Mothra vs. Godzilla and Ghidorah The Three Headed Monster both rule and both prominently feature Yuriko Hoshi, whom I am in love with. These two facts are in no way a coincidence.
+4
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GustavFriend of GoatsSomewhere in the OzarksRegistered Userregular
Frankenstein vs Baragon (1965) - This movie certainly doesn't fuck around. It starts with a german scientist (I wish this dude had been in more of the movie) with the still beating heart of Frankenstein, only for some Nazi's to show up and confiscate it, and hand it over to the Japanese. They bring it to a facility where it's revealed Frankenstein's heart is immortal.. then a bomber flies overhead, there's a flash and the city is engulfed in flames as "August 5th, 1945" appears on screen and I was honestly amazed. I would never expect one of these silly scifi movies to A. Show the atomic bombing of Hiroshimi and B. Make it a relevant plot point. Anyway, the basic plot is the heart regenerates a Frankenstein who then proceeds to never stop growing so long as he has enough food (and he's constantly starving and thus eating) and can regenerate limbs. He forms a bond with the scientists studying him, but eventually gets harassed by a film crew to pushes him to escape (accidentally killing a few people in the process). Meanwhile there's another monster running around, a subterranean dinosaur with a glowing horn named Baragon, but he leaves no survivors so Frankie, who is now kaiju sized, gets blamed for it. The scientists want him alive to study while everyone else wants him dead (my worry would be what if he doesn't stop growing?), but eventually the truth is revealed with Frankenstein tries to stop Baragon. For most of the movie Frankie somehow manages to find normal clothes even when he's 20 feet tall, but by the end he's just in hides, so he looks more like Kaiju Caveman than a giant Frankenstein. Watching him wrestle with a dude in a giant monster suit is pretty incredible. Sadly, a sequel is teased that we never got, and I'm kinda bummed
After defeating Baragon, Frankie and Baragon get trapped in a giant sinkhole, where they likely wound up in whatever subterranean realm that Baragon is from, with the implication that Frankenstein will likely be better off living among creatures his size. Would have much rather seen a movie about this subterranean ecosystem than what we wound up getting.
Overall, this was a fun little 1950's esque scifi B movie. I kinda wish Kaiju Caveman had shown up in the Godzilla series proper. That would have been a hoot. The movie takes itself like 100% seriously though, which the "normal dude fighting a rubber suit monster" visuals kinda just don't handle it too well.
Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (1966) - Had to watch this dubbed, but apparently the english cut isn't TOO far off from the Japanese one this time, so that's not bad. This is one of the few godzilla films I had seen before and remembered in any detail. (Though I somehow didn't remember that Mothra is actually in this film!). The setup for this film is weird, while the rest of it plays out fairly straight. Basically this guy's brother goes missing at sea, but a psychic says he's absolutely alive, so he goes to a dance marathon to try to win a boat (3 days after the marathon already started) he winds up talking to two guys who just recently had to tap out, who are like "Boats? we know where there's lots of boats!" and take him to marina where they break into a yacht to look at it, only to find it's occupied by a dude with a gun. The dude is pretty cool though, and let's them sleep overnight. Only when everyone wakes up it's revealed the brother, who is the only one who knows how to operate a boat, took them out to sea while they were asleep to go look for their brother. Additionally, the gun the guy had turned out to be an easily breakable toy and the dude is probably a bank robber who was hiding out on a boat.
Then they get attacked by a giant lobster monster and wind up on an island with a terrorist organization making nukes, and that's basically the setup. I think the protagonists are pretty enjoyable in this film, but the villains are pretty shit. You never get an explanation as to who these guys are (In the Japanese version they're known as "Red Bamboo" but that's it.) or what they want beyond vague terrorist stuff, or how they have access to all these resources. They apparently never even show up again, either. Eventually the protagonists (Aided by an escaped slave, whom are all from Infant Island i.e. Mothra's people) discover King Kong Godzilla is sleeping on the island and use lightning to wake him up, at which point he rampages, destroys the base, and fights some giant monsters.
The human drama is passable, as are the giant monster fights, but mostly this movie is pretty forgettable. Except for the self destruct mechanism for the base. It's this big column with a turnable switch at the end of it and it has a two hour timer... and apparently as the timer goes down, the column lowers, which would be an incredibly pointless feature unless a bunch of rubble lands on the console making it so you have to reach your hand around girders and shit to reach the button, so every time you get close, it conveniently escapes your grasp. I think you can guess what happens.
War of the Gargantua's (1966) - I think the subtitling on this one tripped me up. Basic gist is that two monsters have spawned from pieces of the Frankenstein's monster and turned into a brown mountain dwelling bigfoot kaiju man and a green sea dwelling bigfoot kaijuman. The subtitling implies the brown one is in fact the Frankenstein monster from the first film, and shows flashbacks to the scientists (at the Frankenstein Research Center, naturally) observing and and interacting with a hairy bigfoot child, which is not how he appeared in the first movie, but I guess the subtitling is wrong and neither of them are the original. Anywho, the green garguantau shows up and starts killing and eating people and everyone thinks it's the one the Frankenstein institute had studied before he escaped, but the scientists insist that behavior isn't consistent with the one they studied. The military actually manages to beat the shit out of the green one (First appearence of the MASER tanks, apparently) but then the brown one shows up and saves his brother. The happy reunion doesn't last long, as the brown one soon discovers his brother likes eating people and they basically beat the shit out of each other for the rest of the movie. Again the scientists want to protect the good one and the military just wants them both dead, nothing new there.
The ending of this movie comes straight out of left field and is truly bizarre.
The two gargantuas are fighting in the ocean when suddenly a volcanic island raises, spews lava everywhere and kills both the garguntuas. The end. Like, what?
Looks like next up on the docket is Son of Godzilla. Oh boy!
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turtleantGunpla Dadis the best.Registered Userregular
Maaaan, Godzilla vs The Sea Monster.
When I was just a wee little kid I had that on VHS. I probably watched that movie a hundred times. Tape got destroyed when our basement flooded years ago.
I think the japanese War of the Gargantuas had some rights stuff going on so they were basically trying to avoid calling it Frankenstein at all for the movie, though looking into it now I can't find anything that mentions that so I may have just assumed that.
Yeah but "On Myself" is a statement on its own as opposed to Godzilla which is just a name. And that's still fewer commas than you were using originally
GreasyKidsStuffMOMMM!ROAST BEEF WANTS TO KISS GIRLS ON THE TITTIES!Registered Userregular
edited August 2018
Boy, Neon Genesis gets really upsetting around the episode 17-18 mark huh
so much ripping and tearing
edit: aaaaaaah this show's going places
GreasyKidsStuff on
+6
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valhalla13013 Dark Shield Perceives the GodsRegistered Userregular
Ultraman versus Jet Jaguar, GO!
0
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GreasyKidsStuffMOMMM!ROAST BEEF WANTS TO KISS GIRLS ON THE TITTIES!Registered Userregular
man what the flying fuck was The End of Evangelion
+13
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Bloods EndBlade of TyshallePunch dimensionRegistered Userregular
The film End of Evangelion was a dark, brutal, psychedelic orgy of sex and violence that culminated in the mass extinction of humanity set to an optimistic J-pop song with lyrics about suicide. The themes of the television show criticizing the audience for being spineless and lost in a fantasy world were cranked up to eleven, as the protagonist Shinji basically watches everybody die around him due to his refusal to make any effort whatsoever to engage with other people
+1
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GreasyKidsStuffMOMMM!ROAST BEEF WANTS TO KISS GIRLS ON THE TITTIES!Registered Userregular
The film End of Evangelion was a dark, brutal, psychedelic orgy of sex and violence that culminated in the mass extinction of humanity set to an optimistic J-pop song with lyrics about suicide. The themes of the television show criticizing the audience for being spineless and lost in a fantasy world were cranked up to eleven, as the protagonist Shinji basically watches everybody die around him due to his refusal to make any effort whatsoever to engage with other people
I see you also read the critical reception section of the Wikipedia article
Son of Godzilla (1967) - So going into this I figured the tone would have started skewing towards a younger audience (as I knew was eventually coming) but the tone of this movie is all over the map. Sometimes it's dead serious with nary an ouch of irony; other times it's an incredibly silly cartoon. Even the music has this weird dichotomy. The movie takes place on an island with a research facility and initially I went "Oh awesome! They must be studying the monsters! They're finally taking a proactive move against them instead of just waiting for the next attack." but nope, it's for an unrelated weather control experiment and it just so happens to be the island with horse sized praying mantis', a colossal spider, and a mountain with a baby godzilla buried in it! What terrible luck. It's probably passe to say this, but I'm super not into Manilla's design. It doesn't even look like the same species as Godzilla. (Also the high pitched gargling noise it makes confused the shit out of me for a good chunk of the movie. I thought there was a cat outside.)
Kumonga (the giant spider) was pretty cool, and actually moved pretty well given what I'm assuming would have been a pain in the ass to puppet. Though I'm not sure why it makes the same noise as the giant praying mantis's. Also, where in god(zilla)'s name did this egg come from? They clearly refer to Godzilla as the "Father' so where's the female godzilla.
....wait, what if the 1954 Godzilla was the female?
King Kong Escapes (1967) - Had to do the english dub, but apparently it's spot on with the japanese movie, so that's rad. I was kinda disappointed this wasn't canon with King Kong vs Godzilla, but I guess the scale would be an issue. I love old movies like these where you can just have the animal completely understand English (or Japanese, as the dub may be) and nobody questions it. Also, super weird that this movie has Dr. Who as a villain. I love how the lady villain is constantly talking about "My country" and "the nation I work for" and they never have the balls to actually SAY what nation.
It's weird that this scientist dude managed to design a correctly scaled robo-kong when Kong was just a theory at the time that nobody had proof existed. I liked that the ending was
The Monster intentionally defeating the villain; instead of having basically no interaction with the monster or defeating them incidentally.
Anywho, not much else to say about this one. I though it was over-all okay.
Destroy All Monsters (1968) - I was super looking forward to this one, but I think Ghidorah the Three headed Monster was a much better attempt at this. Also, I can't believe they did a SECOND "mysterious planet in-between Mars and Jupiter) with aliens that want to mind control Earth's monsters." Love that Earth finally figured out how to wrangle all the monsters and stick them in a contained ecosystem. (Though WTF is Mothra there? She has her own island she peacefully lives on. Also Mothra's a caterpillar again, 30 years into the future. Mohtra has the most ridiculous life-cycle for a giant monster.
It's super weird seeing Baragon, Gorosaurus and especially Varan in this film. Also, god damn
Did King Ghidorah just get crushed in this film. He lost to Godzilla and Rodan alone, and now there's like 10 monsters beating the shit out of him.
One thing I been loving in these films, that's been pretty consistent throughout, is that Godzilla's favorite form of attack appears to just be kicking rocks at things. Atomic Breath, Claws? Forget that shit, I'm gonna kick rocks at 'em! This movie was above average, but I think it lacks a bit of charm.
Anywho, on to the next film! All Monsters Attack!
With a name like that, it's got to be on the scale of Destroy all Monsters, right!
Was poking around the interwebs and saw that apparently
A. The agreement between Toho and Legendary/WB precludes there being multiple live action movies in development at the same time (Which is why there aren't any Toho films on the docket)
2. The deal apparently ends in 2020
Anyone know if these are accurate or are they just fansite rumors?
I've heard that as well, as supposedly the reason they're not doing Shin 2 and the whole expanded universe / other kaiju movies for toho, buuut can't remember from where so it could have been just fansite rumors there as well.
Son of Godzilla (1967) - So going into this I figured the tone would have started skewing towards a younger audience (as I knew was eventually coming) but the tone of this movie is all over the map. Sometimes it's dead serious with nary an ouch of irony; other times it's an incredibly silly cartoon. Even the music has this weird dichotomy. The movie takes place on an island with a research facility and initially I went "Oh awesome! They must be studying the monsters! They're finally taking a proactive move against them instead of just waiting for the next attack." but nope, it's for an unrelated weather control experiment and it just so happens to be the island with horse sized praying mantis', a colossal spider, and a mountain with a baby godzilla buried in it! What terrible luck. It's probably passe to say this, but I'm super not into Manilla's design. It doesn't even look like the same species as Godzilla. (Also the high pitched gargling noise it makes confused the shit out of me for a good chunk of the movie. I thought there was a cat outside.)
Kumonga (the giant spider) was pretty cool, and actually moved pretty well given what I'm assuming would have been a pain in the ass to puppet. Though I'm not sure why it makes the same noise as the giant praying mantis's. Also, where in god(zilla)'s name did this egg come from? They clearly refer to Godzilla as the "Father' so where's the female godzilla.
....wait, what if the 1954 Godzilla was the female?
King Kong Escapes (1967) - Had to do the english dub, but apparently it's spot on with the japanese movie, so that's rad. I was kinda disappointed this wasn't canon with King Kong vs Godzilla, but I guess the scale would be an issue. I love old movies like these where you can just have the animal completely understand English (or Japanese, as the dub may be) and nobody questions it. Also, super weird that this movie has Dr. Who as a villain. I love how the lady villain is constantly talking about "My country" and "the nation I work for" and they never have the balls to actually SAY what nation.
It's weird that this scientist dude managed to design a correctly scaled robo-kong when Kong was just a theory at the time that nobody had proof existed. I liked that the ending was
The Monster intentionally defeating the villain; instead of having basically no interaction with the monster or defeating them incidentally.
Anywho, not much else to say about this one. I though it was over-all okay.
Destroy All Monsters (1968) - I was super looking forward to this one, but I think Ghidorah the Three headed Monster was a much better attempt at this. Also, I can't believe they did a SECOND "mysterious planet in-between Mars and Jupiter) with aliens that want to mind control Earth's monsters." Love that Earth finally figured out how to wrangle all the monsters and stick them in a contained ecosystem. (Though WTF is Mothra there? She has her own island she peacefully lives on. Also Mothra's a caterpillar again, 30 years into the future. Mohtra has the most ridiculous life-cycle for a giant monster.
It's super weird seeing Baragon, Gorosaurus and especially Varan in this film. Also, god damn
Did King Ghidorah just get crushed in this film. He lost to Godzilla and Rodan alone, and now there's like 10 monsters beating the shit out of him.
One thing I been loving in these films, that's been pretty consistent throughout, is that Godzilla's favorite form of attack appears to just be kicking rocks at things. Atomic Breath, Claws? Forget that shit, I'm gonna kick rocks at 'em! This movie was above average, but I think it lacks a bit of charm.
Anywho, on to the next film! All Monsters Attack!
With a name like that, it's got to be on the scale of Destroy all Monsters, right!
(god help me)
I assume off-camera Mothra keeps having to use up her life force solving Giant Monster problems. She's the most put-upon group mom of all time
Posts
I, too, liked John Carter a lot
Frankenstein vs Baragon (1965) - This movie certainly doesn't fuck around. It starts with a german scientist (I wish this dude had been in more of the movie) with the still beating heart of Frankenstein, only for some Nazi's to show up and confiscate it, and hand it over to the Japanese. They bring it to a facility where it's revealed Frankenstein's heart is immortal.. then a bomber flies overhead, there's a flash and the city is engulfed in flames as "August 5th, 1945" appears on screen and I was honestly amazed. I would never expect one of these silly scifi movies to A. Show the atomic bombing of Hiroshimi and B. Make it a relevant plot point. Anyway, the basic plot is the heart regenerates a Frankenstein who then proceeds to never stop growing so long as he has enough food (and he's constantly starving and thus eating) and can regenerate limbs. He forms a bond with the scientists studying him, but eventually gets harassed by a film crew to pushes him to escape (accidentally killing a few people in the process). Meanwhile there's another monster running around, a subterranean dinosaur with a glowing horn named Baragon, but he leaves no survivors so Frankie, who is now kaiju sized, gets blamed for it. The scientists want him alive to study while everyone else wants him dead (my worry would be what if he doesn't stop growing?), but eventually the truth is revealed with Frankenstein tries to stop Baragon. For most of the movie Frankie somehow manages to find normal clothes even when he's 20 feet tall, but by the end he's just in hides, so he looks more like Kaiju Caveman than a giant Frankenstein. Watching him wrestle with a dude in a giant monster suit is pretty incredible. Sadly, a sequel is teased that we never got, and I'm kinda bummed
Overall, this was a fun little 1950's esque scifi B movie. I kinda wish Kaiju Caveman had shown up in the Godzilla series proper. That would have been a hoot. The movie takes itself like 100% seriously though, which the "normal dude fighting a rubber suit monster" visuals kinda just don't handle it too well.
Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (1966) - Had to watch this dubbed, but apparently the english cut isn't TOO far off from the Japanese one this time, so that's not bad. This is one of the few godzilla films I had seen before and remembered in any detail. (Though I somehow didn't remember that Mothra is actually in this film!). The setup for this film is weird, while the rest of it plays out fairly straight. Basically this guy's brother goes missing at sea, but a psychic says he's absolutely alive, so he goes to a dance marathon to try to win a boat (3 days after the marathon already started) he winds up talking to two guys who just recently had to tap out, who are like "Boats? we know where there's lots of boats!" and take him to marina where they break into a yacht to look at it, only to find it's occupied by a dude with a gun. The dude is pretty cool though, and let's them sleep overnight. Only when everyone wakes up it's revealed the brother, who is the only one who knows how to operate a boat, took them out to sea while they were asleep to go look for their brother. Additionally, the gun the guy had turned out to be an easily breakable toy and the dude is probably a bank robber who was hiding out on a boat.
Then they get attacked by a giant lobster monster and wind up on an island with a terrorist organization making nukes, and that's basically the setup. I think the protagonists are pretty enjoyable in this film, but the villains are pretty shit. You never get an explanation as to who these guys are (In the Japanese version they're known as "Red Bamboo" but that's it.) or what they want beyond vague terrorist stuff, or how they have access to all these resources. They apparently never even show up again, either. Eventually the protagonists (Aided by an escaped slave, whom are all from Infant Island i.e. Mothra's people) discover King Kong Godzilla is sleeping on the island and use lightning to wake him up, at which point he rampages, destroys the base, and fights some giant monsters.
The human drama is passable, as are the giant monster fights, but mostly this movie is pretty forgettable. Except for the self destruct mechanism for the base. It's this big column with a turnable switch at the end of it and it has a two hour timer... and apparently as the timer goes down, the column lowers, which would be an incredibly pointless feature unless a bunch of rubble lands on the console making it so you have to reach your hand around girders and shit to reach the button, so every time you get close, it conveniently escapes your grasp. I think you can guess what happens.
War of the Gargantua's (1966) - I think the subtitling on this one tripped me up. Basic gist is that two monsters have spawned from pieces of the Frankenstein's monster and turned into a brown mountain dwelling bigfoot kaiju man and a green sea dwelling bigfoot kaijuman. The subtitling implies the brown one is in fact the Frankenstein monster from the first film, and shows flashbacks to the scientists (at the Frankenstein Research Center, naturally) observing and and interacting with a hairy bigfoot child, which is not how he appeared in the first movie, but I guess the subtitling is wrong and neither of them are the original. Anywho, the green garguantau shows up and starts killing and eating people and everyone thinks it's the one the Frankenstein institute had studied before he escaped, but the scientists insist that behavior isn't consistent with the one they studied. The military actually manages to beat the shit out of the green one (First appearence of the MASER tanks, apparently) but then the brown one shows up and saves his brother. The happy reunion doesn't last long, as the brown one soon discovers his brother likes eating people and they basically beat the shit out of each other for the rest of the movie. Again the scientists want to protect the good one and the military just wants them both dead, nothing new there.
The ending of this movie comes straight out of left field and is truly bizarre.
Looks like next up on the docket is Son of Godzilla. Oh boy!
When I was just a wee little kid I had that on VHS. I probably watched that movie a hundred times. Tape got destroyed when our basement flooded years ago.
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You can rent it on Amazon
Well hot damn
and he is an ultra man
It should be 'Godzilla, and other, less important, kaiju' or something.
no, money down!
https://www.amazon.com/Myself-Other-Less-Important-Subjects/dp/0691135312
Godzilla. And. Other. Less. Important. Kaiju.
GAOLIK
edit: aaaaaaah this show's going places
I see you also read the critical reception section of the Wikipedia article
Showa or Heisei
Son of Godzilla (1967) - So going into this I figured the tone would have started skewing towards a younger audience (as I knew was eventually coming) but the tone of this movie is all over the map. Sometimes it's dead serious with nary an ouch of irony; other times it's an incredibly silly cartoon. Even the music has this weird dichotomy. The movie takes place on an island with a research facility and initially I went "Oh awesome! They must be studying the monsters! They're finally taking a proactive move against them instead of just waiting for the next attack." but nope, it's for an unrelated weather control experiment and it just so happens to be the island with horse sized praying mantis', a colossal spider, and a mountain with a baby godzilla buried in it! What terrible luck. It's probably passe to say this, but I'm super not into Manilla's design. It doesn't even look like the same species as Godzilla. (Also the high pitched gargling noise it makes confused the shit out of me for a good chunk of the movie. I thought there was a cat outside.)
Kumonga (the giant spider) was pretty cool, and actually moved pretty well given what I'm assuming would have been a pain in the ass to puppet. Though I'm not sure why it makes the same noise as the giant praying mantis's. Also, where in god(zilla)'s name did this egg come from? They clearly refer to Godzilla as the "Father' so where's the female godzilla.
....wait, what if the 1954 Godzilla was the female?
King Kong Escapes (1967) - Had to do the english dub, but apparently it's spot on with the japanese movie, so that's rad. I was kinda disappointed this wasn't canon with King Kong vs Godzilla, but I guess the scale would be an issue. I love old movies like these where you can just have the animal completely understand English (or Japanese, as the dub may be) and nobody questions it. Also, super weird that this movie has Dr. Who as a villain.
It's weird that this scientist dude managed to design a correctly scaled robo-kong when Kong was just a theory at the time that nobody had proof existed. I liked that the ending was
Anywho, not much else to say about this one. I though it was over-all okay.
Destroy All Monsters (1968) - I was super looking forward to this one, but I think Ghidorah the Three headed Monster was a much better attempt at this. Also, I can't believe they did a SECOND "mysterious planet in-between Mars and Jupiter) with aliens that want to mind control Earth's monsters." Love that Earth finally figured out how to wrangle all the monsters and stick them in a contained ecosystem. (Though WTF is Mothra there? She has her own island she peacefully lives on. Also Mothra's a caterpillar again, 30 years into the future. Mohtra has the most ridiculous life-cycle for a giant monster.
It's super weird seeing Baragon, Gorosaurus and especially Varan in this film. Also, god damn
One thing I been loving in these films, that's been pretty consistent throughout, is that Godzilla's favorite form of attack appears to just be kicking rocks at things. Atomic Breath, Claws? Forget that shit, I'm gonna kick rocks at 'em! This movie was above average, but I think it lacks a bit of charm.
Anywho, on to the next film! All Monsters Attack!
With a name like that, it's got to be on the scale of Destroy all Monsters, right!
(god help me)
A. The agreement between Toho and Legendary/WB precludes there being multiple live action movies in development at the same time (Which is why there aren't any Toho films on the docket)
2. The deal apparently ends in 2020
Anyone know if these are accurate or are they just fansite rumors?
I assume off-camera Mothra keeps having to use up her life force solving Giant Monster problems. She's the most put-upon group mom of all time