Hanuman and the 5 Riders (1974)

It was in December last year since I wrote something about Sompote Sands, and that's way to long ago! So here we have Mr Sands unauthorized version of Kamen Rider, Hanuman and the 5 Riders - made as a sequel to his absurd Ultraman-movie The 6 Ultra Brothers vs. the Monster Army! The Ultraman-movies where actually official co-productions with Tsuburaya Productions, but when Sands wanted to make himself a Kamen Rider-movie he got a no from Toei... but he just fucked that and made a movie anyway!

To watch this movie with out subtitles is very confusing, and I guess it even will be confusing with subtitles, but the Kamen Riders are driving around on their cool motorbikes, kicking monsters and demons. All these are footage directly lifted from the Toei-movie Five Riders Vs. King Dark! Inserted here and there is another version of King Dark, but this time made of papier-maché and silver tape, sitting in his dungeon with a machine that sucks the blood from virgins (I don't know if they are virgins, but it sounds better) a his very small army of worthless soldiers. So he kidnaps a young hunky scientist that builds a machine to him that creates four (or maybe five) manimals! Yes, it's Thai guys with very crude pig, hen, lizard and so on - masks! One of they even lays explosive eggs!

But soon Hanuman comes to the rescue and fights the bad guys... and a lot of other stuff happens too. Sort of.

It's not easy to blame this movie for being boring, because it's so damn absurd and funny all the time. The original Kamen Rider-footages is fun and with the typical Japanese TV-quality, but the new Thai-footage is even funnier with extremely primitive effects, action, silly comedy, monster-battles and not so good copies of the original Kamen Riders. It's obviously a family-movie, but when you least expect it you'll get some very cheap gore and nudity thrown in your face - which is only good - and it gets downright sleazy in some moments. One of the highlights is when the three robbers from The 6 Ultra Brothers vs. the Monster Army are brought down to hell and there witness naked women being tortured with spears and men being boild alive in a huge pot!

In another memorable scene the hunky scientist is tickled so much that he pee's in the face of one of the evil henchmen! That's comedy!

Hanuman and the 5 Riders is hardly a good film, but it brings some blood, nudity and good family values to us all. We should be grateful to mr Sompote Sands for that!