Saturday, November 7, 2009

Flashman (1967)


thanks to the Batman tv series, masked heroes became the rage all over the world.  Italy seemed to be quite taken with them, as they turned out several movies- two Superargo features, Argoman, Goldface, a slew of "Three Fantastic Supermen" films and a hero I'd heard of but never thought I'd see at all, let alone dubbed in English and in a fine video presentation.  and yet, here is our hero "Flashman"!  not to be confused with the Japanese Super Sentai series (Flashman) of the same name, of course.

our hero is veddy veddy English, and of course has a butler (named Jarvis, on loan from Mr. Stark?) who helps him out.  a scientist has invented a serum that turns people invisible, and a villain has stolen it for nefarious doings.    our hero wants to stop him.  our hero has a bulletproof costume and can leap really well- 20 or 30 feet into the air.  his sister also knows his secret identity.  which is a neat twist.  usually family members are to be protected.

there is some clever wordplay with some invisible man being seen and all.  I wonder who dubbed this?  probably the same people that dubbed many of the Italian peplums and spaghetti westerns from the same time period.  like many Italian movies, it's got a rockin' theme song, and the entire soundtrack is pretty good.  one of the other characters is named "Smithers" and they keep saying it.  all I can think of is Waylon.  the movie runs a compact 90 minutes.

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