Sokko It To Me
As I was surfing around the web a couple of weeks ago, I came upon an interesting web site called Hulu.com. It streams TV shows and movies for free with limited commercial interruptions. I know you might feel that you shouldn’t have to see commercials online, but it is only one commercial per break and you don’t have to pay to watch the show. You can watch recent films like American Virgin or older ones like The People That Time Forgot. It’s the same with shows, they have current hit shows like Chuck and classics like The Dick Van Dyke Show.
But that’s not what I want to talk about. Hulu has Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot! Who’s Johnny Sokko? I’m glad you asked. He was the Mighty Morphing Power Ranger of his day. The original show, translated as Giant Robo, was a short lived live action Japanese children’s show of the late sixties. AIP dubbed the episodes in English, renamed it and released it through TV syndication in the early seventies.
The plot involved a space alien named Emperor Guillotine coming to Earth, taking over an international criminal gang called the Gargoyles who plan to take over the world with an indestructible giant robot. Little kid Johnny Sokko inadvertantly gains sole control over the robot and is recruited by international good guy organization Unicorn to protect Earth from the many monsters Gargoyle throws at them.
Viewing it today, the show comes off as a curious mixture. On the one hand it is a prime example of Japanese suitmation, with battle royals between to two men in rubber suits, you know, good cheesy fun. On the other hand it is an extremely violent show. The plots leading up to the suitmation climaxes involve karate fights and shootouts where the participants get injured or killed, at one point main bad buy Spider gets acid thrown in his face. Though bloodless, like the old serials we all love, it is still a little off putting when you consider this was aimed at kids, and AIP did little little editing to tone it down. Another serial like aspect of the show is that eight-year-old Johnny Sokko participates in most of these fights, giving as good as he gets.
The F/X on the show is vry good for the time period and takes me back to being six again and watching it after school. I can still remember the final episode being my first, tear induced exposure to the concept of self sacrifice. I was so upset about Giant Robot’s death and cried so hard that my mother thought there was something mentally wrong with me (she still does to a certain extent but that’s another matter). Her response was to forbid me to ever watch the show again, which was the proper parent thing to do I suppose, but since the show was never rebroadcast, probably due to parental complaints in the Cleveland area, it never really became an issue again.
Sadly Hulu only has the first nine episodes, which seem to be the only ones that are available anywhere. Oh well, at least they also have the complete first season of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, you know the really good season. To quote Gypsy from MST3K, “Richard Basehart!”
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