When looking at the 1966 Golden Bat film, it’s interesting to see how much it innovates – if not outright invents – in the realm of cinematic hero tokusatsu. The main hero – Ogun Bat (Golden Bat) is widely credited as basically being the first 20th-century superhero, with characters from DC having parallel evolution in the US – his cinematic counterpart innovates considerably more then he invents, but those innovations are nothing to sneeze at.
Off the bat (no pun intended), Golden Bat is certainly not the first Tokusatsu film as we know it (that would be Gojira). It’s also not the first hero-based Tokusatsu series – The Iron Sharp (adapted to Invasion of the Neptune Men for US release), Planet Prince (Prince of Space in the US), and Super Giant (Starman in the US) films came first. Golden Bat builds off those concepts with an existing character to innovate.
For starters, Golden Bat himself doesn’t show up until basically the end of the film’s first act. Instead our focus lies on the Pearl Research Institute – a top-secret UN research institution created to stop the impending threat of the rogue planet Icarus, which threatens to destroy the Earth. The institute is run by Professor Pearl (Andrew Hughes), along with Dr. Yamatone (Sonny Chiba), and scrappy young amateur astronomer Akira Kazahaya (Wataru Yamakawa). Yamatone is a two-fisted adventuring scientist, complete with recruiting Kazahaya through sending a sneaky group of guys to pick him up and bring to the secret lab where he can be read in on their secret mission. The lab itself feels like half a prototype of the Photonic Power Lab from Mazinger Z, and partly the Science Patrol from Ultraman. The latter part particularly feels like it and Ultraman are borrowing from common DNA, what with their flying car, their team of security guys with ray-guns, and so on.
This is also emphasized by the fact that Golden Bat himself isn’t exactly a character – his cinematic predecessors had secret identities that allowed them to interact with the rest of the cast when they’re not doing superheroism, giving them real depth. Instead, Golden Bat serves almost as a deus ex machina that is summoned by Professor Pearl’s daughter Emily (Emiri Takami), whenever she’s in peril. Instead, all the big character moments with the protagonists are with Emily, the Professor, and the various members of the Research Institute. That said, those character moments are enjoyable, with a few nice acting moments – though there aren’t a lot of big interpersonal character beats, outside of ones between the Professor and his daughter. Everyone else otherwise just kinda acts like Big Stoic Science Heroes.
This is aggravated by the fact that Golden Bat’s own powerset is fairly close to Superman’s but without the flip side of that equation that often comes with the character. A lot of the pathos and drama with Superman is with villains who he can’t beat through physical force, or with the trade-off between the Clark Kent identity and Superman. This has none of that. Similarly, the characters that beat Golden Bat to the cinematic punch don’t have his invulnerability. This is also emphasized by the fact that Ultraman, who would make his debut after this, has the added dramatic modifier of the Color Timer limiting how long Shin Hayata can be Ultraman – adding some additional dramatic tension.
In all, Golden Bat is fine, and is generally an enjoyable tokusatsu movie. It does have the problem of having what people call the “Superman problem” far more than any Superman property actually does, but it doesn’t necessarily make the movie bad.
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