Well, I wimped out on Friday’s showing of The Mysterians, which naturally I now regret. However, had I gone to that I would have been leaving my house voluntarily for four nights in a row, and if I did that, I think I might have died. Also, I was pretty wiped out after Thursday night, when I hit the first Godzilla showing and didn’t get home until 1:00 AM. I made it to work the next day, but I was kind of foggy throughout. So by the time I got home on Friday, it was pretty clear I lacked the energy to get back out again.
I did make the Saturday night, July 4th double feature, though. I got in line about ten PM, and soon they let the crowd in (smaller than previous years, but that’s unsurprising considering the economy right now). I had the pleasure of sitting up front and watching folks wander around and take photos and coo over the historic Pickwick Theater. It’s indeed a gorgeous edifice, a movie palace that opened in 1928, and resembled a cathedral more than the boxy, utilitarian multiplex auditoriums of today. I more or less grew up in that theater, so these comments aroused a great deal of hometown pride. It’s also huge; it seats about 1,400. You won’t see many more like that.
At 10:30 the first feature started, the American (or maybe International) dub of Godzilla vs. the Thing. The ‘thing’ was Mothra, but a lot of people in the dub indeed call him ‘the Thing,” which frankly grated on the ear. This was the fourth Godzilla movie, and considered by many to be the best one ever. The audience really knew their stuff, and not only cheered the first appearance of Godzilla, Mothra, larval Mothras, the Fairy Princesses of Infant Island, etc., but also cheered the appearance of each name actor as well. Well, name actor to these folks. It was pretty cool.
Toho and the Godzilla series itself were at the tops of their game with this entry, and it shows. The model work is consistently excellent, including the various machines we see, like the giant water pumps that drain a flooded area following the monsoon that opens the picture. Meanwhile, the Godzilla design here is considered one of the very best, the best of the classic Godzilla films, and possibly the single most popular design ever. I will say that Godzilla comes off as awful clumsy in this chapter, and given how overwhelmingly powerful he would eventually become, his loss to two caterpillar Mothras will strike many as kind of unlikely.
What really drew me out that night (again, against all my natural instincts not to ever leave my house) was the premiere, subtitled showing of Monster X Strikes Back: Attack of the G8 Summit! This 2008 flick brings back Guilala, the infamous chicken monster from The X From Outer Space. Renowned as the goofiest dai kaiju to have an entire theatrical film built around him. Fittingly, then, the recent update of the character is a flat-out comedy, basically a parody of Toho giant monster movies (including a main theme just a couple of notes off of one of composers Akira Ifukube’s classics).
Meanwhile, the G8 setting was used to do a lot of gags about each country’s leader. Each leader was vaguely based on a real life model (Putin, Germany’s Merkel, etc.), although the American president looked kind of like Clinton but acted more bellicose. The jokes across the board were generally quite broad. Sometimes they were even pointed: Many of the assembled leaders suggest a plan of attack. For Russia, it was to poison the monster (a ‘joke’ based on the government’s real life assassinations of several reporters and whatnot), while the Merkel analogue uses poison gas. (Ouch.)
Still, if you’re the kind of guy to laugh at the Italian prime minister yelling “Mama mia!” in response to a giant monster attack –and I have to admit I did—then the film is light but amusing fluff. Of course, I saw this in the best possible circumstances, with hundreds of happy, rowdy people who got almost all of the jokes, especially the giant monster ones. Whether it weathers well watching it at home, and it is out on DVD now, remains to be seen.
Still, for seven bucks, it was a pretty entertaining evening. Thanks to convention organizer and G-Fan publisher J.D. Lee, as well as the staff of the Pickwick, for a most enjoyable weekend.
