Feng Su Fong (Li Yi-Min), a young man in a stylish lavender suit, is out shopping for a birthday gift for his kid sister when the shop-girl unexpectedly sprays him with knock-out gas. He awakens in a hi-tech underground lair belonging to the Brotherhood of Satan whose evil overlord purports to be the Devil himself! Immediately Doctor Morten (Ku Kwan), a mad scientist dressed inexplicably like Count Dracula, transforms Su Fong into a super-cyborg minion. Aided by good scientist Prof. Chin (Han Chiang), Fong manages to escape and team up with Piao Hung (Man Kong-Lung), a daredevil motorcycle racer who by coincidence had the same thing done to him. Together our two bug-eyed masked superheroes take on the wacky rubber monster minions of the Brotherhood of Satan in an endless array of chases, escapes and karate battles.
Only available with English subtitles via a German DVD release, Super Riders Against the Devil or War of the Infra-Men is a re-titled German-dubbed version of a Taiwanese cut-and-paste feature film spun-off from a Japanese superhero sequel. As if that were not convoluted enough it was also billed as a bogus sequel to Hong Kong's Super Infra-Man (1975). Asia in the mid-Seventies was gripped by an obsession with Japanese superhero serials including Kamen Rider (1971) and its sequel Kamen Rider V3 (1973), created by prolific manga artist Shotaro Ishinomori the godfather of the masked hero sub-genre. While more prestigious studios like the Shaw Brothers cashed-in on the craze with original productions like Infra-Man, this Taiwanese movie went the cheaper route by splicing together three half hour-long Kamen Rider V3 theatrical shorts together with new linking footage featuring martial arts movie star Li Yi-Min. Two out of three of these Taiwanese Kamen Rider movies found their way into German theaters including the earlier Frankenstein's Kung Fu Monster (1973) with only the elusive The Five of Super Rider (1975) still sought after by fans.
Super Riders Against the Devil's rough and ready aesthetic reflects not just your typical Seventies chop-socky production but Toei Films' grind 'em out attitude when it came to children's films. Even at this relatively early stage in the evolution of the Japanese sentai genre the formula was more or less set in stone. Kamen Rider V3's origin is pretty much the same as that of the original Kamen Rider. Only the names have been changed. The story is hopelessly juvenile, indeed borderline incoherent, betraying its origin as three separate story-lines spliced together as the plot changes at each half hour mark and wheels out yet another Professor and monster-of-the-moment. At one point two female characters enter the story, one of whom shares the same name as the little girl saved by the heroes only a few scenes before. Quite how she matured in such a short space of time is anyone's guess. As with a great deal of Japanese children's fare from the Seventies the violence is a little jarring, albeit amusing, including a scene where besuited henchmen machine-gun crowds at an amusement park along with a memorable moment when monsters terrorize a children's birthday party.
For all its flaws Super Riders Against the Devil is never dull and, provided viewers enter into the spirit of the thing, a fairly fun genre romp. Dynamic editing combines with cracking karate stunt-work and seemingly endless explosions to create an energetic comic book caper. The dialogue veers from pseudo-scientific gobbledegook to shrill melodramatic silliness but Japanese genre fans can still savour some outlandish monster costumes (e.g. a kung fu frog, a human-sized moth man with machine-gun fingers and Egyptian Sphinx-styled 'robot chick' (to use Piao's words!)) and charming low-tech special effects. On top of that the soundtrack favours the same swanky jazz grooves that grace the Edgar Wallace krimi thrillers.
