For anyone who has a soft spot for cheesy Asian action pictures, this one has it all; pseudo-sci-fi, kungfu heroes, kungfu villains, Skull Warriors by the thousand, and a villain with one of the most classic names in movie history: the dreaded. Princess DRAGONMOM! Stationed at the earth's core, she wakes up after a ten million year sleep (with her superscience still on the cutting edge and her minions still hanging around waiting for her to wake up), and becomes alarmed at the surface world's progress. She attacks with her massive resources and threatens a stunned world.
Naturally, the answer to this threat of millions of soldiers emerging from the center of the earth is to combat them with a handful of kungfu cops and their one leader, Inframan, a sort of early Cyborg created from a brave volunteer.
Clad in a (very) tight outfit, Princess Dragonmom makes demands to the world's leaders to serve under her. Frankly, I don't see how they could refuse. (Imagine seriously for a moment, the world's leaders having to go on t.v. and announce with a straight face that our world is in danger from.Princess DRAGONMOM!)
Princess Dragonmom has her own special henchmen, in the form of a half dozen of the oddest-looking rubber creatures ever created; one has tentacles for hands and speaks (I swear) in a tough New York accent (remember, this is dubbed); another has a drill-bit for a hand. How do they fight the kungfu cops? With kungfu, of course! The sight of a guy with tentacles doing kungfu blocks and chops (complete with loud THWACKS and POWS) is something I can't quite describe. I found myself rooting for the rubber monsters all the way through the movie.
I thoroughly enjoyed this film. The kungfu goodguys are in there kicking (literally), doing continual blackflips, frontflips and somersaults throughout the entire movie, the skull warriors outnumber the Stormtroopers from Star Wars (oddly, both are dressed in white) and are even worse shots (I think it's the glare from those white helmets), and Inframan kicks anyone's butt he comes up against, which in a way is a little anticlimactic. He's strange-looking and a walking special effect, but not really that interesting a character as say, a Chinese babe with an attitude.
By the end of the movie you may find yourself wishing that Dragonmom had won.
Seven stars.
