So with Covid currently–hopefully permanently–dormant, G-Fest returns to Chicagoland. This includes showing a slate of G-Films at my childhood home, the Pickwick Theatre. We start Thursday with the traditional four films. The first afternoon choice is Godzilla vs Hedorah–in Japanese, so no Save the Earth, sadly–playing at 1:00.
There was a brief period when I was young, before she realized that shipped had already sailed, that my Mom decided I was too weird and obsessed with monsters so I wasn’t allowed to watch anything monster-related. Sadly, this occurred exactly when Godzilla vs Monster Zero and War of the Gargantuas was playing the local drive-ins as a double feature. So there went my first chance to see a Godzilla monster theatrically. The new films went straight to TV here, so my first real opportunity was Godzilla vs the Smog Monster, which played, yes, at the Pickwick for a kid’s weekend matinee.
The film was weird and experimental and I really didn’t like it. Indeed, I’ve never entirely made my peace with the ’70s G-Films. Even so, the nostalgia factor of seeing Hedorah again in the same theater I saw it in as a lad would normally have me requesting the afternoon off, except that I am deep in a PTO hole because of having recently taken two weeks off. So personally I’ll stick with the Thursday evening movies. More on those later this week.
