Golden Bat: The Phantom of the Skyscraper (lost tokusatsu film adaptation based on Kamishibai character; 1950)

The poster for the film.

Status: Lost

Golden Bat: The Phantom of The Skyscraper (黄金バット摩天楼の怪人, Ōgon Batto: Matenrô no Kaijin) is a 1950 tokusatsu film produced by Tokyo Eiga Haigyo (now known as Toei) and Shin-Eigasha. Released sometime in December of that year, the film is the first live-action adaptation and film adaptation of the Japanese Kamishibai hero, "Golden Bat" - often claimed to be not only the first-ever Japanese superhero but potentially the first-ever modern superhero. This film is mostly based on the Golden Bat manga comic adaptations from the 1940s produced by Meimei-Sha hence Golden Bat’s physical appearance being his musketeer-styled design. This is Japan's first special effects superhero film^[1] and quite possibly Japan’s first superhero movie.

Plot

According to a Japanese Golden Bat fansite and a newspaper advertisement for the film, the film's plot was as follows:

"Evil mad scientist Dr. Nazo alongside his QX gang target the discoverer of the Ultron superatom under the name of Dr. Ogata, producing a power far greater than that of a hydrogen bomb and is made in an attempt for peace. Soon shows up as the protector of humanity under the name of Golden Bat to stop Nazo's evil plans."^[2]

Claims

It has been stated on the now-defunct Kaze Kozou's blog that the film didn't make the titular character, Golden Bat fly in this film, but instead chased bad guys on a motorcycle. A man named Mr. Gaiden on the blog said: ''This film was made at a time when Japan was still under the control of GHQ, which was just after the war, and Japan was poor, so I don't think movie companies at the time had much leeway to use special effects. Also, Shin Eigasha, the predecessor of Toei, I think they didn't have enough money as an independent film company, and they didn't have the technology or the luxury to use special effects to recreate the flying Golden Bat in the original, so they settled on a bike-riding version as a last resort.''.

Differences from the manga

Masaru and Kazuko from the said series, appear as major characters in this work, but there is a difference being that they are brother and sister in the film instead. Detective Chief Oki does not however appear, but his last name is used for Dr. Ogata's assistant.

Cast

Ryuji Ueda as the Golden Bat
Hiroshi Sugi as Seiichiro Ogata
Yukio Mosaki as Masaru
Reiko Suzuoka as Kazuko
Ryuko Kawaji as Ranko
Takehiko Kobe as Puku-chan
Ryuji Ueda as Yuji Oki
Taizo Fukami as Teruyuki Maki
??? as Dr. Nazo
Arata Sejima Dobsky (Nazo's assistant)
Masao Shimizu as Inspector Horie
Hibari Misora as ???

Availability

As for running on eight 1,927m reels,^[3] due to the age of the film itself, Shin-Eigasha gone defunct sometime then since they have never been seen or heard from again and the overall obscure status of the Golden Bat as a character, the chances of this film surviving are incredibly low unless Toei themselves or a collector reveals that they have a copy of it. As of now, the only surviving elements of the film are its poster, some newspaper snippets, and some on-set photos that were auctioned off, though even most of these are unseen to the public.^[4] It’s unknown how successful this film was and when the last showing of it was before its loss. In 1966 Toei released another live-action film based on the franchise itself that still survives to this day.

Sometime in presumably 2016, a poster of this film was sold at an auction for over 200,000 Yen (1.306,63 USD) with a total of 54 bidders.^[5]