Have a nice weekend, folks!

Updated on May 13, 2010 By Ken Begg 19 Comments

I got dragooned into traveling to Louisville for the weekend, and joyfully get to rise at 4:00 tomorrow morning to start the trek.  I’ll be gone until late Sunday night, so consider this an open forum if people wish to chat in my absence.  I hope and trust everyone will have a wonderful weekend.

I thought I’d leave an Amazon link behind if anyone is looking for a handy one, and this is out Tuesday, so it seemed timely.

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  • Ah, the original Gamera. There’s really nothing quite like it in movies. The sheer mindboggling mind… boggle… that is Z Plan must be seen to be believed.

  • Shlocky Horror

    Have a safe trip and a great weekend, Ken.

  • TongoRad

    Make sure you enjoya butter kuchen while you’re there! Have a good trip.

  • Gamera

    Who doesn’t love a giant, fire-breathing, flying, prehistoric, child-protecting, turtle-monster!

    I’d love to see the thought process that lead to ‘Hey Gojira is making a pile of money, we need our own giant monster. What about a giant turtle! Everyone loves turtles right!?!’

    I think the time is right for ‘Gamera vs. The Giant Claw’.

    Have fun and safe travels Ken.

  • The Rev. D.D.

    Maybe based on the older films (although one of them is quite good and a couple of them are decent, goofy fun), but Gamera rocketed out of the minor leagues with his 90s trilogy, which utterly kicked ass.

    I think the Massasaurus (Massisaurus?) would be a better match for the Giant Claw.

    Personally, I’m waiting for the Tabonga to take on the Creature from the Haunted Sea.

    Oh, and safe, fun journey, Ken!

  • What is the messisaurus? I thought I knew all the kaiju in existence? What is its movie?

  • The Rev. D.D.

    I’m pretty sure we all know it, although we may not know it by its proper name. That was what the characters declared the beastie in It’s Alive! to be.

  • BeckoningChasm

    The very first Gamera film was pretty serious, but had THE WORST Kenny ever. That kid needed to be the victim of a “weapons mishap.” The others are goofy and stupid and must be the origin of the term “mindboggling.” In fact, I might bet they were made just to define that term.

    Safe travels, Ken!

  • Rock Baker

    God bless you and keep you safe, Ken, have fun!

    I can’t remember where I saw this, but I was on some b-movie site with a countdown list of goofy monsters (Guilala won) and the Massosaurus was on the list. There, it was lovongly called The Cheap Monster, both for its economical build and multiple uses. Really, it does look like the kind of monster you’d cook up for a really ambitious home movie, which is the feel that Buchanan’s Azelea Pictures all had (just with some name actors thrown in, making the movies even more sureal). To me, he’ll always be The Cheap Monster.

    I picked up the Anchor Bay(?) tape of the widescreen Gammera the Invincible, and found it to be a really good giant monster movie. Helping to no end is that they played down the Kenny parts of the story and made it a more grown up picture. Plus they brought in Brian Donlevy (always liked his Quatermass the best) and there’s a larger-than-usual role for unsung character actor Dick O’Neil!

  • Gamera

    Reverend: Ken posted the original Gamera so I meant him, the kinda goofy ’60s version vs. the Giant Claw.

    I love the ’90s version and picked my screen name largely based on them. I’ll probably get flamed for saying this but I think the ’90s Gameras are the best Kaiju films I’ve ever seen, even beating out Gojira himself. Plus it didn’t hurt to replace Kenji with cute Japanese gals.

    Sorry, I still haven’t seen Buchanan’s ‘It’s Alive’ and my only familiarity is from Ken’s review. Funny, when I searched for it Google wanted to know if I meant Mosasaur? Which was a very nasty prehistoric critter but being a sea animal would have problems fighting the Claw. Now a giant mutant Archaeopteryx would be fun.

    Personally I’d love to see ‘The Giant Claw’ redone since I was thinking the only way to make the film better would be to replace the puppet with a really cheap CGI Claw. It’d work for the Massasaurus too I bet.

  • The Rev. D.D.

    BC: I’ll beg to differ on the 2nd Gamera film being goofy and stupid, at least compared to the rest of the series. It’s surprisingly serious in tone (and is the one I consider quite good). The rest, I’ll grant you.

    Gamera: Gojira is still the best, but after that, I’m hard pressed to pick giant monster movies that are as high-quality as the 90s Gamera ones. They really are superb, and anyone who’s not seen them owes it to themselves to rectify that.

  • BeckoningChasm

    Rev: Apologies, I meant the rest of the Gamera films “that I’ve seen” and left out that little clarifying bit. The only other ones I’ve seen were two, one with a knife-headed monster and alien brain-eating ladies, the other with the squid-creatures that merge into one mega-squid. I stand by my “goofy and stupid” judgment on those two. :)

  • Rock Baker

    Attack of the Monsters and Destroy All Planets. “Goofy and stupid” doesn’t begin to describe those two pictures! For better examples, see the first three (Gammera the Invincible, War of the Monsters, The Return of the Giant Monsters) and the first two 90s films (Gamera: Guardian of the Universe, Gamera vs Legion). Tho a kids’ film of sorts, Gamera the Brave is worth a look too.

    The real shame is that, apart from Gammera the Invincible, all of the original films were only released on television domestically. So the only way to see the American prints is to watch cropped movies with half the image gone. Still, the AIP-TV dubs are vastly superior to the clumsy home video versions released by Sandy Frank in the 80s. (However, Gamera vs Zigra was not released by AIP-TV, so the Sandy Frank version is the way to go on that one.) Good thing for fans, the old AIP prints are aparently in public domain these days, so there are now low-priced releases of the long-absent Gamera vs Monster X and Destroy All Planets we can finally see.

  • The Rev. D.D.

    The one with the knifehead monster (Guiron) is indeed stupid and goofy, but I consider it a pretty fun time. The one with the squid (Viras) I haven’t seen in a long time, but recall it being pretty bad.

    I’d second seeing War of the Monsters, with Barugon, as I think it’s the best of the original cycle. I also suggest Return of the Giant Monsters , with Gyaos; it’s pretty silly and stupid, but lots of fun.

    The last three, Gamera vs. Jiger, Gamera vs. Zigra, and Space Monster Gamera, are all terrible. Granted, I haven’t seen Jiger, but I’ve heard nothing good about it. The other two are probably the worst of the series; the last one, in fact, is just a clip show from the previous installments, along with three superheroes who don’t do shit the entire movie.

  • I think the third modern Gamera – Rise of Iris or whatever the heck it was titled is also pretty good. The plot is complex and wanders, but it does have an evil video game designer which has a special appeal to me. Plus it is quite possibly the single most complicated Kaiju movie plot ever filmed and deserves recognition for that alone.

    Also the monster Iris is just spectacular I feel – almost like a geometric shape more than a monster. They also feed us with other hints about the history of Gamera – such as the sea floor filled with Gamera shells, implying a continuity of Gameras (later confirmed with Gamera the Brave), or the clues that perhaps at one time Iris fought alongside Gamera. Or that there are other monsters – Gamera as the Turtle, guardian of the North with Iris as the Phoenix, guardian of the South. This leaves us with the western Tiger and the eastern Dragon (Godzilla?).

    It’s just so chockfull of stuff that there is NO WAY it can be a great movie, but it is still very entertaining for a kaiju fan.

  • Rock Baker

    Space Monster Gamera, or Super Monster as English posters call it (my print still has Japanese titles), was awful in every way. MST3K should’ve skipped the others and just done Super Monster! With all the stock footage, you can sort of watch it as a ‘best of’ affair, but they’ve replaced the music with an irritating new theme song that just repeats and repeats and repeats (and even muffles when the action goes underwater!). You’d think having three super-women dressed like Starman might make for a fun viewing, but as the Rev points out, they don’t really do anything. They go through this elaborate routine that changes them from civilians into superheroes (lots of Ultraman-style arm waving and spinning involved to make the change) and then they have to change right back because they can be detected (by the evil spaceship orbiting above) the second they go ‘Super.’ Ken really needs to review this one someday soon!

    Gamera 3, vs Iris, or whatever you want to call it, was an interesting change of pace -but one could argue that’s the very thing that killed it at the boxoffice (If I recall correctly it didn’t gross much). After having expectations risen so high by Gamera vs Legion, the less traditional approach of Iris probably didn’t sit too well after such a long wait for it to hit screens. Japanese giant monster movies are sort like meat and potatoes entertainment, messing around with the ingredients usually doesn’t win much affection when you’re hungry for what you know. Just a thought.

  • BeckoningChasm

    My recollection of Destroy All Planets is that it, too, contained huge swaths of footage from previous Gamera films. Which made it rather less focused that it, er, ought to have been for a Gamera film.

    And yeah, Attack of the Monsters is a lot of fun. Whenever I need to rouse an unconscious friend, punching them in the head does wonders!

  • John Nowak

    I can imagine being afraid of giant lizards, I can imagine being afraid of sharks.

    I can even imagine being afraid of cats. I’m not afraid of them myself, but given how many of our ancestors were dragged out of trees by leopards it’s not too surprising that a lot of people are spooked by kitties.

    Then there’s rabbits. I understand “Night of the Lepus” was based on an Australian book, and I could understand Australians disliking rabbits. I was just in some Australian zoos and museums and they’re presently running an anti-feral cat campaign. They probably did something similar with rabbits.

    Turtles, though? I’m with the commenter Gamera on this one. I’m willing to believe the recent films were quite good, but still…

    “Let’s make it a turtle! It’ll be terrifying!”

  • My favorite bit in ‘Iris’ is when the anti-heroine who wants to destroy Gamera flashback to her parents’ death. They recreate an actual scene from the first movie (although we don’t see her parents die there), only with a redesigned, more evil looking Gamera, because that’s how she imagines it. Man, that was a nice touch.