The first two films in the six movie series were reviewed and while they may not have too much to do with this fourth film do have the links to them. The first two films were one long story and thought they may have been a bit better than this fourth film. Have one other film but that's not subbed so this may be it for the series but have a feeling there is a good chance the remaining three movies will be completed.
Release Date: April 1, 1959 Length: 59 minutes Director: Satoru Ainoda Screenplay: Kiyoshi Oda
Screenshot dimensions were 1274x538 Subs were once again done by Kingmenu, this time helping them was Shockwave 2022. For the first two films gave them a grade of a B-, this time around it's a C. You'll see why I gave the subs that grade in many of the screenshots but thanks to them for doing this movie.
There are a total of six films but more importantly it was a very popular TV series at the end of the 1950's. Tsueno Kobayashi was the director for the first two films, he came up with the idea for the Gekko Kamen character. Though it was a TV series the characters/actors aren't the same, for instance Omura Fumitake who played the hero of Gekko Kamen wasn't in the TV series.
I would give anything to see the original TV series that aired from February 1958 until July 1959. The show was immensely popular as it usually got well over 40% for a rating but there wasn't too much competition back then. Even though the series was still massively popular it was taken off the air for many children tried to duplicate the stunts of the hero Gekko Kamen, you can see where the "Kamen Rider" shows got their name. "Moonlight Mask" was the proper title of the series that had 130 episodes in seventeen months, two episodes aired each week. This was the second Japanese Super Hero with the first being "Super Giant", it wasn't as popular as "Moonlight Mask" but did inspire many other classic Tokusatsu shows such as "Ultraman". Here's an excellent video about the series and also other info about the start up of Tokusatsu kinds of shows back in the late 1950's and what a social phenom "Moonlight Mask" aka Gekko Kamen quickly became, will use both terms throughout the reviews. Even after the series ended there was a movie in 1981, then a manga series and an anime plus so many other things associated with "Moonlight Mask". The video is 31 minutes long but be like me and watch it in three parts of ten minutes, it's extremely interesting and how I love viewing such documentaries such as this one which aren't all that common.
Fumitake Omaru as Juro Iwai aka Gekko Kamen.... Besides being a Super Hero Juro runs his own private detective agency, the next two characters are his assistants. No person ever got on to the fact that Juro and Gekko Kamen were the same person though their voices were the same and that Juro would disappear to change into his hero outfit. Which is right above, the cape and uniform is white while the gloves are yellow, also yellow was his Honda motorcycle though is very close to a Moped. Talked about how Juro used his guns above, he can shoot two at once while riding his motorcycle. Also in his motorcycle bag are other weapons besides guns though Gekko Kamen rarely uses them, he also can fly a helicopter! Juro helps out the Tokyo Metro Police often and they gave him a special permit for a gun which was very rare back in the 1950's. One other thing is that Juro has 'adopted' a pair of children named Konomi(female) and Shigeru(male), both were orphaned and live at his agency office. For the first two films we didn't see much of Gekko Kamen saving the world and even less of his alter ego Juro Iwai. The same applied to this fourth film as we didn't see a lot of Juro or Gekko Kamen, kind of like how you wouldn't see much of Superman in the 1950's series until the very end.
Yaeko Wakamizu as Kaboko.... Kan Yanagiya as Fukuro Gorohachi.... Juro's two assistants at his detective agency and both are quite daffy! But least in the case of Gorohachi he is semi-competent and did save the day once for Gekko Kamen. The real name of Kaboko is unknown and what else is unknown to me is if the pair know their boss Juro is the hero Gekko Kamen? For a while towards the end of the first film thought Gorohachi knew Juro and Gekko Kamen were one but after viewing this second movie not so sure.... EDIT: Actually did figure out by the end of the second movie neither of Juro's assistants knew the secret identity of him. The only person to date to know of Juro's secret identity was the very evil Skull Mask but he fell to his death from a cliff at the end of the second movie.
Ken Sudo as Chief Detective Matsuda.... He's very close to Juro but doesn't know that his friend is actually the Super Hero Gekko Kamen! Juro often helps Matsuda out on cases though of course more so in the TV series, Matsuda is about a decade older and appears to be competent but too often has to rely on Juro or Gekko Kamen to solve a case. Matsuda didn't have a lot of screentime in the movies and think the role was much larger in the TV series.
I'm not going to give a long history of the series/films in these reviews, there is a fairly good Ja.wiki page to check out for info and here's that link: Gekko Kamen Ja.wiki page . But even that was missing some key details, don't know about the TV series but the info for the six films was kind of skimpy but it was a start for me. By going to a few other sites think I was able to piece together the cast for who played who but it's probably not 100% accurate.... on second thought think it is! Very few of the characters from the first two films appeared in this fourth one, of course the hero Juro iwai aka Gekko Kamen did. Also returning were Kaboko and Gorohachi who are Juro's two assistants at his detective agency. Inspector Matsuda from the Tokyo Metro Police also was in this film, all four were the main characters in the TV series which as mentioned I've never seen and would love to do so. Of the four Juro easily gets the most screentime and even more than his alter ego Gekko Kamen. But have noticed in all three films I've viewed it's the guest stars who get the most screentime, especially the villains. Some of the above info and four character details below were carried over from the first two movies but did make edits to them.
Main Characters
There weren't as many major characters compared to the first two movies, there is one key detail about Gekko Kamen aka Juro Iwai. You will see him in many screenshots firing a pistol, one example is above but the hero isn't a violent man at all. When Gekko Kamen fires his guns it's often to knock the weapons out of his opponent's hands or to warn them not to fire anymore. Gekko Kamen never fires to hurt or kill a criminal and as far as I can tell has never killed a person in the movies or TV series. The hero's motto was he'd rather not see any criminal hurt or killed but would prefer seeing them forgiven and helped. That's not easy to do considering some of the people Gekko Kamen ran up against such as the Skull People in the first two films. In Japanese you've probably figured out that Kamen means MASK while Gekko means Moonlight or a Ray of Light. So "Moonlight Mask" is the English title of the series and movies while in Japan the fans used Gekko Kamen, that's how I'll always refer to the hero.
Junji Masuda as Dr. Akira Yamawaki.... Very important to the story such as Dr. Nakajima was to the first two films but the creation of Dr. Yamawaki's is a bit hazier than Nakajima's. Yamawaki is an Atomic scientist and has been working on a way to make the enzymes in atomic particles a boon to mankind such as helping out with curing diseases, protection from atomic radiation and more. It still hadn't been perfected during this movie but of course with such an invention it could also be used for evil purposes which was one of the main stories in this movie. The other was of eight convicts who had escaped prison during a typhoon, their objective will be to kill ten leading Japanese scholars or politicians, Yamawaki was on that hit list! Though his unfinished creation was so important to the story we didn't see much of Yamaewaki until the second half of the film.
Katsuhei Matsumoto as Akiyama.... Never did hear the man's first name. Akiyama is the Tokyo Metro Police Commissioner but in some screenshots you will see Superintendent used but I'll stick with Commissioner. Akiyama was one of ten on that hit list which was created by the ultra diabolical International Assassination Squad, two have been slain and Akiyama was almost victim number three! But he survived but while in the hospital two more attempts were made on his life. Of course being the Commissioner is the reason the International Assassination Squad wants to see Akiyama eliminated, he also has an ultra attractive daughter named Meiko.
Michiko Shirakawa as Meiko Akiyama.... The screenshots don't do her justice but Michiko as Meiko 😍 made my heart beat faster then any other woman in the past five years, WOW! She didn't have a long career but was in some known movies, her role wasn't too large in this film but was semi-important at the end. It's okay that Meiko wasn't on the screen more for my heart was beating so out of control....
Ken Hasabe as the reporter Yamamoto.... Not too major to the story but was the only reporter to gain the respect of Juro Iwai and his assistants, Yamamoto did have a fair amount of screentime. That's him on the left below, Juro's assistant Gorohachi is on the right.
Yoshi Kato as Chosokabe.... Another character who didn't get a lot of screentime though in a way he did(?) and was extremely major to the story! We only saw the Chosokabe man twice when he visited Akiyama in the hospital, recently the pair had become good friends. Chosokabe was the head of Oita Bussan which was a finance company but I wonder was it a real outfit? But this was a devilish plan by Chosokabe as he was secretly the head of the International Assassination Squad!!!! We viewers knew that for the face of both were so similar, the only difference being Chosokabe wore glasses. It also meant Yoshi played a duel role and while never a huge star I've seen him in about ten films with the top being "Zero Focus" from 1961 which is a must watch.
Yoshi Kato as Suda.... The head of the notorious and somewhat unknown International Assassination Squad. Never once was his name mentioned in the film, of course twice Chosokabe was used when he visited the police commissioner Akiyama in the hospital. Don't want to refer to the leader as Chosokabe for it could be confusing plus we never did learn of his dual identity until the end. Very little was known about the International Assassination Squad but once they targeted someone it was almost a certain death! In this story Suda had targeted ten important scholars, politicians and leaders to eliminate, in the beginning two were quickly snuffed out! In order to complete this mission while a Typhoon hit the Kanto region Suda's henchmen broke into Kitamita Prison and helped eight inmates on death row escape! These eight would be the assassins for Suda's plan and all were ruthless, they worked as a team and we never did learn any names though it was the group and not individuals who were key to this storyline. You can see what Suda's ultimate goal is in the first screenshot below, how many times as that been the main theme to a movie.... thousands????
Rinichi Yamamoto as the Monster Gorilla aka Kong.... In the TV series Gekko Kamen did have to battle against a monster dubbed (King)Kong as it was so massive! This creature was also dubbed Kong but was much smaller yet very powerful, for some reason even bullets couldn't hurt it! However the monster did have a weakness near his head so loud noises, lights and having things thrown/fired at his head gave his opponent a chance. When a movie is only 59 minutes in length it's hard to give the background of every key character, never did learn the exact details of how Kong was created. Though very powerful it wasn't much larger than a human and did act like one as it could drive a car and write! In one crazy scene Kong also piloted a helicopter, that crashed so Gekko Kamen thought he was a goner but not so....
There were a few other characters but none were all that important to the story. One to an extent was who is the man on the left below talking to his superior Suda of the International Assassination Squad. That man appeared to be Suda's top henchman but was never referred to by name and may never talk about him though he will be in a few screenshots. The second pic below is of some of the inmates that fled from Kitamita Prison thanks to that unnamed assistant of Suda's. There were ten at first but two were eliminated by Suda, soon they shed their prison uniforms and wore the ones of the International Assassination Squad. In a shocker did find a trailer for the movie on YT, that's after the screenshots and do recommend viewing both videos in this post.
Whew(!), these intros take so long to do plus they are hard as I have to do so much research for character names, air dates, then take screenshots, etc. This has been the toughest drama/movie to date for me to find info about as these movies aired 67 years ago but think almost all of the details to this point are accurate. Even though these kinds of posts take me so long to do the above section is also my favorite part of blogging, when a long intro section is complete I think they look so darn terrific!!!! So I don't care about how long it takes to do or that not nearly as many viewers will notice it compared to posts for scantly clad J-Pop Idols! Took 107 screenshots for this film and will use a dozen in this intro section which lowers the total for the actual review to 95 photos. So went up to the 45th for the first post and have the other fifty in part two of the review. Besides doing my own blogging I also visit other sites and mainly to read up about older shows or movies such as this one. I prefer two medium sized posts for a review and bet most reading this will agree with that so I cut one very long post in half. Most reviews I read at other sites are very good but often when one runs on for about 4,000 words with a small amount of screenshots it can get a bit tiring to read and could turn off viewers.
Thanks for checking out another in this film series but it may be the final review though think there is a chance the other three movies will be subbed. It is kind of nice doing these kinds of reviews as I've never done film series before so think a goal will be to find some others in this genre as sometimes I hate doing a one and done review. There is another three movie series very similar to this, haven't viewed any of them but those will be my next movies to do posts for. I did copy and paste some info from the last post done for this movie series and that's above. But did a lot of editing so in the end run wonder if it may have been easier to just write things up? So did that editing plus added in about five characters and a video so while it may look similar to the previous reviews most of what's above is different.
The previous four posts I did for Gekko Kamen were for one long story, I do two posts for one film and why is explained just above those screenshots. This film was another very enjoyable one but did think the first story was better though I do recommend this film too. One negative was the subs were a tad subpar but I have seen worse and did thank the team that did them in the beginning. I'm kind of used to seeing bad subs on occasion so I got used to them quickly but didn't want to take too many screenshots of those with typos. Did so for a few and you'll see what I meant by saying the subs were really so-so and they are key for doing these kinds of posts. For it makes it much easier for you viewers to follow the story when the screenshots show what a person is saying, it also helps me remember what took place. In the end run it's no big deal, I'm not a stickler for perfection and really just glad they were good enough for me to enjoy the trio of movies.
In that first screenshot above it shows a radio announcer warning the Tokyo Region, Kanto, that Typhoon #25 has been walloping the area and it was the strongest typhoon since the war's end. Listening to the report was the movie's hero Juro Iwai though he was in his mild mannered persona. No one has ever even suspected Juro of being the masked hero Gekko Kamen though like Clark Kent tends to disappear and reappear depending on where his alter ego is. Besides being the savior of Japan many times over Juro runs a detective agency and is a very respected private eye, even the police come to him for advice. Juro is known in the area for solving impossible cases but of course transforming into Gekko Kamen helps solve some of them. With Juro while he was listening to the broadcast were his two agency assistants Kaboko(woman) and Grohachi, we didn't see much of them until the second half of the movie. Also at his detective HQ were Juro's two 'adopted' children Komoni and Shigeru, unlike the second film we saw very little of them. We never see the personal side or life of Juro but think him and the four others all live at his Detective Agency office.
The radio announcer had one more important story, eight prisoners had escaped from the high security Kitamita Prison and all were there for being murderers! We'll soon learn more about those eight as they will be key to the story and shortly after Juro received a call from his friend Matsuda. That's the man with glasses above in the third screenshot, he's a high ranking inspector for the Tokyo Metro Police and has asked Juro to come to his aid immediately which our hero did! The location was the Yamawaki Atomic Nucleus Institute, that's above and in the screenshot you can see how bad the storm was.... also that Nucleus was spelled wrong on the sign!!!! At the laboratory inspector Matsuda had some news for Juro and wanted his help on the case, the very respected scientist Yamawaki had been kidnapped! Also the plans for his new project were snatched and though it was explained I was still a bit fuzzy about all of the details. Yamawaki was working on a project where he could extract Enzymes from Atomic particles, that was explained to Juro and Matsuda by Yamawaki's assistant. Who added in the scientist's creation would be a positive one as it could be a way to protect humans from radiation, also to create new energy sources and perhaps even many more things to benefit mankind. But of course if the new invention fell into the wrong hands(an evil group) it could be a disaster, that's what may be taking place with the kidnapping of Dr. Yamawaki!
Who nabbed the scientist was unknown at this point but a mysterious note was left for Juro at the lab, that's in the seventh screenshot above and Shujuro is a typo. It warned the private detective to lay off the case and to not search for Dr. Yamawaki, of course there's no way Juro aka Gekko Kamen would ever back down! The note was signed by Kaiju Kong, many monster fans know Kaiju is the word for beasts such as Godzilla, Rodan and the rest. But Juro and his mate Matsuda had no clue who or what Kong was, he was referred to as a man and in the end Juro was partially correct with that assumption. Juro didn't explain much to us viewers or Matsuda but he felt there could be a connection between Typhoon #25, the escape of eight killers from Kitamita Prison and the kidnapping of Dr. Yamawaki. Matsuda in the second to last screenshot above didn't know where Juro came up with that possibility but will soon, right after that comment you can see who appeared but hidden behind a screen. It was the Kaiju Kong who looked much more menacing lit up that way, he gave a final warning to Juro and the police to lay off looking for Yamawaki! In the first screenshot below the police opened fire on Kong but the bullets seemed to bounce off of him! They truly did for his body was similar to a bullet proof vest, soon Kong fled the Yamawaki Atomic Nucleus Institute.
As the screenshots above show Suda is like so many other fanatics in that he wants to rule Japan but what plan does he have that will work where all others have failed? Suda's plan is one that had the potential of working but only if done on a bigger scale meaning more important figures needed to be killed. Suda has one man assistant working for him but we also never heard his name used even once, this man led the Squad's troops at Kitamita Prison to spring the eight killers who will now work for International Assassination Squad and their aim is to kill ten chosen men. According to Suda these ten may not be too well known by the public in Japan but are so important to how the country currently runs and how it will in the future. By eliminating these ten then Suda felt Japan would begin to crumble and his diabolical organization would swoop in for the final blow! Murdering these people would be Kong along with the eight prisoners now indebted to Suda, we saw in this scene that the powerful ape is held in a cage by Suda. Having Kong will also enable Suda to keep his new henchmen under his control easier and did notice something very key then, had wondered if it was a easily missed spoiler and it was. For when Suda left the room thirty seconds later the cage holding Kong was shown to all in this huge room, then the drape fell over it again. Thirty seconds later Suda appeared back in the room so I had mused are Suda and Kong one and the same? Hmmmm, what Kong is will be revealed at the end but not how it went from being a human to an ape or at least the exact details. It didn't take long for Suda's plan to conquer Japan to go into effect, in the bottom two screenshots above a pair of figures were killed in consecutive days. Those scenes were extremely short but both times the killer was Kong, wonder why the highest ranking person in Japan who would be the Prime Minister wasn't a target?
Suda will not kill all ten on his hit list immediately, for instance the scientist Dr. Yamawaki is still being held captive and that's so he will finish his atomic particle creation. The plan here was for Akiyama to just be kidnapped as Suda wanted to interrogate the commissioner to obtain all of his knowledge and when it would be best and easiest for Suda's squad to attack Japan. Sounds good in theory but when you're dealing with Gekko Kamen throw all your plans out the window! For he arrived in the nick of time but not with his guns blazing. Didn't see Gekko Kamen duke it out with thugs in the first two films but he did so in this scene and also a later one. Can't say the Hero is a powerful fighter and relies more on his agility to bring down his opponents. He did so here and was able to stop Kong from abducting the commissioner Akiyama but in a regular fight Gekko Kamen probably wouldn't be a match for Kong. In the background sirens were approaching so Kong and the International Assassination Squad goons took their leave but Gekko Kamen wasn't going to allow Kong to flee so easily. After finishing off the remaining thugs who were able to escape before the police arrived Gekko Kamen hopped on his scooter and took off after Kong however it appeared the powerful and human like Ape had disappeared into thin air!
Not quite for soon arriving in the sky via a helicopter was none other than Kong! This was another very serious yet somewhat humorous mini scene as Kong was flying the copter, he was also firing a rifle at Gekko Kamen! All the shots missed, Gekko Kamen then stopped his motorcycle and scaled an electrical structure.... in the middle of nowhere? For the first time in the movie Gekko Kamen did use his pistols, he never aims to kill a person(or Ape!) but shot at the helicopter's engine. Which were direct hits, the copter began to descend and Kong crashed into the structure that Gekko Kamen was fleeing from. You can see above the copter exploded and seemed like that would be the end of Kong however that wasn't the case. After that tragedy the International Assassination Squad leader Suda was notified of Kong's demise and that made me wonder how did he survive for I had begun thinking Suda and Kong were one and the same?! Commissioner Akiyama was hurt in the melee and had to be transported to a hospital but as Suda says in the bottom screenshot above he's still the Squad's next target and most of part two will be about the attempts the International Assassination Squad make at kidnapping/killing Akiyama! That wraps up part one of the review, below are more screenshots of what took place in this first half but not nearly as many as usual. They should have been up to the 29/30 minute mark but don't think I went that far and need to start keeping track of those things. The next part has the second half of the review and think having three medium sized paragraphs instead of two in a segment does make them easier to read, any comments on that?
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