Raiders of Galaxy

From the archive

"No planet was safe!" There are two ways to appreciate these movies. The first is to have a full, open bottle of bourbon in hand while viewing them. The second is to appreciate the freaky, random confluence of events that brought them into being. The first thing to appreciate is that South Korea embargoed foreign movies, especially animation, for a lengthy period of time. This meant that not only was there a dearth of programming for SK TV, it also meant that native studios could rip off foreign intellectual property, and their viewers would have no idea that they were watching knockoffs. So native studios did just that, aping all kinds of Japanese anime, as well as US movies such as Tron. The next thing to appreciate is the very existence of Hong Kong schlock producer Joseph Lai, responsible for many of the more wack-a-doo ninja movies from the 1980s. Mr. Lai purchased job lots of said Korean animations, apparently, and re-edited various individual works into completely different "movies", hiring various random expatriates to dub the results into English, thus creating entirely "new", yet nonsensical, works. So far as anyone knows, none of the voices were, in fact, experienced actors. Finally, there is the intended market. These masterworks were created, by all appearances, to fill out dead time on Australian TV networks --- and for no other reason. "Raiders of Galaxy" is one of these movies, and makes even less sense than you might imagine. Download it and watch -- if you dare!