Mighty Jack (1968 TV Movie)
3/10
A pieced together Japanese show that has lots of random things happening!
13 April 2012
I saw this 'movie' as an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. It is actually another in a long line of Sandy Frank cocktails where he pieces together several television episodes and presents them as a movie. He did the same thing with another MST3K riffed movie, "Time of Apes". He did a bit better job in this one than that one as that one left so much out that by the end you really felt like you missed a lot of key plot points. This one seems to be made up of the first few episodes of the television show it was cut from and the last few and the episodes are so distinct that nothing is really brought up that makes it seem like you missed a whole heck of a lot of things that would have helped in understanding the film as a whole. I will say that the first portion of this one is not all that bad and is the highlight while the second portion of the film gets really crazy as it starts with one thing, then turns all spy movie and then finishes with a zany barrage! So, overall, not a really good mash up, but miles ahead of "Time of Apes" and the "Fugitive Alien" movies.

The story starts out with a man being kidnapped by the dastardly organization known as Q. Soon the super secret agent squad, Mighty Jack, is dispatched to rescue this man in their super big ship that can fly and submerge! During this section of the film, we learn that you apparently have to open your eyes to see the amazingly bright lights and go blind and keeping them shut is not an option and we learn that the super awesome ship does a lot of bank turns. The second portion of the film has Mighty Jack discovering Q has the ability to make ice that does not melt! There is a lot of double agents in this section of the film before the awesome climax of watching the Mighty Jack ship fight a big old glacier!

This made for a very funny episode of MST3K as most Sandy Frank movies do. Even if they are overall good films, his editing and dubbing can turn even sort of good films bad and this one just does not seem all that good. A strange show that seems to be part model attack show like Ultraman or that one Toho film featuring the ship that fought the serpent monster combined with a Bond film as the main villain was obviously copying Blofeld as he was even accentuated with a kitty cat. The jokes were funny and the one bump making fun of the whole barrel over the guy with blinding lights was great.

So this 'film' was better than a couple of other Sandy Frank mash up television shows that I have seen, but still not good. The cast is okay, but as with most dubbed films, you cannot really get a true feeling as to what their true ability is. The first portion of the film was the best part as the second portion of the film seemed almost rushed. This may have been the case as the show may have been told they had to end it so they could have ended it the best way the could. Not the first time I have seen this as the video game Xenosaga was to be a six part series of games, but got cut short and the third game seemed very rushed and sped you to a conclusion that seemed rush.
5 out of 8 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Recently Viewed