Friday’s very successful Discord Watch Party featured The Magic Serpent (1966), an extremely great magic samurai / ninja / kaiju movie. Even better, many had not seen it before. It’s hard to find stuff right in our ballpark that are unknown, given the small but highly elite demographic that still hangs out here.
Under the rather lame title Dragon Showdown, The Magic Serpent was avialable via Shout Factory!’s amazing but highly flawed Classic Tokusatsu Collection. Sadly, this is off market now, but if you bought it when it was available, then you already have a very nice (if dubbed) copy of this film. Shout Factory! is certainly the least of the boutique labels, not just for their general lack of extras but because they do amazing sets like this but then kind of half-ass them.
I really bought the set to get a gorgeous copy of the spectacular Golden Bat. It’s on there, but under the title Space Ninja (yikes!). And sure enough, since the film was never brought over here there’s not a dub, which is fine with me. However, the subtitles stick with calling the hero “Space Ninja” when CLEARLY he’s being called “Golden Bat-o” all the time, and has this whole bat motif. It’s really annoying. Also, the second half of Prince of Space isn’t on the set either, meaning you’re only getting half that film. Correct those flaws and this would have been an absolutely essential set.
Anyway, The Magic Serpent has four monster, and I could only find stills for two of them. The other will appear tomorrow.
Note: B-Fest is the week after this, followed the next weekend after that by Basement Fest. Thus the next Discord Watch Party won’t be until March 20th.
