Lupin the 3rd: The Movie -- The Secret of Mamo parodies Spielberg, Stranglove and Clinton.

Lupin the 3rd: The Movie -- The Secret of Mamo.
Theatrical feature, 1978. Director: Soji Yoshikawa. 100 minutes. Price & format: DVD bilingual $24.98. Distributor: Pioneer Entertainment.

Cartoonist Monkey Punch's Lupin III has been filtering into America since before anime began to be commercially licensed. There was a 1971-1972 23-episode anime TV series by the Tokyo Movie Shinsha (now TMS Entertainment) animation studio that was moderately popular; then a 1977-1980 155-episode series that was so popular that it spun off two theatrical features; this one, Lupin III, released December 16, 1978, and Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro (Hayao Miyazaki's theatrical feature directorial debut), released December 15, 1979. (The list of TMS' Lupin III TV and theatrical anime credits from then to date would fill a page.) The Castle of Cagliostro is generally considered a better feature, but The Secret of Mamo (to use this DVD release's title) is still plenty of fun and is more faithful to Lupin's TV persona.

Lupin III is the modern descendant of early 20th century fictional gentleman-thief Arsene Lupin; a suave, jet set international master thief usually accompanied by partners Jigen (a Chicago-gangster type) and Goemon (a traditional Japanese samurai), and pursued by Interpol Inspector Zenigata. Also present is femme fatale Fujiko, though one never knows whether she will be Lupin's ally or his rival.

For this first Lupin III theatrical feature, the whole cast was pitted against Mamo, a mysterious French megalomaniac who tried to use Lupin as a dupe in a scheme to seize control of the U.S.' and the Soviet Union's nuclear weaponry. The story is fast and funny, with constant unexpected plot twists that melded many parodies of scenes from 1960s and ‘70s TV and movie thrillers from Spielberg's debut Duel to Dr. Strangelove into a coherent original and suspenseful thriller. The superb jazz score by Yuji Ohno also deserves a mention.

TMS had it immediately dubbed into English for a JAL trans-Pacific in-flight movie. Barely-legible bootleg videos of that dub were popular among anime fans until a new commercial dub was released on video in 1995 as Lupin III: The Mystery of Mamo. This Pioneer release is a third English dub. Since the plot involves a terrorist nuclear threat, it is amusing that the three dubs include references to world events in 1978, 1995 and 2003, with parodies of the voices of presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Pioneer's DVD includes the original Japanese soundtrack with a subtitled translation which was not previously available, in addition to its new English dub which is less faithful than the previous two. (Granted the dialogue is full of witty repartee, Inspector Zenigata's lines now unfortunately sound more like inane one-line jokes than reasonable conversation. This lessens the cleverness of Lupin's escapes, since it does not take any great intelligence to outwit an adversary who sounds like a boob.) The DVD extras include a translation of the original 1978 12-page souvenir press book.

In the 1980s, when TMS began turning out Lupin III movies in quantity, the studio retroactively retitled this one Lupin vs. the Clone. If you hear of that title and wonder if that is a different movie, no it is not.