handed science
versus religion stuff. Yeah, and then meanwhile, back at the

(39:43):
temple where the children are dancing and praying for rain.
Of course, all the dancing goes on, but some bad
guys show up. There are these ruthless thieves who appear
in a jeep and want to steal a precious idol
from the temple complex. So they up to a statue
of the Buddha and start chopping its head off, saying
soon we will be rich.

Speaker 2 (40:05):
Yeah, and this is yeah, this is just super low, Like,
this is highly frowned upon. I mean, and we don't
you don't even need to be told that. Obviously they're
they're messing around with with on sacred grounds. But yeah,
to rip the head off of a statue like this
on temple grounds just the lowest of the low. And
our hero instantly realizes this.

Speaker 3 (40:24):
Yeah, he sees what they're doing. He catches the thieves
in the act, and CO tries to stop them. They
fight him off. In fact, this goes there's a long
sequence of him chasing the thieves around and then like
kicking him to the ground, and every he's really insistent,
he keeps getting back up. That's perseverance, you know, he's
going to fight for that Buddha head. And eventually the
robbers they have enough of CO and they just straight

(40:46):
up shoot him in the face.

Speaker 2 (40:48):
Yeah, like three shots and then I mean, it's not
too graphic. It is a little surprising. When I watched
it for the first time, I'm like, oh my god,
that just happened. But you know, to be clear, it's
just like three gunshots and then suddenly he has red
paint smeared on his face and he's dead.

Speaker 3 (41:04):
Yes, so the way it actually looks in the movie
is kind of benign and comical, but conceptual. Yes, they
shoot a child in the face. That is what kicks
off the rest of the plot. So Co is dead.
He's lying there dead in the road as the robbers
escape with their booty and the children. They come to
see their friend. He's been killed and they start to

(41:25):
hold a funeral for him. And then meanwhile on planet
M seventy eight, the mother of Ultra gathers her six
sons and ooh, it is bad news for those thieves
because the Ultras saw what you did. They so they
reason about this. Here's how it goes. Co was good,
thieves are bad, so they deem this instance of shooting

(41:48):
a person in the face unfair. And then we learn
that the Mother of Ultra transports Ko's body to the
planet M seventy eight and then quote the Ultras merge
his body with Hanuman, so Co will be able to
return to Earth as an avenger.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
Okay, So on one hand, I'm not entirely sure why
Earth is under the jurisdiction of seventy eight, but fair
enough the other thing like this, So this whole bit
about how the boy Co becomes Hanamon, or to what
extent he becomes Hanaman, I was always unclear about this
watching it without any translations. I'm still unclear unclear about

(42:28):
it with a translation. So I guess it's like, because
Hanaman exists, Hanaman has a reality, it pre exists, and
yet somehow they are stepping in and allowing Hanaman to
return to Earth by fusing him with Koe's body. So
there's some sort of the metaphysics on it are a
little foggy, is what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (42:50):
Well, at one point, one of Ko's friends explains the
situation by saying Co is dead, but he became Hanuman. Okay,
I'm I'm not sure, So I don't know to what
extent he's still Co, but to some extent he is. Yeah. Anyway,
So the form that the mother of Ultra's intervention takes here,

(43:12):
is that a giant hand reaches out of the sky
at Coe's funeral, picks him up, takes his body to
the altar of the Ultramen, turns him into Hanuman. And
then we see Hanuman flying over cities in Thailand in
that iconic pose, you know, so upright, sort of posed
with the arms in the air, just zooming around over landmarks.

Speaker 2 (43:34):
Yeah, like I think the ruins are in Ayuthia. And
then we see Hanuman flying over what I believe is Bangkok,
and I think even flies over that the Royal Palace
that I was mentioning earlier that has the fabulous murals.
I think that's one of the locations you see him
fly over.

Speaker 3 (43:50):
And there were like reports there are sightings of Hanuman
flying around because in doctor Weizut's lab, Melissa receives the reports.
She's like, hey, they're saying Hanuman was sighted flying through
the sky and we suit his smug and dismissive and
he's like, Hanuman does not exist. That is foolishness. I
only need science. And then we get a bunch more

(44:20):
lore that I really enjoyed. It feels mostly superfluous to
the rest of the film, but we get the legend
of fra Rahm and his brother Frau Loch. So Frau Loc,
we find out, fought against the demon thought Sakhon, and
he was wounded by a lance. And because a wise
man had said that only the sap of the flower Sangkon,

(44:45):
which was found on the mountain of Sapaya, could heal
Frauloc Hanuman had to go looking for this flower. But
he is warned by the sage that the flower must
be plucked before sunrise, and so in order to get
it before sunri he has to slow down the Sun's cart.
So there's some drama with the sun cart driver. We

(45:05):
see Hanuman going up to the guy who basically, you know,
like the Sun, the driver of the Sun, and the
Sun agrees to slow down because Frau Loc is a
saint who must fight a demon to maintain the universe.
And then there's a long scene where Hanuman chases the
flower around the mountain. They seem to kind of be
flirting with each other. The sequence is very good and

(45:29):
it has more of that psychedelic imagery. Ultimately, Hanuman wins
this chase by tying up the mountain with his tail
and he gets the flower.

Speaker 2 (45:37):
Yeah, it's this whole sequence is just like a marvelous
fever dream. But to your point, I'm not exactly sure
why it was necessary. It's nice, it's yeah, it's great,
and it's about our main character Hanuman, but I don't
know if it was super necessary for what is a
rather long movie about gods and Kaiji.

Speaker 3 (45:56):
Oh, I'm not complaining. I will take this sequence. I
want it left in.

Speaker 2 (46:00):
Oh yeah, no, it's good.

Speaker 3 (46:01):
Don't streamline it for me anyway. So Co after this
returns to stop the thieves. The thieves are they're in
their car with the stolen buddhahead and they're like, haha,
we're going to get some money for this. We're going
to sell it for a crime. And then they're driving
along the road and then suddenly, standing in the road

(46:21):
in fact dancing is Co the boy Ko who they
shot in the face, and they're like, what is this?
Is this a ghost? You know? They start freaking out
and they shoot at him. They empty their guns into
him to no effect, and then Koe goes into Hanuman mode.
He changes into Hanuman form and becomes gigantic and just
brutally murders the three thieves brutally murders them with a

(46:45):
preference for gory, crushing deaths, like one of them he
stomps on. One of them, he knocks over a tree
on and that guy gets crushed in is all bloody.
And then the last guy he grabs and crushes in
his hand like a can.

Speaker 2 (47:00):
That one I love because he's also kind of nodding.
Holly does it as if he's acknowledging us the viewer
and saying, yep, yep, I'm crushing him in my hand.
Like there's kind of like a monkey's zeal to the vengeance.

Speaker 3 (47:12):
Yes, And there's also this bniacal like Hanuman talks, you know,
he says like while he's chasing them around, we get
at least the subtitles I saw where haha, you're all
going to die. You cut Buddha's head, and after the
three thieves are crushed, the buddhahead magically returns to the
statue where it began. So next, now that he's sated

(47:34):
his thirst for bloody revenge, Hanuman has to fix the
sun right He's he's going to protect Earth, so he
flies up to the sun and much like earlier, so
I guess here's one way it connects. You know, previously
he has talked to the Sun into slowing down. Now
he flies up and he tells the Son. He's like,
you're too close to Earth. Your flames are too strong.
You need to back up. And the Sun says okay,

(47:56):
and the problem is solved. Hanuman convinced, says the Sun
to back off, and seems like things should be okay.
Now the movie should be over. It's only been about
forty minutes. So something's got to happen. And incomes the
evil atheistic science to step in and ruin things. So
doctor Weizut and his rocket plan to cause rain. This

(48:20):
leads to a fiasco. There's a long sequence in the
middle of the movie here where rockets start malfunctioning and
blowing everything up and whoops, the explosions of the godless
science rockets open up cracks in the earth and release
ancient demons. And now you know what. The rest of
the movie is going to be a good old fashioned

(48:41):
kaiju meat slam, some some foam costume suplexes and Frankensteiner's
and here it's just basically monster action for the rest
of the movie.

Speaker 2 (48:51):
Yeah, and it's pretty great. Like I say, you might
come into a film like this thinking, wow, you know,
I'm a Godzilla fan, I'm a Gammerer fan, and if
you hie, hold those particular films in high regard. But
this is some some fabulous monster wailing.

Speaker 3 (49:05):
Yeah, and there are a lot of monsters. Five of
them wake up and they're running all over the place.
They're dancing in the rocket fields. That's a great but
again it's very dance oriented kind of fighting. Yeah, they're
almost There are parts where it looks kind of like
the demons are doing the dugie. And so there there's
first the classic human forces versus the giant monsters. That

(49:28):
doesn't go so well for the humans. They send in
the air force and the monsters breathe jets of fire
on the airplanes and wreck them and so forth. And
then we get another phase of the movie that is
Hanuman to the Rescue Hanuman versus Demons. At first, Hanuman
is doing pretty well, but then all the demons gang
up on him and he starts getting whipped and they

(49:49):
paralyze him inside a crystal laser ball. And then there's
a big third phase of the fight where the Ultramen
show up and then the Ultramen join on Hanuman's side
the Tides, and yet again we get a classic destroy
all Monsters command and uh Rob, I was wondering if
is there a term for this in professional wrestling, where like,

(50:11):
you know, the fights between this guy and that guy
and it's not going so well for the likable character,
but then another one runs into the rescue.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
I mean it's a run in? Is the terminology for it?

Speaker 3 (50:24):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (50:24):
Yeah, so basically this would be this would be, you know,
a run in where Hanaman is getting handled again it's
five to one, yeah, but now it's it's soon going
to be what eight to five? And one of the
things that's very noticeable is that either side, either the
Monsters or Ultra the Ultramen and in Hanaman, neither side

(50:44):
is afraid to use the numbers game to their advantage.
Oh yeah, they're not going to insist on on Neither
side is going to insist on fair numbers and fair fights.
If it's like four to one, it's going to be
a four to one whaling.

Speaker 3 (50:56):
Yeah, to use the wrestling terminology and pardon my friend,
but there are several cans of whoop ass that are opened. Yes,
they so the monsters gang up on Hanuman and they're
all just like pushing him around. It looks very they're
bullying him, and that makes sense. They're demons, they're from
the earth. They're bad monsters. But then the same thing
happens when the Ultramen show up. The Ultramen. You really

(51:19):
start kind of feeling bad for the monsters the way
they gang up on them. And then there is a
really beautiful final slicing action on the last big monster
at the end. I just loved.

Speaker 2 (51:30):
Yeah, yeah, this is the one where they they cut
him in half and then he explodes.

Speaker 3 (51:33):
He has cloven and then he explodes.

Speaker 2 (51:35):
Oh and they ripped the skin off of another one. Yeah,
that's another one where they they Again this is it's
very in a way grotesque, and to this to a
certain extent, you do almost feel for the monsters, like,
oh man, these demons woke up because of an explosion.
They woke up out of our earth, and they just thought
they were going to get to wail on the world.
Turns out they were in for a very bad day.

Speaker 3 (51:57):
But it's a good day for the audience. I mean,
I really enjoyed this one so so I think that
that does it for me? That's Hanuman versus seven Ultramen.

Speaker 2 (52:06):
Yeah, I would say, you know, there we could go
into more detail describing the the last thirty minutes of
the film, but basically a lot of the expected things
from the genre occur. You know, various humans are observing
the battle and reacting to the battle in different ways,
more clown behavior, the you know, the scientist villain is

(52:27):
observing and learning his lesson that sort of thing. And
then we have some goodbyes said at the end. But
but yeah, the stuff that really stands out those those
psychedelic and mythological sequences, the final fight, and also I
think it's just neat to see, you know, especially the ruins,
the Tay Ruins in the background there. It just adds

(52:47):
to the flavor of the film.

Speaker 3 (52:48):
Yeah. I really appreciated the Ruins in setting up the
fights as well. Thought I thought that was good. Yeah,
it's maybe this is the closest thing we'll ever get
to see to like, you know, a Kaiju at angor watt.

Speaker 2 (53:01):
Yeah. So it's yeah, ultimately, just this one's just packed
full of wonderful weirdness. I love it and I understand
it was it was it was something of a hit
at the time and really helped to cement the Ultramen
as being like a franchise in Thailand, you know, because
the Ultraman I think ultimately we're sort of a Japanese import,
but this made them, you know, authentically tie to a

(53:23):
large degree.

Speaker 3 (53:24):
Do you know if the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers were
inspired by the Ultramen because I see some similarities in
the costumes and all that.

Speaker 2 (53:33):
I mean, I would imagine so, given that some of
the same people were involved in the creation of the
show that became The Power Rangers.

Speaker 3 (53:40):
Oh, I don't think. I don't know really anything about
the history of the Power Rangers. Was that the Japanese show.

Speaker 2 (53:45):
First, Yes, Japanese show Super Sindai I believe, yeah, and
some of the people involved in this film were involved
in that. But basically you just stripped out the human
aspects of that and replaced them with that with Western
actors and have the Mighty morphin Power Rangers.

Speaker 3 (54:01):
I see. Yeah, you might not have been in the
right age group, but when you were a kid, did
you ever have the flute that would play the Green
Ranger song?

Speaker 2 (54:09):
I did not. I remember Power Rangers. I was not
too old to enjoy Power Rangers. So I remember having
it on and watching some of it and liking the
bad guys, but I never had any merchandise from it.
I think maybe I played one of the video games
at some point.

Speaker 3 (54:25):
I remember really liking the monsters, but also noticing, even
as a child that the structure of the episodes was
somewhat repetitive. Yeah, though, I guess you could say that
about the kaiju movies that I love today. In fact,
many of the genre movies I love today, which are
basically structurally identical, and it's just you know, whatever fur
you're going to rub in between those checkpoints in the plot.

Speaker 2 (54:48):
Yeah, but especially if it's a TV series and every
episode needs to essentially have a big monster battle at
the end, you know they're all going to have sort
of similar beats for sure.

Speaker 3 (54:56):
So really it's all about the fur. What does the
fur feel like? Insert from the future. I don't know
if we can run some kind of weird house specific
siren there, So here we're coming back at you. This
was not originally part of the episode we recorded, but
after we wrapped up our wonderful journey with Hanuman and

(55:18):
the Ultramen, Rob you were kind of thinking about it,
and you're like, you know what, we should talk more
about some of the specific Kaiju beat down executions toward
the end of the film. So here's our makeup test.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
That's right, because you know, we like to dwell on
what really works in a film, and certainly Hanaman's brutal
executions of Kaiju that's what it's all about here. So
we can't just let this go by. We've got to
get into the grizzly details.

Speaker 3 (55:45):
Okay, let's hear it all right.

Speaker 2 (55:47):
So one of the Kaiju is just kind of electrocuted,
slash exploded, nothing fancy, but in a way it's perfect because,
especially if you're used to less gory treatment of your
Kaiju enemies cinema, this seems like, oh, well, this is
just what's going to happen. You know, there's going to
be some rubber suit wrestling and there's going to be
some mild exploding or electrocution. The rest of the kills

(56:10):
are a lot more gory.

Speaker 3 (56:12):
Yeah, there's a lot of slicing and use of blades,
which I have not come to expect in Kaiju Meet slams.

Speaker 2 (56:19):
Right, So for two of the sort of nondescript kaiju,
and I think they all have names in this. I've
seen like breakdowns where they each have a name, but
I don't know what these two are called. Hanaman uses
his trident to fling chakrum discs of pure light at them,
which cut off their arms and de capitate them both simultaneously,
So then their bodies run around with bloody stumps where

(56:42):
their arms and head. Once where they run around, they
bump into each other comically for a few seconds, and
then they just kind of lean against each other again,
headless and armless, and then they explode.

Speaker 3 (56:53):
That's kind of a hyper bloody three stooges bit.

Speaker 2 (56:56):
Yeah, and then there's this other kaiju looking our way
up the chain. There's this neat one that kind of
has what I think of its kind of like a
dirpy head. Do you remember this guy? I think so, Yeah,
he's definitely more of a fighter. He's really put in
the boots to one of the Ultras. When Hanaman jumps
in gets the hot tag and so he stabs this
kaiju in the heart with the trident, and then while

(57:19):
the while the other when the Ultra holds him, Hanaman
puts the monster in a headlock and then pulls the
flesh off of the kaijuw's head, leaving only a perfectly
white skull setting atop his body.

Speaker 3 (57:33):
Very very strong. Why do we never see the skin
head ripping move in the in real wrestling? I mean,
like if rowdy Roddy Piper had had peeled the had
like d gloved a head, that would be a popular
finishing move.

Speaker 2 (57:46):
Yeah, I guess it's hard. I mean the closest thing,
of course, is unmasking of a luchador. But and now
you have the reverse where their mask is a skull,
their face is just a human face. You're you're you're
you're stealing you know, the divine or the macabre from
the normal human. But in this case, yeah, you're just
ripping the skin off a monster's skull. But they're not
done with this guy yet. Hanaman and the Ultra they

(58:07):
go ahead and they just pull on both arms of
the sky and they rip the flesh off of the arms, leaving,
you know, leaving just like skeleton there as well. Then
the Kaiju flails and pain for a second, and then
Hanaman uses his wind power to create a vortex around
the Kaiju, pulling off the rest of its flesh, leaving

(58:28):
only a skeleton, which then is like sort of stands
like a kind of like a marionette for a few
seconds before just toppling into a pile of bones.

Speaker 3 (58:37):
It's very wily, Coyote is Yeah. Yeah, once you notice
the physics, then they then they apply.

Speaker 2 (58:42):
Yeah. Okay, So at this point, we have one Kaiju left,
and it's the big horned Kaiju with the rainbow powers,
the one that I believe is it actually was the
one that was able to sort of freeze Hanaman inside
of a sphere before the other Ultras were able to
come and save him.

Speaker 3 (58:58):
Yeah, the crystal lays that gets him frozen. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:02):
Yeah. He also has the power to block out the
sun with smoke clouds, so he starts unleashing just untold destruction.
So Haniman and all seven Ultras gang up on him
and they just beat him down.

Speaker 3 (59:14):
It's like it's really bullying.

Speaker 2 (59:16):
Yeah, it's not pretty. At one point, the monster's trying
to crawl away, like they've beat him down so much
that he's just trying to crawl to safety, and the
Ultras grab him and Haniman like just beats him with
a club. At one point he rallies. He throws a
boulder at the Ultras, but they use Hanaman uses the
club to bash it back to him like they're playing baseball,

(59:39):
and then hits the Kaiju in the head. And so
finally Hanaman creates a laser crescent with his staff and
then cuts the Kaiju cleanly and half vertically, and then
the Kaiju explodes in a shower of sparks.

Speaker 3 (59:52):
I think this is the one finishing move that I
did mention previously, the cleaving in half.

Speaker 2 (59:57):
Yeah, so that's the big that's the big violent.

Speaker 3 (01:00:00):
Finish, tremendous power, all honoring glory to Hanaman.

Speaker 2 (01:00:04):
Yes, So a little more detail about the closing here. Inclosing,
Hanaman and the Ultrus say they're goodbyes. Then Hanaman says
goodbye to the human characters. Then Hanaman flies off into
the sunset, and then the film ends with the director
narrating thanking the viewer for having watched.

Speaker 3 (01:00:20):
The film, and I say, you're welcome.

Speaker 2 (01:00:22):
All right, Well, I guess we'll go ahead and close
this one out, but we'd love to hear from everyone
out there, for instance, that you know, have have you
seen any Ultramen films before? Had you seen Hannaman versus
seven Ultraman before. Have you seen the other Ultraman Hanaman
team up movie? We'd love to hear from you. I'd
also love to hear from anyone who who actually saw

(01:00:44):
these in Thailand or has a you know, more of
a connection to Thai culture and can speak to some
of those aspects of the film, like what is this
film's prevalence in Thai cinema? How about some of those
other titles we mentioned the Japanese or Thai films did?
Are you familiar with any of those? Should? Should we
seek out the Unbalanced our Theater? I'm not sure we

(01:01:05):
could find it if we did seek it out. It
looks it looks like it's a little hard to get.
But anyway, we'd love to hear from everyone about any.

Speaker 3 (01:01:12):
Of these topics. Yeah, definitely, especially Yeah, please tie listeners,
let us know your thoughts.

Speaker 2 (01:01:18):
And if you would like to listen to other episodes
of Weird House Cinema. This comes out every Friday in
the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. We're primarily
a science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
but on Mondays we do a little listener mail on
Wednesdays we do an artifact episode, and on Fridays we
cut loose and talk about some sort of weird or
interesting film huge things.

Speaker 3 (01:01:37):
As always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:01:58):
Stuff to Blow your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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