There were 3 "giant monster" shows from Japan that made it to Philly in the 60's...
ULTRA MAN,
THE SPACE GIANTS, and
JOHNNY SOKKO AND HIS FLYING ROBOT.
ULTRA MAN was by far the finest. Some people liked to make fun of it in later years, but that was uncalled-for. It had a sense of humor, but it also had real heart, and was often dead serious. They knew how to mix tragedy & slapstick side-by-side and make it work in Japan, that's for sure! I only had one problem with the show, and it wasn't the show, it was the bloody tv station running it. Tradition was, a show would get about 2 runs, average 6 months, then be replaced with something else. Maybe 6 months or a year later, they'd run it again, ditto. This happened with
ULTRA MAN a few times, until, in the 70's, they started running it again... and KEPT running it. I mean for like 8 straight years without a break. I'm sorry, I don't care how much I like anything, I want something else! So I eventually got bored and stopped watching. Well, you guessed it. By the time I was ready to watch it again, they'd stopped... and HAVEN'T RUN IT SINCE. Bastards!!!!!
Compare this with
SPACE GIANTS, effectively one long serial. I seem to recall they ran it twice. PERIOD. Never since. WTF???
JOHNNY SOKKO was a riot. From the word go, I saw it as a parody of
ULTRA MAN combined with
GIGANTOR. And that's saying something. Little kid with a gun. Baddies acting like gangsters from
THE UNTOUCHABLES, and trying to KILL the kid all the time. The most idiotic giant monsters ever!! And the main baddies weren't far behind, once "Spider" got killed after about 8 episodes. But there were problems. Several episodes were clearly,blatently shown out of sequence (there was a lot of continuity on this show). And, when they got to the end of the run-- a mere 25 episodes-- they stopped. PERIOD. It's never been seen again. EVER. Except for the compilation movie,
VOYAGE INTO SPACE (5 episodes including the first 2 and the last 1), which I managed to tape. Seen it multiple times since, but always wishing I could see the entire series.
By the way, I'd swear there's a lot of Jack Kirby influence on
JOHNNY SOKKO. Jerry Mano reminds me of Jimmy Woo, and one of the monsters was very similar to "The Octo-Sapien" Jack came up with for
THE HULK. They also use radio-pens like
U.N.C.L.E. What a fun show!
What is wrong with TV programmers?
? If they have their way, before long, every station out there will be running the same shows all the time non-stop. And worse, the same "favorite" episodes non-stop. I picture them eventually narrowing it down to ONE episode of
ANDY GRIFFITH, being run 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
