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An evil brain from outer space that controls all kinds of mutants, some
of whom are able to take human form, and monsters, prepares to invade
earth. But earth has its own superhero, Starman, and he has vowed to
protect our planet. First, the Simerans, as the brain's mutants are
collectively called, try to scare everyone into submission using one of
their monsters, but Starman chases the monster away. Then the Simerans
attack an earth scientist and have him then delivered to a hospital that
secretly serves as one of their headquarters - where they kill him. Thing
is, two kids have witnessed the Simerans attacking the scientist, so they
have one of them admitted to the hospital as well - where he finds out
what the hospital really is, and is almost killed for doing so ... but
Starman comes and saves the day. Unfortunately though, the hospital's head
surgeon, who is also a Simeran leader, escapes, and Starman meets him
again when he tries to kill a politician at the airport - which ends with
the Doctor blowing up himself and the airport, but not before Starman has
saved everyone. Professor Okawa, apparently also a Simeran, has
developed the ultimate germ weapon, and his lethal female mutant sees to
it that he remains undetected, since the mutant kills everyone only
nearing his lab. Then though, one of the assistants of the professor tests
the germ on a local woodcutter, which leads Starman to the lab where he
fights botht he professor and his mutant to the death before destroying
the deadly germ. In the finale, Starman follows the monster from the
beginning of the movie to the Simeran headquaters, fights and defeats
everyone in sight, unmasks one of the Simeran leaders only to find him to
be a scientist he thought on his side, then finds and destroys the evil
brain, which ultimately saves earth - once again.
As you might
know, the nine circa one-hour movies of the Japanese Super Giant-series
were distilled into 4 circa 75 minute movies for American consumption,
with the lead hero being rechristened Starman. Now for the
other movies of the series, this worked pretty smoothly, as the Super
Giant-movies were mostly two-parters, so they merely had to be
spliced together and some superfluous scenes removed - easy enough.
However, Evil Brain from Outer Space consists of the three movies
of the Super Giant-series that were standalone films and
thus each had a self-contained plot with beginning, middle and end. And
thus if you splice three self-contained one hour movies together to fit
into one 75 minute movie, the results are ... well, let's say choppy. So
yeah, in a way, this film is a trainwreck, a narratively incoherent mess
that very often just gets caught up in its story to tie the three seperate
plots together without actually advancing the proceedings as such. Having
said that, it is doubtful that anyone would watch any of the Starman films
for their narrative brilliance, these are good fun not despite of but
because of their slight inconsistencies and silly sci-fi-premises, but
also because of their cheap sets, cheesy costumes, crude special effects
and basic fight scenes. So ok, you might hate this one, but it's much
more fun to enjoy it ...
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