Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (1966) directed by Jun Fukuda

Also called Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster, this is an odd Godzilla movie in that the human part f the plot isn't so boring or beside the point. Godzilla only appears at the end and Mothra appears after Godzilla. Ebirah is a giant lobster who only shows u now and then, killing anyone who tries to leave the island run by an evil terrorist organization called the Red bamboo.  There is also a giant condor that comes out of nowhere and doesn't last long. The Mpthra worshipping native of a nearby island are slaves fo teh red Bamboo who have them making a yelloe substance that can stop Ebirah from attacking boats so the terroists cane come and go as they please. 

OK the human story is not exactly plausible but the characters are fun and interesting enough to keep you interested. The effects are not gratifying, some of the model work is super but the lack of realism has a certain charm. Some shots of the tiny singers who call Mothra are just dolls and on some of the boat senes, the ment rowing or dolls or even articulate puppets. It's super obvious and, like I said, charming. 

The bad guys are killed by Ebirah while making their escape but they have set an atomic bomb to destroy the island before they fled and our heros become concerned that it will killed Godzilla who saved them. Why? Godzilla is usally living off nuclear energy and jumping into the water wouldn't save him so close to the explosion if it was a danger to him. Don't watch a Godzilla movie, aside form the forst Godzilla minus 1 if you are looking to make sense of it! 

Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001) directed and co-written by Shusuke Kaneko

Poor Baragon doesn't get a mention in the overly long title! Maybe he had his name removed after seeing the finished film? The film isn't that bad to be honest though Baragon does next to nothing except get killed and Mothra is pretty much in the same boat which leave the real battle between Ghidorah and Godzilla.

Supposedly taking place after the original 1954 film and ignoring everything that came after it, Godzilla has returned and a reporter, her military dad and a bunch of other people including the ghost of some old guy awaken three other monsters as guardians to protect the world. There seems to be a "spiritual" to some of these later Godzilla films, Biolante had the spirit of a girl murdered by terrorists in it and Godzilla has the souls from the war in this film. The spirits of Baragon and Mothra join with the spirit of Ghidorah to fight Godzilla. It's doesn't work in either film if you ask me. 

The effects in this film are a mixed bag. Godzilla is very mean looking with white eyes with no pupils and a lot more puppetry added to the face for more expression. The other monsters have none of that and Ghidorah has an underwhelming toy like design. Mothra is... fine. She starts in a pupil state which last all of 5 minutes before entering her cocoon which looks a sack of balls floating in a lake. There is an attempt to add CGI throughout but it doesn't work for the most part. The model work and destruction effects are the usual high quality, Toho Studios always hire talented model makers. 

Another thing to mention is the lead character, a female reporter who as just as idiotic... I mean heroic as male heroes are. I mean she chases GODZILLA on a bike to film it's rampage while her assistant turned love interest by the end of the film helps her but never takes her role as the hero away.

So dumb as it is the human characters are better than in most giant monster movies and it does move along and kept me entertained. 

Godzilla VS Biolante (1989) directed and written by Kazuki Ōmori

 

I recently caught this on a cable network just as it was starting and decided to watch. I swore I had not seen it but I think I did. I did remember it being one of the later Godzilla films people thought were good and above the earlier sillier films from the 70s but... I have to disagree. 

The film has some interesting elements, like the giant plant monster is at first OK except for the giant flower on top which makes it a bit silly but it transforms into a pretty awesome looking creature at the end. It doesn't move all the well I thought but it was pretty complicated and I give credit where it's due. 

The story which got such praise was simply ridiculous, complicated and with the same characters we have seen in other lesser Godzilla films. People we really couldn't care less about other what their stories are. There is an international spy thriller part that just made me laugh out loud and a "touching" story about a scientist father who loses his daughter in a terrorist attack and does what any loving father would do. He takes her DNA and misses it with a plant and Godzilla cells and turns her into a giant plant monster. For some reason she is conscious in the creature for a bout 5 minutes then she seems to fade away, probably so  no one will root for the plant monster over Godzilla during the fights. At the end her face appears in the sparkly remains of the monster and flies into space where the particles reform into a giant flower in orbit. 

The crazy earlier films from the 60s and 70s had a charm this one was missing as it tried to be a lot more than it was. 

TV series: Monarch - legacy of Monsters

 

Evidently I have been n a Japanese monster kick lately. We had a chance to watch the Legendary TV series Monarch - Legacy of monsters recently. Legendary is the studio making the new American Godzilla and King Kong movies which have been getting worse with each one. I have to say the Series was much more interesting and better put together. There are damn few monsters but much more interesting characters and situations and mysteries to get you involved. 

A young  San Franciscan woman goes to her father's in Tokyo and discovers he  has another family there. She meets her new brother and the two go on hunt to find their father with the brother's ex girlfriend and get caught up in the history and intrigue of Monarch, the organization that is trying to control the giant monsters appearing over the earth since Godzilla attacked in 2014. The series at the same time follows the beginning of the organization by following the scientists and military man who founded it. 

I won't spoil much but everyone seems to be related and no one is to be trusted. It moves along and throws in enough monsters to remind you they are still there and it has Kurt Russel and his son playing the same character in different time periods. Like most of these mystery mongering plots, it takes awhile to find anything out but it's not boring. I will say the last 2 episodes basically cover everything in the first 8 and you could watch those two and be pretty much up to date and not have missed too much. It, of course ends on cliffhanger and I will watch if a second series comes around. I liked everyone in it more than anyone is any of the films and while not earth shattering, it did leave me curious for what happens next. 

Godzilla Minus 1 (2023) directed by Takashi Yamazaki

 

I will admit that after seeing trailers for this film, I was excited. It looked AMAZING and the setting, post WWII Japan was intriguing since Godzilla was not supposed to appear until the 50s when the first film was released. 

This is, in many ways, a return to the tone of the original Japanese film although I was glad to see it was not as big a downer as I anticipated. It's no laugh riot, but in a film about lost hope, lost honour and loss of everything, it had its uplifting moments. I was not sure what the title meant but (thanks to my friend George) it was cleared up for me. Japan is literally starting at the lowest point in its history... zero at the film begins and then it manages to drop even lower, to minus 1 when Godzilla arrives and makes things even worse. 

The leads are a Kamikaze pilot who is dishonoured by living through the war, a homeless woman who has found and decided to take care of a baby which makes her also dishonourable in may people's eyes who assume she is a prostitute and how they eventually come together as a family of misfits trying to figure who they are after the devastating war. In my assessment, Godzilla is the representation of that devastation and loss after the war as he comes in keeping anything from being rebuilt and no one can move on while he is proving how small and weak humanity is compared the the terrors the have released on themselves like the bomb, the war and of course Godzilla itself. 

Despite the heavy subject matter, this movie is still, at is roots, a giant monster movie. The integrate the original Godzilla theme music, come up with ridiculous ways to destroy the menace, destruction is everywhere and it even manages to reference previous films without being too "canon driven". There are extremely sad parts and the willingness to talk about the how the Japanese government put very little value on human life while fighting the war was refreshing. The Americans are not shown as being all that much better in the end. It's a rare kaju film where the human characters are not just front and centre but the  driving force of the plot. It really works. There is real drama in here without Godzilla having to show up at all, but boy does he ever show up. Massive and looking better than I have ever seen despite a low 15 million budget as opposed to the American Godzilla films which I believe average 200-300 million each and are not nearly as interesting to watch. He is massive, scary and his look references not just past versions but mythological dragons. It is an unstoppable force of nature brought to life by atomic bomb tests and is now asserting its dominance over us. It is treated as a real living creature and as our punishment for being into being in the first place. 

Of course no movie is perfect. I would say 20 minutes could be cut not because it drags but because I think a quicker pace would make it even more exciting to watch. I also found the end a little too Hollywood for me which robbed it of some of it's most powerful scenes of loss. There is also a very clear leading into a next film, which I will see 100% but I don't think we needed it. 

Godzilla VS. Kong (2021) directed by Adam Wingard

I thought the first Legendary Godzilla movie had a ton of flaws like killing the one engaging character 20 minutes in and showing most of the monster fight scenes on TV screens instead of giving us clear shots of the action but it wasn't unwatchable and the effects and cinematography was pretty good. The second gave us even less characters to get involved with but did have a ton of posters, including an awesome King Ghidorah with a fight between him and Godzilla in Boston's (my home town) Fenway Park which was enough to keep my attention for a goofy movie about giant monsters. Godzilla VS Kong continues the trend of making the humans not just uninteresting but somehow makes them so dull you feel like that might be sapping your own personality out you since nature abhors a void. 

To try and find a positive... it's colourful. That's it. The monsters fight for no good reason they story isn't one and every element seems to have been pulled out of hat and just inserted randomly. It manages to make less sense than any of the early Toho monster movies and introduces conspiracy theories like the hollow earth and fluoride in tap water! WTF? The characters are so dumb and unappealing cardboard cutups that there is suspense, not way to care about is going on even if you could decipher a plot line form this mess. You can't even figure which characters are where on the earth. There is no sense of time as they seem to go form the USA the Hong Kong without having to book a flight, pack or get a hotel room in more seconds. There is no sense of scale either. The giant monsters could be any size, they have no real sense of weight or how huge they are. There are not consequences you would care about to anyone or anything in the entire film. It just happens and they mix dull over tropes with confusing and incredibly dumb but not fun elements.  then the put in Mechagodzilla for 10 minutes.

No one wins this battle of the titans. We all lose. 

Godzilla poster

 

One of a series (most likely) of giant monster posters. I went through the film to find good references and drew the King go the Monsters as he appeared in the original film. These will not be as clean and start at my Star Wars poster series but not too far off from that. I like to keep it simple. 

Godzilla Raids Again (1955) directed by Motoyoshi Oda

This is the second Godzilla film, coming only months after the first was released and it already gave us a signal of what was to come next for series in the next decades. While the first was a moody, political tale of the atom bomb, this one goes in the simple "giant monsters fighting"  direction pretty much immediately.

A plane is down on an isolated island and the pilot's best friend has flown there to save him. They immediately run into Godzilla, who has inexplicably survived dying in the first film, fighting Anguirus who resembles a porcupine/dinosaur hybrid. They fall into the ocean and soon are taking their personal issues to the coast of Japan. At first Godzilla arrives and is lead away from the sure by "light bombs" but that plan falls short when escaped convicts crash a truck into some sort of oil refinery causing a much bigger sours of attention for Godzilla to latch onto. Anguirus arrives and they go on a rampage, destroying everything in their paths.

There is a love story of sorts where the bridegroom gets killed trying to stop Godzilla and a big company relocates as a result of the monster damage so we get to hear about that... but who cares about the human parts? Unlike the first outing where human interactions actually meant something, this movie created the path all others would follow... threadbare human story to pad out the master battles. And there are plenty of monster bottles in this one! Known for "man in a monster suit" effects this film seems to have its share of that mixed with equal amounts of hand puppets. I would not say it is ineffective, however. The effects overall are pretty good for such a quickly produced, low budget production.

In the end Anguirus is defeated and kill by the king of the monsters and the king himself is buried in a mountain of ice. Never to return again, Well until 1962 when Godzilla VS King Kong came out.

I had to confess this was the first time I saw this film. I grew up seeing the Godzilla series at the local Everett Park theatre just outside of Boston and on TV when we got a TV in the side 70s but I somehow missed this gem. I think the local movie house limited itself to colour films and this is black and white and this might have somehow fallen through the cracks in the TV creature double feature distribution deal.

If you like Godzilla films... you'll love this one. It is not to be taken seriously but it's a lot of fun and doesn't disappoint for monster on monster action.

Godzilla VS. The Smog Monster 1971 directed by Yoshimitsu Banno

This film’s actual title is Godzilla vs. Hedorah and is maybe one of the campiest films in the series. There was a planned sequel but the series producer had the film so much those ideas were scrapped. still, in the hearts of many people, this film has a warm place in their hearts - including mine. 

The story is meant to be a warning to humanity of the danger of pollution, which spawns a giant monster that evolves quickly from turd tadpole to flying turd that seems to fart killer gases that kills hundreds. Finally it becomes a walking creature about the same size of Godzilla so they can fight man to man so to speak. The military creates of wall of giant electrodes to dry out the stinky giant piece of crap but it gets damaged during the monsters battle and Godzilla must activate it with his atomic breath. Hedorah has one more trick up it’s sleeve(?) and another version flies out of the remnants of the last forcing Godzilla to fly after it using his breath as propulsion. He catches it, using the electrons again and pulls out what we assume as eggs and drys them out too before leaving humanity behind - giving us a dirty look on his way out the door. Godzilla wants us to know this was a problem of our own making. 

The film starts with an AWESOME go-go dancer singing the theme song and is filled with all sorts of 70s kitsch. As a kid seeing this at the movies I wanted the toys the young boy is playing with at the beginning. I still do. The message of the film though clunky is still unfortunately relevant. More relevant in fact as we have done pretty much nothing to solve the problem of pollution. 

Production for the movie was pretty low end. 35 days to shoot it and a budget of only 250,000$. To top it off the guy in the Smog Monster suit had a ruptured appendix and had to be operated while still in the suit! 

If you want to see my Dramatic readings animations of the theme song, and why wouldn't you, click below!
Dramatic Reading:Save the Earth

Dramatic Readings: Save the Earth!

Another one! This is based on the theme to Godzilla VS the Smog Monster because - why not? Oddly the message, such as it is, is still relevant today... more so even. Plus it's totally weird, 60's and silly.

Thanks as always to Mike Luce for the voice work!

Shin Godzilla 2016 Directed by Hideaki Anno & Shinji Higuchi

Shin Godzilla (Godzilla: Resurgence) marks a new beginning for the Toho studios Godzilla films. While it is the 31st in the series it re0imagines the creature’s origins - basing them more on the Fukushima disaster rather than the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan in WWII. 

The results are mixed. 

Overall, this is your typical Japanese monster flick in style and substance and would not have been out of place on a Saturday morning’s Creature Double Feature TV show. There is a lot of filler exposition with government officials debating and running around trying to decide what to do about the giant monster attacking Tokyo. Two hours is little long for this sort of thing, but it’s a fun film to watch and the special effects are far above some of those earlier efforts in the 60s and 70s we all remember so fondly, and even better than more recent efforts as the mix of monster suits, CGI and puppets gets more sophisticated. 

Visually, Godzilla is huge and the redesign is interesting… but doesn’t always work. In this film it evolves quickly from a sea creature to the two legged creature we all know (more or less) but some of the earlier versions are a bit weird looking. The eyes are on the line between creepy and cartoon-like. The fully formed monster is a mess, mostly in a good way. It looks like a rotting corpse and that may be intentional. The atomic breath is well done and gets a slight laser beam upgrade at one point as well. 

The plot is where this, and many other movies like it, falls apart. It’s fun to watch but really makes very little logical sense. Godzilla is attacked repeatedly by missiles and bombs - which actually do have some effect - and is eventually crushed by knocking buildings over on top of him (her? Who knows?). They use the time he is on the ground to pump fluid into his mouth that will « freeze him »  when he uses his atomic breath and it works. The freezing solution is better than the military one which was to basically destroy Japan with atomic bombs so I guess considering the alternative, a giant decomposing monster in the middle of the city is the better choice. 

The film ends with a shot of Godzilla’s (comically long - seriously - it’s incredibly long) tail frozen while in the process of bursting open and revealing some sort of human-like creatures emerging from it. Creepy, effective looking but confusing and dumb - why on earth would that be happening? We know the monster is continually evolving according to the plot but that just comes out of nowhere. 

Watch it? Sure, if you like traditional Japanese monster flicks (and I do) this fits that need nicely. 

Godzilla 1956 and 2014

The new Godzilla film has arrived with years of speculation, promises and history behind it. It was touted as a return to the original Godzilla format not the 60s and 70s children oriented films. So as with most reboots these days, we were to expect a grittier more serious, adult oriented presentation. 

In some ways we got what was promised. The giant creature itself is pretty awesome to see and ginormous even by city crushing monster standards. Visually there isn’t much to gripe about in this film. But how does it compare to the original version?

The 1956 film Gojira (not the re-edited American version with Raymond Burr) is a classic and for good reason. If you have never seen it, do so now. Made a mere 10 years after the nuclear attack on Japan, it states in no uncertain terms the horror of nuclear warfare. There are several integrated stories which come together with the touching suicide of the scientist who has developed a weapon to kill the giant monster so this new deadlier technology will not be used again. The Godzilla is this film is a walking H-bomb of sorts and some of the scenes of destruction are reproductions of real city neighbourhoods post nuclear blast. 

The new film downplays any human responsibility for the creature.. it is now a giant predator from another time that lived on radiation somehow and all those American nuclear tests were cover ups trying to kill it. (Critics point out that Russians and others were also doing tests at the same time, but I have feeling this plot weakness could be used to say they were fighting their own monsters which can now appear in sequels). The film follows one family, the father who has lost his wife in a mysterious power plant disaster and his son’s family who years later think grandpa is a little nuts. Sadly, while grandpa’s story is the compelling one and cut short, the son’s family is dull as dish water. This film suffers from the same boring human elements that occurred through most of the Godzilla sequels over the years. It is in many ways structured like almost any one of the 30 or so of them, not the classic original. 

In both films the behemoth remains somewhat of a mystery until well into the film. The difference is, in the Japanese movie he (or she - who knows?) is truly scary, a force of nature. The new film could have built the full reveal in a way where the audience was terrified to see it towering over the city but doesn’t. Visually the elements are all there but because the dialog and characters are so stock and weak, and because no one seems all that afraid of giant city size monsters in this film… we can’t be either. In a lot of areas this movie plays like a sequel to a film they never made. Too many things are assumed. 

There is no getting around how incredible special effects are in 2014 compared to 1956, no one can fault this present version for bad effects. Some budget cutting measures were noticeable however. When giant monsters fight, more times than not we only see it on a television set somewhere and the new creatures Godzilla is « hunting » are not very detailed and seem deliberately made to render faster and easier. They don’t seem to be from the same world as the big guy. The storyline is another problem. No one is going to a film like this without expecting to suspend their disbelief to a massive extent but even in the film’s context it’s hard to believe that anyone would hide the egg of an enormous destructive creature that feeds off radiation in a nuclear waste dump. What bad could possible come of that? 

Is the new film worth seeing? Yes, despite it all. The end battle is worth the price of admission alone and Godzilla is very impressive visually. I saw it in Imax 3D and while I like Imax, 3D as usual adds nothing to the movie. See it on a regular screen and avoid the 20$ + I paid for a ticket and you’ll be fine.