Supersonic Man

A Spanish ripoff of the original Superman movie, the movie is cool for the first two minutes while the exposition for all of this is formed. Then, it happens: the music. The tinny, cheesy music. Then the obviously FAKE blue-screen work that shows our hero as flying through space. Then the movie falls apart as good FX work (laserblasts) and bad FX (the Puma Man flying sequences..no lie!) mishmash together with inadequate dubbing and Cameron 'Mitchel' (?) laughing like his helium was too concentrated. However, the stinger for this episode is when Supersonic Man decides to lift up a bulldozer and, thanks to the amazing art of editing, is shown to pick up this horribly fake particleboard recreation of a bulldozer. It's not even painted well to cover up this shoddy job. Then the regular viewer will lose all respect and this movie will go back to the comedy section of your local Hollywood Video and lay there until Hell freezes over. But if you are a lover of bad movies, this one is a must. If you loved 'Puma Man,' this is FAR more entertaining. Go knock yourself out. The costume of Supersonic Man is quite interesting, unlike the rest of this movie.

This is two movies in one. The first is a 1-star bad movie and a 10-star RiffTrax movie with the voice-overs. How do you rate a movie like this?

The actors involved try hard, but in the end the plot and script drag it down. Cameron Mitchell as always delivers a fine performance in low-budget movies given what he has to work with.

Is it worth watching? To me on it's own, no. But with the RiffTrax crew working their magic was well worth my time and quite entertaining.

Supervillain Gulik (Cameron Mitchell) kidnaps a scientist in search of a powerful weapon which shall make him ruler of the world. When the scientist asks him why he wants to become ruler, he just shrugs and says: 'Aren't we all driven by something?' In other words, he has no clue, but the movie needed a super-villain... Enter the superhero: somewhere out in space, Supersonic Man comes to the rescue, his cape fluttering happily in the airless emptiness, accompanied by the even happier doodleeedoo soundtrack. Supersonic Man can stop bullets, lift heavy machinery, and he can turn into Boring Guy with a 1979 moustache, so the scientist's daughter won't discover his secret identity, but the moustache disappears every time he turns into Supersonic Man. Everything you thought was silly in superhero movies is right in here, so if you love bad movies with ridiculous special effects, don't miss the hilarious "Supersonic Man"!

Juan Piquer Simon used to be a postman (thus linking him to Fabrizio de Angelis, ex-postman and director of "Killer Crocodile"), but quit his job to step into the movie business. If his mail delivery was as excellent as his knowledge of movie making, I wouldn't send a letter to Spain.

Supersonic Man is so obviously a Superman rip-off that I'm almost ashamed to mention it. Still, shame is something Piquer Simon didn't seem to have. Granted, the man has lots of imagination, but so has a toddler who draws three lines on a piece of paper and says it's a car. Supersonic (for that is his name) is sleeping in a spaceship when an intergalactic voice tells him an evil mastermind wants to kidnap a professor so he, the evil mastermind, can rule over the world. The evil mastermind is none other than Cameron Mitchell, actor in a handful of classics and the lead in over 150 B- to D-movies. In this production he's the biggest (read: only) star.

Supersonic doesn't take the train, like any superhero he can fly. Well, flying... it does look like the actor is busy pretending to swim in the air. Go lie on a bench and move your body first 10° to the left and then 20° to the right. Keep doing that, add a blue screen and you too can fly. To make us believe the movie was shot in the US, Supersonic often flies in the air with parts of New York in the background. Unfortunately, that's the only use of these scenes, so basically you're just watching a man in a silly suit pretending he can fly.

Supersonic's suit may give you a few chuckles, but what really got me rolling on the floor is the scene where the professor's daughter (Patricia) is chased by gangsters. Just when it looks like her car is going to hit a bulldozer, Supersonic lifts it up with one hand. Though, why a bulldozer is standing in the middle of a forest road beats me, just as it's quite fascinating to see the bulldozer is actually made of wood. The crooks try to avoid hitting the bulldozer, drive down a hill and for some reason that should explain why their car explodes.

The bulldozer scene is featured quite early in the movie, so it's best to stay on the floor. Don't crawl back into your couch as an avalanche of bad scenes is still coming your way: bad special effects (toy helicopters anyone?), cheesy humour and even more bad special effects (toy houses?). Oh, did I mention already the plot is hard to follow and some plot lines commence but never go anywhere? Frankly, "Mulholland Drive" is easier to follow.

To make things even worse, this Spanish action movie (let's use that phrase lightly) is dubbed in university English. When the giant robot bursts into the professor's lab to kidnap him, the professor states: "What kind of tomfoolery is this?" One has to admire those academics, if not for their vocabulary, then for the fact that he doesn't start laughing when the giant and fierce (and frankly slow) robot appears.

Juan Piquer Simon is sometimes compared to Ed Wood, but at least Wood had a vision (a vision hindered by a budget, but still a vision). "Supersonic Man" however is a work that makes "Killer Crocodile" look like a masterpiece. Which in its own right is quite special.

It just seems logical that the Italians would have made something along the lines of Superman as they often do versions of successful films such as Jaws, Star Wars and Alien. I had just never really seen any like I had the others; however, I have seen one now, Supersonic Man! Yes, he looks super built, but his costume definitely needs more work and his alter ego is played by a completely different person. Though the plus side on that is that it is harder to discover his identity, but the villain seems to think it is one and the same guy. And speaking of villains, never before has the screen seen a villain such as the one here, who seems to have no real goal beyond boring an old man to death with his discussions.

The story, Supersonic Man is dispatched to Earth because something so dastardly is about to go down that it will cause ripples throughout the universe! Actually, I think whoever gives orders to Supersonic Man really oversold the threat, not sure the villain would have been too much trouble for a normal person to take out. A professor is kidnapped and Supersonic Man under his guise as Paul comforts her and for reasons unknown will search warehouses as Paul who has no powers so that he can get captured!

Supersonic man seems to have rather vague powers. Seems he has super strength and speed sure, but also the ability to turn a gun into a banana... Suffice to say, he is nearly indestructible to lava, freezing cold and bullets so it makes little sense they they try a flame throwing slowly walking robot at him. The only thing that seems to stop him is high frequency sound.

So, this film is rather lame, but entertaining to watch. I laughed quite a bit when a car goes down a somewhat steep incline and just explodes! Then a boat explodes for no reason and then a house explodes! Everything in this film is very prone to just blowing up! The villain is the typical villain of this era, no powers whatsoever and lots and lots of henchmen. Supervillains literally did not start appearing until like the 2000 films and no Batman's villains are not supervillains, just costumed insane villains!