Five of the Super Riders (found Taiwanese adaptation of "5 Riders vs King Dark" film; 1976)

The Taiwanese theatrical poster.

Status: Found

The Five of Super Riders (閃電五騎士X Shǎn Diàn Wǔ Qí Shì X, lit. "The Five Lightning Riders X") was a Taiwanese adaptation of the Kamen Rider movie Five Riders vs King Dark released in 1976

Genesis

In 1975, the Japanese TV and film studio Toei Company licensed out 4 of their Kamen Rider movies and a handful of suits to Taiwanese film studio Tong Hsing Film Co,.Ltd to create 3 movie adaptations for the international market.^[1]

The three movies were 1975: The Super Rider V3 (adaptation of Kamen Rider V3.) 1976: The Five of Super Rider (adaptation of Kamen Rider X.) 1976: The Super Rider (adaptation of Kamen Rider vs. Shocker and Kamen Rider vs. Hell Ambassador.)

These adaptations had new footage shot with Taiwanese actors replacing the Japanese cast, not unlike the Power Rangers franchise, and changed the plots to them to form a film trilogy. Notable changes included Riderman being turned into a female character and the character Garagaranda being a separate monster instead of Ambassador Hell's monster form in this film series.

Premise

The 5 great Super Riders must team up to stop the evil world domination plot of Emperor Chi Wu and his monster army

Availability

While the first and third movies' can be found in their entirety online in both Mandarin, German and French dubs, the second movie, Five of the Super Riders, never saw a wide international release. It was released in South Korea some time in the late 1980s under the title 번개기사5형제 (English: Lightning Knight 5 Brothers) and in Brazil and Latin America under the titles Karatekas del Espacio (English: Space Karatekas) and Los Supermanes De La Galaxia (English:The Supermen Of The Galaxy) . The Latin Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese dubs are now lost and the South Korean version is only partially available online, with 58 minutes of the Korean dub being uploaded to Youtube on December 21st, 2019 by user 특촬어린이영화.^[2] The opening of the movie was uploaded to Youtube on November 27th, 2013 by user 흑연마왕.^[3]

The movie's original Taiwanese cut has allegedly been re-released several times on VHS and DVD.

On March 8th, 2020, the original Taiwanese cut was finally made available on YouTube by user 文彥.^[4]