Pumaman (L’uomo puma)
A few films back we
failed to find a proper version of the movie Time Chasers, so we resorted to
watching the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 version of the movie. For Pumaman we
didn’t have that problem (it was easily found on YouTube), but we had a related
issue. Years ago, whilst Colin and I used to calm our Sunday hangovers with
MST3K, we saw their version of Pumaman. On that fateful afternoon it was
recorded onto VHS for some reason and soon it became our most watched episode
of that show. So much so that we know many of the gags off by heart, which now
makes reviewing this movie particularly hard. So if this has a little of a more
serious tone than usual (or if I do have to mention a few of the things brought
up by Mike and the robots), then I can only apologise.
For some reason, back
in Aztec times, an alien left a golden mask that can be used to control minds,
on Earth. In the present day (well 1980), the mask falls into the hands of the
evil Dr Kobras (Donald Pleasence - Or Pleasance according to the credits. That's right. a film so incompetent that they can't even get the name of the actors right), who wants to use the mask to control the
minds of all the worlds leaders. He starts by controlling the woman who was
studying the mask for him, Jane Dobson (Synde Rome). He then sets out to
discover who has the powers of the Pumaman, the protectorate of the mask. He
does this by having his henchman throw random Americans from tall buildings, as
only Pumaman would be able to survive this (I’m not sure what this is meant to
achieve either). But Kobras isn’t the only person looking for the Pumaman.
Aztec priest, Vadinho (Miguel Angel Fuentes) is also looking for him, using the
same extreme methods. When he throws American professor Tony Farms (Walter
George Alton) from a window he sees that he has those powers, and finally
persuades Tony to put on a belt that gives him the full range of powers
available to Pumaman. It then falls to Pumaman to defeat Kobras, rescue Jane
from his grip and ensure the mask is once again hidden away from those who
would misuse it.
This movie does
nothing but raise questions. Mainly along the lines of “What were the writers
of this on and where can I get some?”. There have been some questionable
plotlines in the movies we’ve watched so far, but throwing someone out of a
window to see if they have superpowers is amongst the top of the list of them.
Firstly, if you’re the villians of the film, surely if you do discover the hero
this way they are now at the bottom of a tall building, whilst you’re at the
top AND you’ve just made a superpowered enemy. Secondly, if you’re the
potential mentor of the hero, and it turns out that you knew their father, who
happened to be the previous Pumaman, which as it turns out is something that
passes down the family in succession and you are aware of this, then throwing
the next Pumaman from a building can only make your job more difficult and
cause severe trust issues…
And then there are
Pumaman’s powers. He has cat-like agility, excellent night vision and super
strength, that allow him to use his hands like claws, which all pretty much
make sense. But then he also has the ability to fly. Now I may have only seen a
puma in a zoo before, and I’m by no means a specialist in puma behaviour in the
wild, but I’m pretty sure that puma’s are not reknowned for their flying
abilities. I’ve watched countless nature programmes in my life, but not once
has David Attenborough ever narrated over the images of one of these majestic
big cats swooping over plains of South America as it hunts for bats and eagles.
Nor have I ever seen one teleport, or walk through walls, which is another inexplicable
power of the puma. Basically I think the writers may have been Superman fans,
and like his writers, just added new and unexplained powers in when they were
stuck or too lazy to come up with a way for Pumaman to escape his current
predicament.
The last question is something
that still bugs me, and it revolves around the core point of the film. Pumaman
was created as a protector for the mask that the aliens left on Earth for some
reason. A mask that has the power to enslave the world’s population and
seemingly has no other powers or reason to exist. So the question is this… Why
leave the damn mask on Earth in the first place? Surely if they just wanted to
get rid of it they could have launched it into the sun, or dropped it into an
ocean, or left it on an uninhabited planet?
However it wasn’t just
the writers that made questionable choices concerning this movie, the wardrobe
department were just as guilty. According to them putting Donald Pleasence into
a badly fitted latex bodysuit (well I say latex, but it actually looks like
it’s made out of heavy duty bin liners) makes him look suitably villainous.
Really it just looks like he’s a retired civil servant on his way to a BDSM
fetish party after he’s accidentally ordered the wrong size gimp suit. Even when
he’s not dressed in this ridiculous get up, he still looks like he’s employed
Stevie Wonder as his stylist.
As for Pumaman, he has
possibly the worst superhero suit I’ve ever seen. A brown sweatshirt with an
Aztec design, tan coloured trousers, brown shoes and an orange cape. Of course
we shouldn’t forget the belt that magically gives him not only his powers, but
this costume too. That looks like a homemade, child’s wrestling belt. Are we
really meant to believe that the role of the Pumaman has passed down through the
years, from the 15th century onwards, whilst they all wore this
costume? Did tan slacks really strike the fear of the gods into the ancient
Aztecs?
The acting is exactly as
you’d expect for a movie like this, with not even Pleasence able to rescue it
despite a suitably camp performance. He was of course quite adept at playing
villainous roles, Blofeld in You Only Live Twice being his most memorable for
me, so was really in his element hamming it up with this role. I’m still not
quite sure why he agreed to be in such an obviously bad movie though. Sure
statistically for someone who was in so many movies he’d bound to be in some
bad ones, but even just reading the script must gave given some clue as to how
bad this movie would turn out.
As for the rest of the
cast, well, I’m not sure that anybody told Rome that she wasn’t a
mind-controlled zombie throughout the whole film, and that she was allowed to
express some real human emotions. Fuentes suffers from a similar lack of any
emotions. So much so that he could pass as a traffic warden if he was to put on
the correct uniform. As for Alton, he makes the least convincing superhero since
Bella Emberg as Blunder-Woman in The Russ Abbott Show
Strangely this isn’t
the worst superhero film I’ve ever seen, but I’ll say more about that at a
later date. For now I’ll recommend that you should watch this movie, but only
the MST3K version (which can be found here) as it’s truly one of the funniest
things I’ve ever seen. Altogether now… Pumaman, he flies like a moron!
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