This movie is a gem... at least if you love the campy, trashy cinematic Encounters of the Third Kind. As far as I know, this milestone was made by re-editing some scenes from a Japanese kids-oriented SCI-FI TV series JUMBORG ACE with newly made scenes shot in Taiwan. Local Kung-Fu director Chen Hung Min was in charge for the additional scenes made with Martial Arts actor George Wen Chiang Lung (THE IRON MAN, TRIANGULAR DUEL, THE DEATH DUEL). He plays the commander of a Space-defense organization. His girlfriend's little brother (kid actor Yeh Shao Yee, who played Bruce Lee as a kid in Bruce Li's CHINESE CHIEH CHUAN KUNG-FU) accidentally finds an ancient statuette of a demonic warrios who is radioactive. Both the kid and his father (actor Fang Mien, the good master in FIVE FINGERS OF DEATH and CHINESE BOXER/HAMMER OF GOD) fall sick. In the meanwhile a Martian king who looks like a KISS rock band's member, appears on TV declaring war to Earth, then a flying saucer attacks and the Martians stomps on skycrapers (yeas, they're taller than Godzilla!). They're looking for a magic stone in order to conquer the Universe (well, what do you expect from Martians? An invitation to a birthday party?). In the second part of this silly, funny, unbelievable joke of a movie, the Thai demonic statuette takes life and grows to Godzilla's proportions and goes on Mars to stop the Martians and their death-ray weapon. The Thai giant warrior is helped by a gigantic American robot who knows Karate and the dark, arid martian landscape becomes the theatre of an epic battle (even if all of a sudden you see a fighting against two rubber dinosaurs on a landscape that's all but Martian, with green mountains and forest under a clowded sky, cuz this part was blatantly taken from the above-mentioned TV series). Not even Cameron or Ridley Scott have such genius!!! They're too educated!!! But if it's all too simple taunt a thing like MARS MEN today, please remember we were in the pre-STAR WARS Sci-Fi, in a low-budget cinematic industry (Formosa, now Taiwan). So, back to 1976, the FX department was not so bad for an Asian B-movie. The fact that the screenwriter was the same of DUEL OF KARATE (and the production company was the same too), says it all. Released in Taiwan 7/3/76 and in Italy 1977. Dont' miss the scene where the Martian tramples the skycrapers with accelerated movements in Charlot-style: PACIFIC RIM or TRANSFORMERS can't do it! Probably the best Kung-Fu-Vs-Aliens-and-rubber dinosaurs-on-Mars epic ever made.
