Kamen Rider BLACK – Hurry to Demon Island is the first Kamen Rider BLACK film that was set between episodes 22 to 23 in the series. A time before Shadow Moon is introduced, and Century Kings, the guys responsible in fan subbing Kamen Rider BLACK has subbed this film!
The film kicks off with a boy riding his bike when he spots a mysterious shadow; he saw the shadow gliding towards him. He fell from his bike as he saw the shadow pass through him and disappeared. He paced back and we are panned to a scene in which we a saw a green car. Then, a mysterious tongue grabbed the boy; we are back to the car, which turned out to be one of Gorgom’s mutants in disguise.
Later, we saw various clips of children being abducted by the said creature while donning various disguises, and the weirdest that I saw is the rose one. Seriously, really it is freaky yet cool at the same time.
After the Mutant abducted another child that is playing a violin while seating a couch that turned out to be the Mutant in disguise, we are now opened in the film’s title screen.
We are now into a scene in which Kamen Rider BLACK is riding Battle Hopper, one of Kamen Rider BLACK’s personal bikes and we are now panned into a scene in which we are introduced to this film’s main baddie, the Chameleon Mutant. Yep, he is the one who is abducting the kids earlier.
After ramming his bike on Chameleon Mutant, BLACK hops out and attack the Mutant. The Mutant evaded the attack and BLACK concludes that he is the one responsible in the kidnappings. Chameleon Mutant agrees on what he said, and shows to us a crystal ball, it turned out to be the container of the bodies of his victims. BLACK attacks the Mutant it was not effective.
A giant rock came hurling across BLACK, it was the Chameleon Mutant in disguise. The Chameleon Mutant then swallows the children trapped inside the crystal ball after that, the Mutant used his tongue and attacked BLACK, and now, he is under the Mutant’s clutches. Until a strange light that severed Chameleon Mutant’s tongue appeared, it’s Birugenia!
Birugenia then said to leave everything to him, BLACK returned to his bike and chased Chameleon Mutant… and ignored Birugenia. Birugenia followed BLACK and after BLACK crashed inside an empty warehouse thanks to Birugenia, we are now led to the battle between BLACK and Birugenia.
During the battle, it seems that BLACK is avoiding all of Birugenia’s attacks. BLACK later on attacked Birugenia but thanks to his attacks, Dark Storm, he never came close to Birugenia… until Battle Hopper came. The bike rammed Birugenia but he evaded. Because of this, Battle Hopper was left opened and Birugenia slashed him with his sword. BLACK is pissed and he wants Birugenia to pay for his Battle Hopper (Umm, BLACK, Battle Hopper has a regeneration feature, but what the heck.) and calls for Road Sector!
BLACK jumped out from the warehouse and hopped on Road Sector. He activated Road Sector’s Attack Shield, preparing to ram it on Birugenia. Birugenia prepares his defense, making Road Sector’s attack ineffective. After this, he leaped into one of the ship’s cargo crates that are left in the area and left.
BLACK heads back to Battle Hopper in which we see him regenerate. Meanwhile, Creation King is pissed on the Gorgom Priest, Chameleon Mutant and Birugenia due to their failure attacks them with an electric attacks coming from above. One of the shocks hit Chameleon Mutant causing him to mutate more and now, he has the ability to split into five. After Creation King has calmed down, Darom, a Gorgom Priest then said his orders.
Creation King is angry especially to Birugenia because he interfered Chameleon Mutant due to his ambition in defeating Kamen Rider. Because of this, he will be in confinement for the entire time. NOOO! I want more Birugenia action!
After this Birugenia left, Darom asked Baraom how the conditions of the children are. He replied that they all passed in the physical examination and now they are ready for surgery. We are now into a scene, inside a room with children being tied in a bed, struggling to escape. The children abducted earlier are planned to be turned into mutants that leads us to learn Gorgom’s plot this time.
The sun will illuminate Gorgom God’s Eyes and with its light hitting on the children, they will turn into mutants. We are led into a stock footage from previous episodes that discussed about the mutant’s the BLACK faced where created 50,000 years ago and now, Gorgom wants to create more mutants using children.
Finally you said it!
Kotaro returns to the café in which we saw the girls watching the news about the abduction. Kotaro got the glimpse on the news as we saw the girls sobbed while watching the parents of the abducted children begging the kidnapper via TV to return their children. Kotaro then rushes out and look for clues on the possible whereabouts of the Mutant.
While Kotaro is looking for clues, a bus that says about surviving the 21st Century (You have to be kidding me.) is throwing flyers about their survival camp for surviving in the 21st Century. Kotaro got the glimpse of the bus and got a hold of one of the thrown flyers. After deducting it, he concludes, the bus is suspicious, very suspicious.
He follows the bus and back to the bus, the kids are eating Kamen Rider BLACK candies! Secretly advertising a merchandise FTW! Anyways, the guide notices Kotaro is behind them and you guess it, transforms into the Chameleon Mutant! The kids panicked inside the bus. Kotaro rushed on the bus but it disappeared that led to Kotaro almost falling on a cliff.
He wanders on the area in which we saw an angler and if you did your research in this series or went to this site, you know that this is Shotaro Ishinomori, making a cameo in one of his works. Kotaro asked the angler if he saw a bus, he replied, “Demon Island.”
After some short talk, Kotaro decides to go to the island but Ishinomori, I mean the angler stopped him and suggested to give him a ride with his fast boat. Kotaro agrees and we saw Kotaro wearing a diving suit.
Back on Demon Island, Darom is preparing for the surgery. Back at the boat, after the angler bade farewell to Kotaro, he jumped on the boat and now is swimming towards Demon Island.
Back on the Island, we saw a boy taking a Physical Test, since he is negative; he will be turned into mutant feed. The boy was thrown in some place in which we saw other kids who were negative in the said test. Meanwhile, Kotaro arrives on the Island. Back on the operating room, it is time for the priests to turn them into mutants… and Kotaro arrives back in his street clothes. O_O
Anyways, Kotaro sneaks in, but the Chameleon Mutants are in disguising themselves as rocks. The Chameleons then showed up and now has cornered Kotaro, which leads him to transform into BLACK! Since this film is on widescreen, his transformation sequence has been compressed to fit the widescreen format. He then fights the mutants, as the Gorgom God’s Eye is now shinning, ready to turn harmless kids into deadly mutants. However, BLACK crashes inside the operating room! He frees the kids, after he freed some of them until he fell on a trap hole.
He was then automatically tied in a rock slab it was a trap. The kids served as bait to lure BLACK in the Island. The Gorgom Priests is planning to use the Gorgom God’s Eyes to turn BLACK into the ultimate mutant! Darom hits BLACK’s Kingstone to modify him into a mutant, and slowly, starting the surgery. BLACK asked God’s help, and miraculously, the Kingstone reacted, and created a strong energy that caused BLACK to be freed on the slab! He jumped in higher ground, and introduced himself.
After this, he made a speech that light will always prevail from darkness. The Chameleon mutant split itself into five and attacked BLACK. Their attacks failed. He then destroys the Gorgom God’s Eyes statue via a Rider Punch (Upgraded Version) and frees the imprisoned children. The base is now exploding. We are now in the film’s last fight scene.
The kids are running away from the base and BLACK was grabbed by Chameleon Mutant’s tongue. Chameleon Mutant attacks BLACK, he evades it and now, he split himself into five again forming Mutant Sentai Chameleonger! Sorry for the bad Sentai reference. Anyways, with five against one, it seems the mutants had the upper hand. Even with the disadvantage, BLACK still fights them.
The fight was about mutant’s stealth and versus BLACK’s keen senses. Some mutants are disguising themselves, preparing to attack BLACK when suddenly two of them attacked BLACK. He was able to separate the two from the others but it was just a trap. The Chameleons used their tongues to electrocute BLACK. Because of this, he uses his Kingstone Flash, making them vulnerable.
He then swings the Red Chameleon Mutant against its brothers, making them weaker and BLACK prepares for his quadruple Rider Punch! He punched the four mutant clones and after this, they vanished. Then, he Rider Kicks the head honcho and exploded.
BLACK meets up with the kids and we saw the entire island exploding, and so, the narrator speaks and we are back to Kotaro and he swears to fight to protect everyone.
On to the review, even in a short span of time, the film delivered the things that I loved about the series before Shadow Moon came into picture. Namely, Birugenia and the crazy Gorgom plot.
First is with this guy, Birugenia. When he first appeared in the series, it was in my opinion one of the greatest scenes in the entire series. After a series of failures, they have no choice but to awaken a supposed candidate to be Creation King but because he does not have the Kingstone he did not qualify to become the next Creation King and was trapped inside a coffin until further notice. With Kotaro having the Kingstone, he wants it so he will become the next Creation King. With this ambition, he operated independently from the three head Gorgom Priest, making him quite a good match against BLACK and the Gorgom Priests.
In this film, his ambition is still running in his head that it caused him to severe his allies’ Mutant just to get his hands on BLACK. Because of his ambition, he only appeared for almost 7 minutes of the 24-minute film airtime. The film lacks Birugenia participation! Oh well, at least the Chameleongers are a good match for BLACK.
The second thing that I loved about this film is the crazy Gorgom Plot. It’s been a running joke on the entire fandom about their crazy plots. Got addicted on a certain singer with LSS worthy lyrics? It might be a Gorgom Plot. Your older brother who is 20 years old turned out to be stuck on a 10-year old boy’s body? It might be a Gorgom Plot. Milk got expired earlier than usual? It might be a Gorgom Plot.
In this film, to lure BLACK they abducted kids to be turned into monsters! Wow, instead of these guys doing the direct approach of abducting any of the girls who just appeared for what, 2 to 3 minutes and the only thing they did is cry, what they did is abduct a group of kids and warned them they will turn them into monsters! Dumb, yes. Crazy, yes. It’s definitely a Gorgom Plot!
The best thing in this film’s Gorgom Plot is that the writers gave us the impression that Gorgom just wants to add monsters in their arsenal considering that Gorgom’s monsters are hungry and depleting in number thanks to BLACK. If you watched the series, you know that they have plots that involved in creating Mutant Feed and the like, making the plot predictable that BLACK will save the kids, end of story. But it turned out to be just a big ploy to lure BLACK and try to turn him into one of Gorgom’s mutants! Clever, yes. It is a Gorgom Plot.
On to the film’s monster, Chameleon Mutant, he is one of the mutants that BLACK faced that he had quite some challenge aside from the Rhinoceros Mutant. He has the ability to split into five, giving BLACK a hard time in fighting him, add the fact that this creature has the ability to disguise itself. He was a great challenge to BLACK’s skills.
About Shotaro Ishinomori’s cameo, best. Scene. Ever.
To the disappointments, the entire film felt like a regular episode of Kamen Rider BLACK except its on widescreen and they made a group of monsters act like a Sentai team. Aside from the lack of Birugenia, some characters in the film felt like they are not needed in the film like the girls that the only thing they did is just cry while watching the news.
Overall, even with the minor disappointment of the lack of Birugenia screen time, it does not hinder the film’s overall performance. In the era with no CGI, the film tries to create wonderful SFX with the technology they possessed during that time, giving us a great superhero film that we can enjoy. If you are a fan of the series, or an adult who watched this series back when he was a child, you will really enjoy this film even with its shortcomings, such as the time.