I will try to keep spoilers to a minimum (even though this is a noise-punk piece of modern art more than a movie). Hope you enjoy, and i apologize beforehand for my overtly Nordic accent.
Electric Dragon 80.000 volt (for the rest of the video i will just call the film “Electric Dragon” for simplicity. Is a short film by the cyberpunk sci-fi director Sogo Ishii, now known as Gakuryu Ishii. His previous filmography is quite unknown to me to be honest but he has made a name for himself in the business making out of the box cinema since the late 70’s. Most interesting for me as a Kaiju-fanatic is that he has had a large part in the “Neo Ultra Q” Mystery/Monster series. Which is literally Ultraman combined with The Twilight Zone.
The film basically only has three characters present. Tadanobu Asano (famous from the ultra-violent Ichi the killer, the brilliant anthology film “Survive Style 5 +”, see it if you haven’t yet, and you probably haven’t, Funky Forest. As well as the character Hogun in the Thor movies, yes the Marvel ones. He is apparently playing Raiden in the upcoming Mortal Kombat adaptation.
Masatoshi Nagase who is mostly known for Japanese movies which have yet to gain an audience abroad.
As well as Masakatsu Funaki as the narrator who are most famous for his career in MMA and Wrestling.
So to actually start tearing down the incredibly basic plot that is shown in the most minimalistic way ever.
Tadanobu Asano is Dragon Eye Morrison, a guy who had an accident in his youth where he got electrocuted while playing around at a power plant. Yeah… You can hear this is going intense.
This is really not explained but shown, so i will try to interpret this to my fullest capacity.
After the accident he gets what can be best described as a “super power” where he not only conducts electricity but also can store enormous amounts of electricity in his own body. It takes quite a while for him to get to know his “new self” though. He desperately tries to find new ways to get an outlet for all the electricity which he can’t help but absorb. Of every way he try, everyway is based on violence and is met by him almost killing every opponent in his path.
Turn to “today”. He works as a Private Eye, for reasons (kind of) explained he has a knack for finding reptiles. So his work is basically him trying to find peoples lost pets. Soon we will find out the ways he can get an outlet for his weird electric powers that actually don’t hurt anyone. There are two ways. The primary way is that he straps himself to a table, actually charging large car batteries with his own built up energy.
The secondary, and way more entertaining way is that he literally summons an electric guitar from the heavens just to shred like Yngwie Malmsteen himself. The problem is that Morrison has no idea how to play the guitar. Hence the “Noisey” part of how Noise-rock this movie is. This film aint for the ones prone to epilepsy, there are parts with intense flickering lights, the black and white hue that colors this world does not make it easier to watch. All whilst the screeching, feedback from the guitar howls like it’s about to die. Or summon Cthulhu itself.
In comes the other character. Morrison does not speak in this movie, all of the dialogue is basically done by Masakatsu Funaki which is the narrator that like the movie itself delivers all of his lines with howling screams and exploding kanji that blinks like a thunderstorm across the screen. Like i said, not for those prone to epilepsy.
In comes Masatoshi Nagase as Thunderbolt Buddha.
A mysterious man with a semi-Buddha mask on at all times. First it’s unknown where his intention lies but soon it becomes clear that he is on a personal mission to find and defeat Dragon Eye Morrison. It never becomes clear, but maybe it’s nothing more behind his agenda than just to have an enemy to focus on. That his existence feels pointless unless he can find his own meaning. And his meaning is to find an equal. Morrison is his equal. As well as the otherway around. The perfect enemies in a sense.
You could say that this is an unconventional super hero movie, you can say this is just cinema art-snobbery. You could just call this a form of visual Dada-ism. The one thing that we know for sure about the plot is that everything is explained in the opening exposition. Morrison is a Dragon. Not figuratively but literally. This movie is a love letter to modern Japanese storytelling as well as ancient. This is a new take on the Dragon mythology of old and explaining more about that will take another time.
With all this plus all the amounts of references to Godzilla, Ultraman, Zatoichi, Sonny Chiba, Dragon Ball as well as Hong Kong cinema and Myths and legends. It is safe to say that Electric Dragon is a feast for the senses. Unfortunately the movie never came out in the west really, it had a really small dvd print run a few years ago in England and America but nothing since. So to see this masterpiece you have to find another ways. But the second it becomes widely available again you owe your collection a copy of Electric Dragon 80.000 V.