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20 years ago, Tien-Yu (Stephan Yip) was the sole survivor of a shipwreck caused by a giant robot, and he had to see his parents die back when. Since then he has sworn revenge, and since he has been the only witness of the attack, he has of course become a valuable asset of tbe Professor's (Jamie Luk) defense organisation and has been trained to pilot earth's superweapon, the giant robot Mach Baron. Other members of the organisation are bumbling inspector Chang (Paul Chun) on his flying moped and young and lovely pilot Nai-wen (Li Lin-Lin). The aliens now send giant robot after giant robot to earth, but Mach Baron ultimately smashes them all to Kingdom Come. The aliens figure this must have to do with the special metal titanium which Mach Baron is made of, and which the aliens are already mining on earth but have no idea how to apply. So the aliens take Nai-wen and her little brother hostage to exchange against the Professor. The Professor agrees to this, and even gives up the secret of titanium application, then fakes his own death so he can escape the aliens' underwater headquarters. Mach Baron in the meantime finally faces a robot enemy he can't defeat, but the Professor comes back to life just in time to give him the robot's Achilles' heel, so Mach Baron sends another giant robot to Kingdom Come, then he and the others in the team go and destroy the aliens' underground headquarters before also blowing up their escape pod, to save earth for good.

Iron Super Man was an attempt of Japanese film and TV producers Koichi Takano and Kiyoshi Suzuki to make some bucks of their TV series Super Robot Mach Baron in the then restrictive Taiwanese film market by re-using the effects scenes from the series and filming some new linking sequences with actors from Hong Kong and Taiwan in Hong Kong, produced by Taiwanese production house Chang's Film Company, a strategy that failed on one hand as the film fell prey to Taiwanese censorship only about half a week after release, but it succeeded on the other as it sold to many markets worldwide.

... and frankly, the film feels pretty much like what it is, a handful of episodes of a TV series cobbled together to come up to feature length, with repetitive plotpoints and repetitive effects and a very choppy story arc. Of course, whether or not one likes the movie as such mostly depends on how much one enjoys Japanese giant robot shows from the 1970s - but even if yes (as in my case), this film is a little too long in the tooth to not outstay its welcome at least to a degree, even if there are many nostalgic chuckles throughout.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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