‘Argoman The Fantastic Superman’ or — The Hero Nobody Deserves or Needs… Ever?
Why bother watching ‘Watchmen’ or ‘The Boys’ for a deconstructed superhero movie when there’s already ‘Argoman The Fantastic Superman’ (1967) who is tenuously a superhero but most definitely a psychopathic maniac who should be behind bars and, possibly, executed for his behaviour.
The movie starts with Argoman about to be executed by the Chinese army (they had the right idea). How does our “hero” get out of this scrape? By using his special powers to make them kill each other. It is EASILY the most morally horrific opening to a superhero I’ve seen. Not only that but he’s working for the Russians. This all takes place within the first 50 seconds or so.
Meanwhile the Queen of England’s Royal Crown has been stolen so Inspector Lawrence of Scotland Yard contacts Sir Reginald Hoover (secretly Argoman but nobody knows this) who is lounging in this bachelor-pad/superhero base fuck-pad deciding on which one of his girlfriends he should invite over using his electronic girlfriend database system. However, before he can decide his Argo-senses pick up a hovercraft driven by a beautiful woman only ten miles away, so he uses his telekinetic powers to control the craft to his base where he immediately forces the woman, Regina, into a game of archery: if she wins she wins a car; if she loses then he gets to fuck her. It’s sort of like The Golden Shot except presented by a rapist superhero instead of Bob Monkhouse. The only problem is that if Argoma… I mean Sir Reginald has sexual intercourse then he loses his powers for six hours. That’s quite a long recovery time in my opinion, although what kind of superhero stops what he’s doing just to fu… oh, I forgot this was a 60’s Italian film.
Anyway, it turns out the Crown was stolen by a woman called Jenabell, Queen of The World (secretly Regina but nobody knows). Jenabell stole the Crown by stuffing it inside her muff (not kidding) and now informs the authorities that she is after the ‘Muradoff A IV’, a massive diamond created by a nuclear explosion and with the power to reflect light into a beam that disrupts molecular cohesion. The diamond is held by the French Ministry of Technology so Sir Reginald and his team travel to Paris where Sir Reginald hopes to track Jenabell because after he fucked her when he thought she was Regina he gave her one of his radio-active cigarettes and can now track her using his special Geiger-counter ring. But maybe Jenabell has a few surprises of her own and especially as Argoman has brought one of his beautiful girlfriends along then there’s going to be quite a lot of power loses.
Will Jenabell, Queen of The World get her hands on the ‘Muradoff A IV’ and conquer the world… even though she’s, apparently, Queen of it already? Or will Argoman capture her before he is sentenced to jail for.. for… everything? Should the Italians have been banned from ever making superhero movies again? Watch ‘Argoman The Fantastic Superman’ and find out!
First up, I’ve only described the first half of the “plot” as it then goes on to deal with clones, runaway trains, bank robberies, political assassinations and killer robots and I think my brain would start losing molecular cohesion if I even attempted explaining it all. Secondly, this movie is so close, so god-damn near being a cult masterpiece it’s frustrating. It’s not that it’s cheap or that the plot doesn’t make sense or that the stunts, fights and effects are appalling; those are most of the positives! It’s more that the pacing can be a bit flat at times or certain scenes lacking the energy to really tip them over into the truly fantastic. With a touch more pizzazz this could’ve been something special.
Fortunately it is definitely not all bad (well, it kinda is) as there is a consistent thread of insanity woven throughout everything (and it’s nearly always Argoman himself providing it), some rather cool set and costume design and a genuinely awesome soundtrack provided by Piero Umiliani. The film veers violently from the intentionally funny to the unintentionally with seizure-inducing severity, although it does contain the funniest moment I’ve seen in any superhero movie ever made. I won’t spoil it but it’s when Argoman is interrupted saving someone’s life. It’s genuinely hilarious and I’m still giggling from it.
I liked ‘Argoman The Fantastic Superman’ aka ‘Argoman The Paris Incident’ aka ‘Come Rubare la Corona d’Inghilterra’. It reminded me tonally of a mix of Adam West era Batman and the 60’s ‘Casino Royale’ with Argoman’s alter-ego Sir Reginald Hoover a Derek Flint/Doc Savage kinda dude. There’s also quite a bit of Fritz Lang in here too. If you have no tolerance for badly made, morally horrific, utterly nonsensical, infantile superhero movies then you might want to stick to Marvel. But you’d be missing out on the more entertaining movie.
