The Lost Godzilla/GIJoe Crossover (Sorta)

Then there was the time that the old Godzilla Power Hour cartoon featured a cameo from the G.I. Joe villain organization Cobra before Cobra existed.

I'd call time travel shenanigans, but it's probably a coincidence, even with the fact that there's some surprising costume design similarities going on here.

-Signing off.

Latest Godzilla Trailer Hits

...This is the objectively best Godzilla trailer I've ever seen, and tied for best kaiju movie trailer I've ever seen with every Pacific Rim trailer.



Also, that thing with the tail sweeping overhead at the beginning? Awesome.

-Signing off.

[Random Title]

[Random description of a video embed.]



[Reason I like the video that may not be obvious.]

-Signing off.

Impressive Moviemaking

(Fair warning: The clip I've embedded today has a ton of links in the annotations, so if that sort of thing annoys you (I know it bugs me), you might want to stop the video at 2:10 or turn the annotations off. Also, as is not uncommonly the case, I never bothered listening to this video*, so I don't really know what it sounds like.)

I still haven't seen the 2014 Godzilla movie (this sort of delay in watching stuff happens from time to time), but I did learn something interesting about the director's previous movie recently.

See this?



The film that clip comes from had a budget of $500,000 (and stayed "way under" it), all the special effects were done by one person on his home computer, and didn't have a script.

And that one clip tells me that the movie is pretty decent, at least on the visual effects front**.

*I had good reasons, the most important of which was "didn't feel like it." ...Don't tell me that's not a good reason, there are lots of things for which that is an incredibly sufficient reason not to do them.

**From what I've read, the story has significant elements in common with one of my all-time favorite films (you can tell I really love something when I call it a "film" because normally I think that's a super-pretentious word used by pretentious jerks being pretentious), Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind***. If I ever spotted a DVD of this thing, I'd probably get it.

***For one thing, while there's a strong (and admittedly heavy-handed and occasionally nonsensical) environmentalist message in Nausicaa, I've always taken away that the "real" moral of the story is that strange/alien is not bad, just different. This story seems to have a similar message, if what I've read and this particular clip are anything to go by.

-Signing off.

The Video Is What It Says But Not What You Expect

I don't even know.



Well yes, as is often the case when I say that, I do know. Somebody took a lot of pre-1980 Godzilla footage and spliced it together with the '90s-era footage of Space Godzilla for some unfathomable reason. (Unfathomable because the poster doesn't seem to have left any comments explaining the reason for the video's existence. It's just there.)

-Signing off.

SO MANY MONSTERS

And the winner of the monster brawl on my blog: In an amazing come-from behind victory, classic horror movies!*

At least, if we're going by the strength of the releases; today I found that the same company (the fantastic Mill Creek Entertainment) that did the Gamera eleven-movie release and the Godzilla: The Series release also released fifty old movies in a collection with a lower price tag as that Gamera release. (And bought that instantly, even if many of the releases are clearly available basically everywhere on the Internet, because sometimes putting a DVD in is part of the experience and seriously that's like five and a half movies per dollar and I don't have to hunt them down and put them in my already bloated favorites.)

Now, lots of it's probably forgotten old schlock, of course. (The most disappointing of them has to be Black Dragons, which summons a mental image involving a lot of flying, firebreathing things, but is actually a fantastical WWII-era spy thriller where the titular "dragons" are Japanese spies. What.)

But it's also the 1920s-era Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Metropolis, Nosferatu (which my sister watched in German once and adores), The Phantom of the Opera, Night of the Living Dead, the 1960 Little Shop of Horrors, and a frickton of late-'50s-early-'60s era stuff with evocative titles like The Giant Gila Monster, The Killer Shrews, Attack of the Giant Leeches, and Atom Age Vampire. (All of those seem to be about more or less exactly what one would think from the titles, although one can't help but be disappointed by the fact that Atom Age Vampire seems to be about someone being turned into a vampire by atomic medicine rather than a Dracula-inspired vampire in a Buck Rogers-esque rocketpunk setting.)

Ironically considering the context, the collection also includes the kaiju movie Monster from a Prehistoric Planet, which has an incredibly misleading title. (It just means the monster came from prehistoric Earth, not from some other planet. I get it, but I think it's silly.) This is actually the only one of these films I've managed to see before (I've had a couple of old VHS tapes with The Giant Gila Monster and Metropolis before, but was scared to try to use them with the succession of carnivorous VCRs I'd had access to for the same time period), on some late-night low-rent Mystery Science Theater 3000-style production, and I have to say it appeared to have about the same budget as an equivalent length of average Ultraman episodes (the original series, that is). Frankly, the monsters (yes, plural) were hilarious, being giant flying horned men in rubber suits dino-dragons that fired laser beams from their mouths, if I recall correctly.

*Apropos of nothing or everything, depending on one's opinion, the crowd-designed game series Colossal Kaiju Combat! actually has a daikaiju in it called Nightstone Manor that is loosely inspired by the underrated (by which I mean "I know it's pretty good even though I've only seen a bit of it") animated movie Monster House, and which is a magical creation of the CKC! world's non-giant monsters intended to beat the crap out of all the giant monsters who are distracting humanity from being afraid of non-giant monsters.

That is fantastic.

-Signing off.

Go! Fake Ultraman (TIMES THREE!)

Even when you've learned a lot about a subject, there's always something new to find out, especially with something as marginal in one's own country as tokusatsu is in the US. (There was an American quasi-tokusatsu show called Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills? And it's had a DVD release? ...There's a thing I kind of need now.)

Like, I already knew that Toho had taken a shot at making a character in imitation of Ultraman, Zone Fighter, who is notable for 1) being much more brutal than most of the Ultras (I have an old blog post where I comment on this, but the embedded video is long gone and a bit critical to my commentary-but most of it had to do with decapitations, dismemberment, and/or extended application of rapid-fire projectile weaponry, so you can sort of guess at it), and 2) having Godzilla and King Ghidorah guest star here and there.

But I'd never heard of Assault! Hyuman*, Go! Godman, or Go! Greenman.

These shows are even more obscure than Zone Fighter, and, for that matter, much more obscure than Zone Fighter, because while I've known at least a little about Zone Fighter for a decade or so, I first heard of these three while wikiwalking last week, and I'd rather thought I'd heard of most of the "kyodai (giant) heroes."

There's not much to be found on YouTube for the obligatory embed; two of the series have exactly nothing. Go! Greenman does have an intro sequence available, at least, so there's that.



And while I can sort of see why the Godzilla wiki presented the statement that Godman resembles Ultraman more (presumably because of his color scheme), I look at Greenman and see Ultraman wearing a costume to avoid a lawsuit.



From what I've read, it's also amusing to note that Go! Greenman was a show featuring an Ultra-like warrior fighting super sentai/Power Rangers-style villains, with mooks and growing monsters of the week. Japan doesn't mix and match its different henshin hero subgenres enough.

*Assault! Human had the interesting quirk of its Ultra-like protagonists being called "humans" in English. Who knows what's up with that.

-Signing off.

The Ten Best Kaiju From Godzilla: The Series

In honor of the great cartoon tie-in to that Godzilla movie that everybody hates finally having a good DVD release (which I found well after it was originally released, because the local Wal-Mart is awful), here's a list talking about some personal favorite monsters.

(Honestly, it's not really a list of the very best or even my very favorite, but a list of ones I consider more notable and worth paying attention to. I left out a few I really like, honestly, like the so-called Thorny Devil, Norzzug the living statue, the Fire Monster, the giant frog/plant hybrid thing that thought it was Swamp Thing, and the giant scorpions.)

Each is listed with its debut episode's title here for your convenience. (Unfortunately, the Godzilla wiki isn't very good about this series, and all the episodes are currently redlinks there.)

10. The Crackler, What Dreams May Come. Okay, honestly this is a little bit of a concession to personal taste.

See, the Crackler barely qualifies as an actual monster, because it's actually a manifestation of the amplified brain waves of an insomnia patient. Calling this thing a monster is like calling a bolt of lightning an animal. And it's made of electricity, somehow, so it's a surprisingly apt comparison. And even by the admittedly often tenuous science of the series, this doesn't really make any sense.

But it has a wonderfully alien design, and I adore it.

9. Crustaceous Rex, New Family: Part 2. Crustaceous Rex kind of had to make this list, being the first proper enemy kaiju to be introduced in the series, and a bit of an icon for it as well, appearing in a number of episodes other than his debut (despite being fairly unambiguously killed by Godzilla).

Unlike a lot of the monsters from the series, there was no real explanation of just what the flip it's supposed to be, because it's definitely in no way a crustacean or anything like one. Instead, it's some vaguely unidentifiable Barlownian beasty that pretty much is entirely alien (a lot like the Crackler, really).

It also eats tar that somehow magically parasitizes other animals and at one point pukes some in Godzilla's face.

C-Rex isn't a particularly formidable monster, honestly, but it's a charming one.

8. Ice borers, Freeze. Okay, these guys weren't originally going to be anywhere near this list, because they're honestly kind of silly little things and not that impressive design-wise. But then I read that they're probably based on an April Fool's gag about naked mole rats burrowing through ice with their super-hot foreheads, and I figured they deserve a spot for that.

Otherwise, they're just big moles living in the Arctic.

7. Sub-Zero Manta, Wedding Bells Blew. Something that's actually a teense lacking in Godzilla: The Series is kaiju with iconic profiles. A lot of them are just huge animals or incredibly weird things, and don't quite have the same punch.

And then there's this thing, a completely inexplicable thing that resembles a giant manta ray that flies, only breathes air, has an icy breath weapon, and repeatedly attacks buildings with good air conditioning because it's trying to find a place to hibernate.

Easily my favorite part of this particular monster was that when it got into an inevitable breath weapon war with Godzilla, it was as if the two monsters were clashing weather fronts and started causing severe storm weather to manifest.

6. The Shrewster, The Twister. And then there's the gigantic rodent created by nuclear power/wind power experiments (seriously) that merged with and controlled a tornado.

I love the Shrewster for no reason beyond the fact that it's a giant animal that's merged with a weather pattern. That is golden.

(There's also the fact that its incredibly high metabolism is a loosely implied explanation for how a tornado can be sustained for weeks, which actually makes a minute amount of sense.)

5. Bacillus, What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been. It's kind of funny that there's a monster that's supposed to be just a big old bacterium.

It doesn't make any sense, and it's honestly part of one of the sillier episodes (one of those "journey through a living body" plots that honestly aren't very good), but I really like its design.

4. Quetzalcoatl, Bird of Paradise. Sometimes your giant monster cartoon just needs a giant ugly firebreathing birdosaur.

While it looks surprisingly like a hoatzin, which is a neat bit of trivia (hoatzins are South American birds and the only living member of a big family of birds, and the only birds alive today which at any point in their life cycles have true claws on their wings), it's vaguely implied that "Q" may simply be a big, weird holdover from prehistoric times rather than a mutant like most of the other monsters of the series.

3. El Gusano Gigante ("the giant worm"), D.O.A.. El Gusano, as he's often known for short, is one of the more massive monsters from Godzilla: The Series, at least by bulk, and that gives him a lot of presence; he's one of the more iconic monsters from the series, and like C-Rex appears in several episodes.

While he has some superficial resemblance to both whales and armored dinosaurs, looking at his anatomy he's almost certainly some kind of weird Onychophoran, that is, an offshoot of velvet worm.

Also like C-Rex, his primary role in the series is getting stomped on by other kaiju, because despite his size he's a pushover, though he definitely lived through his run-in with Godzilla. (The only reason he was a serious threat to Godzilla is because he was immune to the toxin that the local government tried to kill both monsters with, and even got a little more impressive because it was a concentrated form of stuff he ate.)

2. The Techno-Sentient, Juggernaut. The Techno-Sentient is both one of the most inexplicable* and one of the most terrifying monsters to appear in the series.

First off, it was able to absorb technology into its body almost completely at will, to the point where missiles that hit it didn't detonate because it had already subverted them; this made it only a little shy of indestructible.

Second, while it was pretty alien, it was very intelligent, and figured out from data it had downloaded from the internet how to start a nuclear war, and promptly tried to do so by invading a missile base and launching a missile at Baghdad. (Fortunately, its own plot was its undoing, because it got stuck to the missile and the missile detonated in orbit instead of when it hit its target; that was probably the only way to stop the darned thing.)

It was easily the most threatening and dangerous monster to appear in the series, and there was no explanation of its origins beyond "it fell from space" and no explanation of its motivations beyond "it wants to kill all organic life on Earth."

*Someone on the wiki suggested, and not without reason, that the Techno-Sentient was a creation of the series' aliens, the Tachyons**. While it makes some sense, I have to admit I don't really like the idea, because the Techno-Sentient was much more effective story-wise as something thoroughly inexplicable.

Also, 1) I think they'd have noticed similarities between it and the technology they'd already observed and worked with if it was made by the Tachyons, and 2) it would have spent less time screwing around than it did if it was on a mission it had been sent on; it would have had better intelligence if it had been sent by somebody who'd been to Earth before it.

**I don't really like that name as the name of an alien race, but ah well.

1. Skeetera, S.C.A.L.E.. Skeetera is the sort-of star kaiju of what is easily the best episode of the series. S.C.A.L.E. used an experimental storytelling style by framing the episode as a documentary composed from camera footage, something like what Cloverfield was trying to do but more successful (well, I suppose not that much like Cloverfield, but the point stands), and was a much more interesting narrative to boot. In fact, I'd say it was better than just about every "artsy" movie I've ever seen.

But enough about that; Skeetera is the hands-down best kaiju from Godzilla: The Series because she's perfect.

First, she's the only monster whose name would fit in in the wider Toho canon, even if it's a name that Toho probably would never quite have generated themselves. Compare it to "Mothra," for instance.

Second, she's probably the most iconic monster in the series (GIANT KILLER MOSQUITO), and iconic in a way more akin to the recurring Toho monsters. (I hate to harp on comparing her to Mothra, but she's really got a lot in common with the other female insect kaiju, except she's rather more evil, or at least amoral.) But she still fits in with the series' own feel.

Third, she has a neat power that's derived from her animal inspiration (sucks blood of other kaiju -> gets bigger and gains new powers derived from victims) in an intuitive/magical thinking sort of way. (Which, with Mothra's "poison dust" attacks being derived from the same sort of thinking, is yet another thing she has in common with her.)

Skeetera only showed up in this one episode, but she's so iconic that I was a bit mystified when Matt Frank left her out of his excellent art-based fan series, Godzilla Neo. Out of the things in this series that need more love, Skeetera is definitely the most deserving.

-Signing off.

Godzilla Makes A Comeback

I'd almost given up on the Godzilla vs. Gamera running tally I've been talking about for a while.

Then, without warning:



I finally found Godzilla: The Series. (Actually, my sister spotted it first, if I'm remembering.)

It was the only one on its rack, which begs some questions, but regardless, I'm pretty sure that's an even score on the ol' scoreboard.

This DVD release is wonderful to have, because besides being one of the best pieces of kaiju fiction ever made (it really is), this DVD release includes two episodes that didn't air on television.*

I'm a happy daikaiju fan.

*Network wars of the late '90s/early '00s, you have much to answer for.

-Signing off.

Godzilla Vs Gamera Scorecard Continues

Since I last posted on this subject, I've found an... eclectic three-movie collection, featuring two of the early '90s-era Godzilla movies and one from '01. One of these movies features a confusing time travel plot but is probably supposed to be in continuity with the other one. (It also features this scene.)



The other one is (as per the common rebooting policy of Toho film continuity) only in continuity with the original Godzilla movie, and features Godzilla coming back as a sorta-zombie that apparently wants to avenge the dead of World War II. ...Yes, really.

And one where he fights Mothra. (Well, two, because the ghosty-zombie-whatever one also features him fighting Mothra.)

So, in terms of "releases taking advantage of Godzilla movie," all they'd need is Godzilla: The Series to tie things up at this point. (Pricewise, Gamera's definitely the winner, because we're talking about twelve dollars versus a large number of ten-dollar-plus releases.)

-Signing off.

Godzilla Versus Some Gorilla*

In the interest of full disclosure, I suppose I should say: I don't really like King Kong. (Early evidence for this can be found in this post; you probably won't be able to tell unless you read the picture's title text.)

And when I say "I don't really like King Kong," I actually mean "I almost hate King Kong."

Now, I should clarify, I've never watched any of the King Kong movies (even though the most recent one is sitting in my DVD collection). The only Kong media I've ever watched was a cartoon series called simply Kong, which featured what appeared to be a clone of King Kong going on monster fighting adventures with a group of human sidekicks, one of whom used a magic gadget to merge with him.**

But here's the crux of it: Gorillas are peaceful, gentle animals, and presenting one as any degree of rampaging beast doesn't sit well with me.

Further, Godzilla has always, since I first grasped the concept of giant monsters, been really high on my list of monsters, and knowing that Godzilla lost to King Kong in a fight in a movie made by Godzilla's own studio*** has always infuriated me.

Because not only did King Kong have to be substantially larger than he had been in his own movie(s)...



...they had to invent Godzilla having a weakness to electricity (he generally doesn't have such) and then use lightning to bring King Kong back to life after Godzilla had already killed him, AND have the lightning give King Kong electrical powers.

That is some Grade A++ BS right there.

*Irony in Godzilla fighting a gorilla-based monster: Godzilla's name is probably derived from combining "kujira" ("whale" in Japanese) and "gorira" (how Japanese people pronounce "gorilla"), and early plans for the monster are speculated to have involved a whale/gorilla hybrid creature. Keep in mind they chose what is now a nonstandard transliteration for the "j" and "r" sounds.

**Amazingly, they actually used the magic merger gadget in a couple of clever ways, considering that the show was basically a cut-rate version of Godzilla: The Series, which was a great darned cartoon (that there's supposed to be a full DVD release of and I really frickin' want it darn it). The human sidekick could merge with Kong so that he'd be able to use his martial arts skills to guide the giant gorilla fighting intelligent monsters (which were common in the show because the main villain had the same type of gadget, only his would mutate the giant animal monsters into even more giant human/animal hybrid monsters; the difference was never acknowledged in dialogue); he could also reverse-merge so that they could transport Kong on a small airplane or other form of human transportation. If you're going to have characters use an impossible gadget, you might as well have them use it intelligently, and the show definitely pulled that off.

***There's an urban legend that in the Japanese version of King Kong Versus Godzilla, Godzilla won the fight, which operates under the assumption that Godzilla is more popular than King Kong in his home country. This urban legend is false on account of the assumption being incorrect: The reason Godzilla lost is because he lost the popularity contest with King Kong. Incidentally, I first saw that urban legend in what was intended to be an informative book. An informative book that was at least a little racist, thinking back; it called Toho "the clever Japanese." What.

-Signing off.

Godzilla Vs. Gamera Update

So since I last commented on the subject, Godzilla's stepped up his game a bit: I've been able to find both the 1954 Godzilla...



...and the 1998 Godzilla, which my sister and I have currently dubbed "Unpopular Godzilla."



Gamera's still in the lead, though, because it's hard to top releasing all one's movies but one for about ten bucks. The only way that the turtle could step up that game is paying me to buy the last movie.

On the other hand, there's supposed to be a complete DVD release of Godzilla: The Series, and if I ever find that, Godzilla's score will go way up, because as I've said, that cartoon blew the movie it was tied into out of the water in every respect. (There's even a long-standing rumor that the cartoon's version of Godzilla was given more respect by Toho than the movie's, though there's not a bit of truth to it as far as I can tell.)

-Signing off.

Yet Another Godzilla Clip

Who needs to spend a frickton of money on fancy anti-meteor strike technology? Just point Godzilla at it.



A couple of things that stick out in my mind as hilarious/awesome about this clip: Godzilla setting up to brace with his tail (and inexplicably causing a bunch of tiny explosions), and when Monster X ducks his tail swipe only to get a facefull of atomic breath weapon.

-Signing off.

I Think Gamera Wins

I was kind of hoping to see the Godzilla movie's release be accompanied by some cheapish releases of older Godzilla movies. Seems like using a low-cost back catalog to make some money is a good way to exploit the hype, doesn't it?

And what do I find?



I find the fricking turtle.

Specifically, an eleven-movie DVD set, containing the entirety of Gamera's Showa and Heisei series movies, which has a whole lot of stupid stuff that I'll enjoy anyway and some things that I hear are genuinely awesome, specifically Heisei Gamera.

For about ten bucks.



Your move, Godzilla.



Aside: I cannot even tell you how much I love when Godzilla pratfalls. This is the second time I've seen a clip of Godzilla just straight up tripping like a big old klutz (the other place I've seen it is in Godzilla Versus Mothra, wherein he trips on some old castle-y building), and every time, it fills me with joy that Godzilla is immune to everything that humanity can throw at him except that which unexpectedly trips him (and mostly just gets him riled up).

-Signing off.

Probable Spoilers For Something I Haven't Seen

I think it's kind of hilarious how the trailers for this movie that appear to be US market trailers work really hard to obfuscate the fact that Godzilla is probably the (anti)hero* of the film. (I haven't watched it yet; I'd like to watch it in theaters, but my sister's job isn't particularly easy to work around at the best of times and now is not the best of times and also the nearest theater is a forty-five minute trip and look theatergoing is a pain in the patootie if you don't live in a big city okay?)



Guys, what do you think the main draw of Godzilla movies is? It's not just Godzilla wrecking stuff; that's fun but it gets boring fast. We (and by "we" I mostly mean me, although the daikaiju fandom in general largely agrees with me) want fights.

And (anti)hero Godzilla is generally far more entertaining than villain Godzilla.**

*Well, I don't know for sure, of course, but when a toyline has a monster that doesn't even get to have a real name alongside its star monster, what the heck is anybody supposed to think? I presume this is why sites reporting on toys aggressively tagged spoilers.

**Discounting the first movie, which I sadly haven't seen the unedited version of, and the time Godzilla was actually a psycho rageghost thing.

-Signing off.

Just Get Released Already, You Stupid Movie

Gr, I missed this trailer coming out on Monday.



This movie. I want to watch it right now.

The last time I was this excited for a movie, well, it was last year because Pacific Rim*, but before that I think it was the Star Wars prequels, which were my first real moviegoing experience.**

*Mentioning that movie gives me the opportunity to bust out my increasingly inaccurately named "wait there is no tag for pacific rim what is wrong with me" tag.

**I know the prequels, especially Episode I, are on the receiving end of a lot of flak***, but watching The Phantom Menace in theaters was an incredibly surreal experience that I don't think I'll ever forget. There have been days now and again that I still couldn't believe there were more than three Star Wars movies.

***One criticism I heard recently is that the prequels make the Jedi Order "too perfect." Pardon my French, but what the hell movie trilogy were you watching?! The Jedi Order from the last days of the Old Republic is a corrupt, weak organization that subordinated itself to the government that it wasn't supposed to be the tool of and imploded on itself, and that was before Palpatine seized the reins of power.

-Signing off.

Obligatory Bizarre Unrelated Product Advertisement Post

This is the best Snickers commercial since the ones where Mr. T just straight up starts smashing stuff with military vehicles.



Mostly because this is Godzilla, and he's riding an ATV.

And who wouldn't want to see that?*

*People who are no fun, that's who.

-Signing off.

Obligatory Godzilla Trailer Post

Reason #1 why 2014 should have come earlier than it did:



As I said of Pacific Rim, even if this movie is awful it will be wonderful. (Honestly, I have much the same opinion of that one Godzilla movie everyone hates.)

-Signing off.

Synapses Firing Randomly (#1)

So you know those car commercials where they depict the car evading something ridiculous, like an avalanche or a monster.

And somebody in Japan clearly thought this was a neat idea, and did this with the series Shingeki no Kyojin/Attack on Titan.



And I thought "Eh, cool enough, that's a neat series and the titans make as much sense as anything... [synapses fire randomly] Okay why did I think of this?"



"Sure your SUV is cool guys, but look what this guy did in a West Coaster!"

-Signing off.

Warning: The Tags (and Comment After the Video) Are Spoilers For the Clip

I've watched a few of these "How It Should Have Ended" things, and this one is far and away the best (yes, even better than the one with Darth Vader), or at least the one most suited to my particular tastes:



Sooner or later, there will be an actual Power Vacuum Megazord (I'm pretty sure there isn't one just yet), and I'll look back at this and laugh. (Not that I wasn't going to look back at this and laugh anyway.)

(Also, there was some dope commenting on the video who was wondering why it "took people so long" to chuck nukes in the wormhole. I'm sorry, but that was addressed in the frikkin' movie and you need to work on your listening/comprehension skills. (They did think of it, and it didn't work when they tried it.)

-Signing off.