Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter: Shoulda Been Anime
This is a total non-sequitur, but a while back I happened to watch an obscure mid-70s vintage vampire-action movie called Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter. It is cheesy, poorly made, and generally just plain bad, but I was struck by the fact that it absolutely screamed “anime.” From the exaggerated characters, to the relatively creative action, to the big showdown at the end, to the general layout and theme of the movie, to the general good cheer of the characters (it’s a vampire movie that is NOT a horror movie, rather far closer to straight action), were you to take exactly the same script, replace the blonde Captain Kronos with a nice, lanky, too-cool anime stud, and hand it to a decent art director, you’d end up with a solid anime action flick.
I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen a live action movie that begged so much to be anime. Read into this what you will. IMDB tells me the writer and director is Brian Clemens, but I see nothing in his list of credits to indicate he’s predisposed to anime-style stories (except maybe Highlander II, which was largely awful in context, though I suppose might have worked as a completely unrelated standalone anime movie too, if you were determined to).
April 3rd, 2009 at 7:43 am
lol thats sounds too cool