The Golden Bat Is Here! (partially found tokusatsu comedy film; 1972)

The poster for the movie.

Status: Partially Found

The Golden Bat Is Here!, also known as Here Comes Golden Bat! or The Golden Bat Shows Up! (Ôgon Batto ga Yattekuru), is a comedy film released on May 13th, 1972 by Toho Studios. Very little information on the film survives despite being produced by a studio as large as Toho. Tthe film has seemingly never been released on VHS or DVD and airings of it were incredibly scarce and non-existent.

Plot

Little information of the film's plot exists online, with most summaries simply stating that the film focuses on the titular hero and his origins. However, multiple sources claim that the film portrayed Golden Bat as being "fat and incompetent".

According to an old Japanese site dating all the way back to 2006, the film's plot was as follows:

"The film starts with a scene in which Kobayashi Keiju, an abnormally old art student, faints from hunger after watching Fujitaku's kamishibai in the park. At Fujitaku's house, Keiju gobbles down two bowls of rice. He feels like the Naked General. Having his drawing skills recognized, Keiju becomes a kamishibai artist through Fujitaku's introduction to the father-son duo Kitabayashi Tae and Ozawa Shoichi, who are notorious kamishibai bosses, and eventually creates the hit "Golden Bat." This is the story of the rise and fall of the kamishibai industry.

There are a series of strange situations, such as Katsura, who is apparently middle-aged, being a young man in his early 30s, and the love triangle between Katsura and Shoichi, but that's because this film is a historical drama that depicts the prewar period, wartime, and the emergence of television after the war. As the story progresses, the sense of incongruity disappears. Among the cast, Ozawa Shoichi is brilliant in his C-type role of "fake leftist before the war → smuggler of goods during the war → fake 30 people just after the war → president of a fake entertainment agency after the war" with plenty of "Ozawa Shoichi heart". Our Fujitaku gives a great performance in a picture-story show to support his wife and children. There are some scenes that Fujitaka fans will not be able to stand, such as when he becomes so absorbed in Kamishibai that he transforms into Golden Bat in his imagination, and then fights Nazo in a one-on-one ring, and after winning, shares a warm embrace with his wife, Tomiko Ishii.

While this work is supposed to be a comedy, the end is a tragic scene showing the decline of the Kamishibai industry due to the rise of television. To top it off, Fujitaka is hit by a car on his way to the "Nostalgic Kamishibai Competition" venue and dies instantly."

Cast

• Tokuhei Kyojima: Keiju Kobayashi
• Zenkichi Sugano and Golden Bat: Takuya Fujioka
• Megumi: Kihiroko
• Toru Katayama: Hiroshi Ishikawa
• Kiyoko: Kazuko Ichikawa
• Masako: Tomiko Ishii
• Shigeo Saeki: Choei Takahashi
• Seitaro Marukawa: Shoichi Ozawa
• Gin: Kitabayashi Yae
• Floating Boat: Mitsuyo Inomata
• Waitress: Tamami Urayama
• Bicycle shop: Junpei Natsuki
• Wife: Matsue Ono
• Kondo: Tadayoshi Ueda
• Teshima: Yasuzo Ogawa
• Matsuno: Wataru Ohmae
• Shimizu: Miki Kojima
• Mishima: Umezu Sakae
• Venue: Kosen Yanagiya (4th generation)
• Hall attendant: Sachiko Mori
• Moderator: Kaneharatei Umanosuke (first generation)
• Detectives: Naoya Kusakawa and Saburo Kadowaki
• Tax office employee: Akira Nagoya
• Kinoshita: Yoshio Katsube

Availability

No known releases of the film exist, with the only footage that exists of it being roughly two minutes taken from a VHS recording of the film on TV. This footage was uploaded on its own in the past, but as of now the upload was removed and the rest remained lost since prior to May 2024, whenLMW user Fantomah (Zoobotnik on his main account), the founder and owner of The Golden Bat Wiki, discovered the above footage on Twitter alongside more information about the plot of the film It's possible a copy still exists within Toho's archives, but a statement, either way, has never been made.

An auction of photos from the film can be seen here.

Gallery

Images

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Videos

Aforementioned 2-minute footage from the tokusatsu film.

Notes

• The film is not to be confused by the film "The Golden Bat!" that was released in 1966 and directed by Hajime Sato.