C-C-C-C-Crazy Game: The Live Action Anime Fun Bomb of THE LEGEND OF THE STARDUST BROTHERS

Desperate Teenage Lovedolls, The Phantom of the Paradise, Hardcore Logo: good-rags-to-riches-to-rags Faustian movie musicals don’t pick up a guitar and wail very often. The Legend of the Stardust Brothers, directed by Macoto Tezuka (son of Astro Boy mastermind Osamu Tezuka), feels like a live action anime complete with crazy broad heroes and villains, rival guitar gangs, and a ramshackle joie de vivre coloring everything from cars flipping over cliffs to romance gone wrong.

Li’l Tezuka packed his debut feature with sonic bangers spanning the ’80s pop cultural gamut from synth pop to garage stomp to purple tinged party funk to second wave ska complete with background skanking dudes fitted with fedoras and sunglasses. Musician and TV personality, Haruo Chicada, originally wrote the album as a concept with no movie in mind. However, once Tezuka heard the parade of instant hits, he knew he had to adapt them to silver screen!

Inspired by outré musicals like The Phantom of the Paradise and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Tezuka and Chicada chucked every idea imaginable into this fun bomb of a movie. The production design looks like a feature length YMO music video complete with dayglo zolo costumes, new wave glam guy makeup, and impossible sets ripped straight from an after-school anime. A loose plot about the perils of fame string along chaotic supercharged song and dance numbers building louder, faster, and zanier until the finale explodes into a giant party ripped from a Mad magazine spread swarming with priests, puppies, pie throwing, confetti, aerobicizers, mohawks, chains, monster masks, Japanese skinheads, and even a pop idol wedding.

I couldn’t stop smiling while watching this movie! Some of its earworms burrowed deep into my memory banks to the point where I went out and bought an optical disk so I could watch all the posi histrionics over again! In a time where I’m quarantined, fretting about the future, and frequently zoning out alone in my room, it’s nice to have such a perfect escapist object d’art radiating the best vibes. I want to crawl through the screen and join the fantastic neverending shenanigans and believe in a simple world where rock’n’roll good guys triumph over evil record mogul ghouls!

I guess there’s some surface commentary in Legend of the Stardust Brothers about the fleeting nature of fame and the repetitive malaise that can sink deep as a hit entertainer, which proves this party boy of a movie has some kind of head on its shoulders. But I’m mostly grateful for the pure sugar rush of pop art magic thrumming through every frame. I wish I could harness this pure good energy, keep it in my pocket, and whip it out whenever I needed a real world pick me up.

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You can catch this Weird Wednesday film at Alamo On Demand along with trademark goodies like: Intros from director Macoto Tezuka and Adam Torel from Third Window Films!