Electric Dragon 80000V

[patrick]

I appreciate Don Brown's raising of Electric Dragon as a topic on the list (refreshing
after all the 'can you help me find this?' postings). But I would like to challenge the
implicit agreement he seeks (via his 'undoubtedly') in calling this a dumb film. I'd like
to know what Don says about the 'well hidden' brain of this film; perhaps we aren't be in
such disagreement.

To me, this film is very 'intelligent' for a variety of reasons: manga/anime, music video
clip and narrative feature mixture, it plays on and with these forms via an overarching
theme of electricity. The retro-manga/US comic book story about how a heavy dose of
electricity has fried the rational higher level brain functions of our hero, partially
desroying their repressive function so that the 'primal' dragon element of the brain
always threatens to overflow into his reality and destroy him and it may be less than
'serious', 'diginified' and 'realistic' as per the traditional expectations of live action
feature narrative film. But it allows for a film that explores and revels in intense
affects and sound-images of extremity  that try to perform (rather than represent) power,
overflowing, collision, the loss of reason etc. The retro allusion to industrial modernity
(machines, electric guitars, steel and sparks and so forth) works well with the dated
narrative about electricity in an age when 'data' flows along optical fibre register the
modern cutting edge. The film has a wry nostalgia for the poetics of (industrial) power
and its potential for reappropriation that punk and heavy metal at its best often achieved
in a late romantic fashion.

Don Brown wrote:

>  It's undoubtedly a dumb
> movie, of the disengage-brain-at-the-door variety, but it does have one of
> its own (well hidden).  I liked it a lot.
>
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