Super Inframan Blu-ray Review

Arrow Video

Blu-ray Release: December 9, 2025 (as part of Shawscope: Volume 4)

Video: 2.35:1/1080p/Color 

Audio: Cantonese, Mandarin, and English LPCM 1.0 Mono (Hong Kong cut); English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (Hong Kong & US cut)

Subtitles: English, English SDH

Run Time: 90:39 (Hong Kong cut), 89:55 (US cut)

Director: Hua Shan

When the Demon Princess Elzebub (Terry Liu) and her monstrous minions attack, Hong Kong’s Science Headquarters leader, professor Liu Ying-de (Wang Hsieh), activates the BDX project, turning officer Lei Ma (Danny Lee) into a solar-powered bionic superhero called the Super Inframan.

A couple of years before Shaw Bros. released their version of a kaiju movie with Ho Meng-hua’s King Kong rip-off, The Mighty Peking Man (1977), the studio attempted to make a Hong Kong version of a tokusatsu movie called Super Inframan (aka: Infra-Man and Chinese Superman, 1975). Tokusatsu is a sort of catch-all term for Japanese movies and TV shows that use extensive practical effects, but it typically refers to the masked superhero media that grew out of Ishirō Honda’s kaiju movies and Teruo Ishii’s Super Giant series (1957-’58). Super Inframan was specifically inspired by the Ultraman and Kamen Rider series, which began in 1966 and 1971, respectively, premiered in Hong Kong shortly after, and are still ongoing as of this writing.

‘Inspired’ might be too generous a word. The script was written by the studio’s most prolific craftsman, Ni Kuang, and he was probably writing 20 other scripts that weekend, so I’m guessing that he saved time by combining the plots of a couple of episodes of Ultra Q, Kamen Rider, and The Six Million Dollar Man, before handing his treatment off to Hua and his crew to fill in the blanks. The setup is minimal, the logic is simple, and the dialogue is loaded with exposition. In his defense and the defense of everyone involved, Super Inframan could easily be mistaken for an authentic Tsuburaya studio tokusatsu. Its performances, storytelling structure, production design, and even framing/camera work all match expectations for Japan’s higher end output.

Given Shaw’s business model of recycling almost every physical aspect of filmmaking to save a buck, the scale and complexity of Super Inframan’s sets and costumes – produced in conjunction with the tokusatsu experts Ekisu Productions – is practically unprecedented. By Hollywood standards, Super Inframan looks a bit cheap, but by Shaw Bros. standards, tokusatsu TV standards, and even the standards of Toho studios’ major theatrical kaiju releases. Even the optical effects, which admittedly aren’t up to Hollywood standards, are brimming with creative energy and ambition. 

But what of the action? Surely the studio with hundreds of martial arts movies under their belt could elevate the genre beyond its television serial limitations. While I wouldn’t compare Super Inframan to any of Lau Kar-leung’s directorial efforts, choreographers Chia Tang & Yuen Cheung-Yan managed to orchestrate a handful of tight and kinetic fight scenes, punctuated by acrobatic suit-work, pyrotechnics, and a really good motorcycle chase. One of the best fights doesn’t involve Inframan or monsters, but a side character played by Kin Lung-huang, who hunts down and battles a brainwashed good guy (Lin Wen-Wei) and a group of human henchmen. Kin is better known under the pseudonym Bruce Le, which he used for a series of Brucesploitation movies.

The titular hero is played by Danny Lee (aka: Danny Lee Sau-Yin), who’d portray a darker, nastier kind of superhero in Ho’s The Oily Maniac the following year (1976), alongside Terry Liu, who plays lead villain Demon Princess Elzebub here. Lee’s tenure with Shaw was long and storied, going back to a supporting role in Chang Cheh’s The Deadly Duo (1971), but he didn’t become an international star until he started headlining cop movies during the ‘80s. Most viewers likely recognize him from Ringo Lam’s City on Fire (1987), John Woo’s The Killer (1989), or grotty Cat. III serial killer movies Dr. Lamb (1992), which he co-directed with Billy Tang, and Herman Yau’s The Untold Story (1993), which he produced. 

Originally a cinematographer, Hua Shan directed several cult favorites for Shaw, including Portrait in Crystal (1983), Bloody Parrot (1981), Flying Guillotine II (1978), and true-crime anthology trilogy The Criminals (with Ho, Kuei Chih-Hung, Sun Chung, and Cheng Kang, 1976-’77). He also found success at the height of the Bruce Lee clone fad, including Soul Brothers Kung Fu (1977), starring Bruce Li, and directed vehicles for Black American martial artist Carl Scott and Indonesia martial artist Billy Chong, including Dynamo (starring Scott and Li, 1978), A Hard Way to Die (starring Scott and Chong, 1979), and Kung Fu Zombie (starring Chong, 1981), all made for the Eternal Film Company.

Bibliography:

• Mondo Macabro: Weird & Wonderful Cinema Around the World by Pete Tombs (St. Martin's Griffin, 1998)

Video

Super Inframan has had a pretty healthy life on home video, even here in the states, where Prism Entertainment and Goodtimes Entertainment both put it out on VHS (each with slightly different edits) and Image released it on DVD. Previous Blu-rays include discs from Paramount in Japan, FilmArt in Germany, Intercontinental in Hong Kong, and 88 Films in the UK. There have also been HD versions on various streaming sites. I believe that all of these were taken from the same Celestial Pictures transfer. 

Arrow has included two cuts of the film – the original Hong Kong Super Inframan version, remastered in 2K from the original negatives, and the shorter, US released Infra-man version, created using a combination of the 2K remaster and a 35mm print. The Super Inframan transfer is nicely textured and gritty, though not so raw that the fine details are lost. The blazing rainbow palette is vivid and black levels are crisp and neatly separated. There aren’t any notable artifacts of the analog or digital variety, aside from very minor compression. The Infra-Man-exclusive shots, mostly credits, show signs of wear and tear, but are good, considering the print source.

Audio

Super Inframan is presented with Cantonese, Mandarin, and English dub options, all in uncompressed LPCM mono. There is also a decent English language 5.1 remix derived from the Infra-Man cut’s 35mm print’s original, so-called Stereo-Infra-Sound mix (it’s also available with the extended cut). The three mono dubs share similar sound quality when it comes to effects and dialogue, despite variations in performance quality and lip sync. The music and most over-the-top sci-fi sounds are quite loud on all three tracks, but fare better on the 5.1 mix, which seems to have been designed to accommodate them.

The soundtrack is credited to Chen Yung-Yu, who probably wrote the main theme, but, as usually happens, a lot of the music was taken from other sources, in this case, cues from two tokusatsu shows by composer Toru Fuyuki – Ultraseven (1967) and Mirrorman (1971).

Extras

• Commentary with Frank Djeng & Erik Ko (Hong Kong version) – Everyone’s favorite NY Asian Film Festival programmer and co-producer of David Gregory’s documentary Enter the Clones of Bruce Lee (2023) is joined by comic artist/publisher Ko for an info-packed track that covers the making of the film (including differing accounts of the production from those involved), its disappointing box office, the various tokusatsu that it inspired it, the differences between the Japanese and Shaw Bros. approaches to the genre, locations, and the wider careers of the cast & crew. 

• Shaw’s Little Dragon (24:36, HD) – Co-star Bruce Le/Kin Lung-huang discusses his career, coming to Hong Kong from Burma, signing with Shaw, the movies he made for the company, botching his first fight scene by hurting the star, the challenges of making Super Inframan, and offers his thoughts on the current state of the industry.

• Super Ultra Infra Action (13:13, HD) – In this new video essay, critic and tokusatsu expert Steven Sloss offers a brief history of the genre and looks back at Shaw Bros.’ brief attempt at making their own tokusatsu and kaiju movies, namely Super Inframan and The Mighty Peking Man.

• Mandarin and Cantonese Hong Kong trailers, German trailer, and two US trailers

• Five US TV spots and two US radio spots

The images on this page are taken from the BDs and sized for the page. Larger versions can be viewed by clicking the images. Note that there will be some JPG compression.