One of the main reasons I did Vampires is because there are so many of them in the history of Super Sentai. It’s a very popular type of monster, is easy to replicate on screen and is a universally recognized part of worldwide folklore. Why there aren’t more werewolves or Frankenstein’s Monsters around I don’t know but here are a few examples of each from Super Sentai (and one each from other tokusatsu properties)
The first example of werewolves in Super Sentai come from episode 7 of Himitsu Sentai Goranger. In that episode this guy:
Crimson Moon Mask has the ability to transform humans into werewolves. To say the werewolf effects were a little on the cheap side would be generous.
In Jyuken Sentai Gekiranger, when Gou/Geki Violet first shows up he has a tendency to turn into a Wolf-Man because his Wolf Ken has been interfered with by the villains.
The last Super Sentai instance that springs to mind would be from Shuriken Sentai NinNinger where a werewolf was responsible for the death of Kinji/StarNinger’s Father and old Brother.
Of course, my favorite example of werewolves in tokusatsu does not come from Super Sentai but instead the Kamen Rider franchise. In episode 39 of the 1971 original, we have probably the greatest episode title ever:
If that doesn’t sound like the most awesome Halloween party ever I don’t know what does! In the episode, Colonel Zol is creating an army of werewolves. The effects are slightly better than the later example from Goranger:
In the end though, Colonel Zol has to complete his operation himself and transforms into his true form to battle Kamen Rider 2:
I forgot to mention one little thing, this was the Christmas episode of Kamen Rider.
As for Frankenstein’s Monster, I can think of two appearances off the top of my head. The first was from Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger where Bandora creates Dora Frankie:
I’ve mentioned him before in my 10 Halloweeny Monsters post so I won’t dwell on his story too much.
The second example comes, once again, from Shuriken Sentai NinNinger. When the ‘Western Youkai’ show up, the first of them to challenge the heroes is Frankenstein’s Monster. He seems a little more interested in soaking up the Japanese pop culture though:
I never thought I would ever see the Frankenstein Monster with a body pillow talking about Moe. I love Super Sentai.
Probably the most famous tokusatsu version of Frankenstein though comes from Toho studios and their 1965 film
Frankenstein vs. Subterranean Monster Baragona.k.a Frankenstein Conquers the World.
In this film, as the war turned against them, the Nazis sent the heart of the Frankenstein Monster to Japan. There it got hit by the atomic bomb and slowly grew into a new, gigantic version of the monster. Fully grown, it battled the kaiju Baragon before vanishing into the sea.
Oh, but we’re not done yet. Aside from the sequel to the above movie which was dubbed to remove all references to Frankenstein and released in the US as War of the Gargantuas, there is another tokusatsu connection to Frankenstein’s monster.
In Germany, most of Toho’s movies were retitled to include Frankenstein’s name somewhere. The conceit was that the bad old Doctor was somehow responsible for the creation of all of these monsters. I guess Frankenstein just had more of an appeal in Germany than any other monster or monster maker. This even extended to other movies which brings us to this gem of a poster:
Which is apparently a German release of the Taiwanese Kamen Rider adaptation The Super Riders.
Paragraph-long redactions in SCP Foundaton articles are just the clinical equivalent of “and where they took him it is not good to ask, and what they did
with him I shall not say.”
I’d also accept “If I told you how we did this, you would bloody try and do it yourselves"
Monsters and Stuff 