Monster of the Day #94

The Rev.

I love the concept of how this version of Frankenstein came about. It’s so crazy.

But we’re not here for him (I think), we’re here for Baragon! I always thought he was one of the cuter kaiju out there, particularly in GMK. Kind of like a large, man-eating, (sometimes) heat ray-spitting puppy. With large scales and a horn. I think it’s the ears and the leaping around that makes me think that.

Sandy Petersen

he was terrific in GMK. He was so obviously outmatched by the big G, but man Baragon was a game little critter. He gave it all he had to try to stop the evil of Godzilla.

Gamera

Personally always thought the title should be been: ‘Frankinstein’s Monster Turns Giant Juvenile Delinquent’ but it probably wouldn’t have sold many tickets.

It’s hard for me to knock a film that stars the charming Kumi Mizuno in a sexy white lab coat with tough guy Nick Adams though.

Baragon always reminded me of a bulldog both in appearance and his ‘never quit’ attitude. Funny that a lovable guy like him didn’t appear in more kaiju movies.

The Rev.

He would appear in my movie, I know that much. Two movies and one token appearance? Bah, poor Baragon!

I played him quite a bit in the “Godzilla: Save the Earth” video game, even though I usually got beat in multiplayer. (Of course, then I’d whip out Space Godzilla and trash everyone.)

Gamera

“Godzilla: Save the Earth” is one of those games I wish had come out for the PC. Still I suck at fighting games so it might have been for the better.

I’d love to see a new version of something like ‘Crush, Crumble, Chomp’ or ‘Mail Order Monsters’ where you get to design your own monster by picking out RPG stats like it’s strength, dexterity, intelligence, etc and then picking out special abilities like fire breath, flight, armored shell, and so on.

The Rev.

Oooo, those sound fun! I have a couple of small-run roleplaying games that let you build up monsters, but I never played a video game like that.

G:STE is not exactly like other fighting games. There are short combos, but almost all can be done by just jamming the same button and pushing the control pad in one direction to change up the last move. Big damage is usually done by breath attacks, throwing buildings, or throwing the other monster itself, none of which are too hard to figure out. Members of my family that never played fighting games have been able to pick it up pretty quickly and hold their own. Oddly enough, everyone’s best monster is completely different in style. You’d think one particular monster could be consistently used by everyone to dominate (and I will say the two Godzillas and the two King Ghidorahs are pretty good all around), but that isn’t the case. I lay waste with Space Godzilla, while no one else can get him to work nearly as well; alternately, someone else regularly wins with Moguera, which I have trouble doing. We still pull it out once in a while; it’s good stuff.

Rock Baker

I have three Billiken kits. The She Creature, Godzilla (‘Terror of’ version), and the first one I got was Baragon. For such a cute monster, he probably killed more people in one movie than any other Toho beast, and then he ate a horse and a bunch of chickens on the side!

Baragon’s various ‘Ultra’ episodes give him a little more coverage, if you can get past the new heads they built for him. One theory is that these TV spots are the reason Gorosaurus attacks Paris in Destroy all Monsters. Word has it Baragon was slated for that scene, and the original suit was to be restored (as it had shown itself durable enough to be tossed around and altered for nearly three years). When they got ahold of the suit, Ultraman must’ve taken his toll, because they decided to build a new suit. But the new Baragon wasn’t ready in time to shoot the scene, so a substitute monster had to go in. Gorosaurus was a recently built suit with good miles left in, so in it went. Baragon had the one scene and plenty of press photos. The stills provided the clue that there was, in fact, a new Baragon, as the story for the longest time was that Toho had actually used the original suit but didn’t have the restoration finished in time. But the Baragon suit in the set stills is much smaller than the suit built for Frankenstein Conquers the World, which was possibly the largest suit Nakajima had ever crawled inside of.

Rock Baker

And why is the AIP version of this thing so hard to find? That DVD release was more irksome than enjoyable. Better to do like the double-disk for Godzilla vs the Thing and just include the TV master if that was the best that was availible. (Although I doubt that it was, as AIP did give it a national release.)

BeckoningChasm

He looks a bit like those dragon-dog statues Chinese restaurants use in their decor.

Sandy Petersen

You can learn everything you need to learn about Godzilla video games, old and new, by checking out the Angry Video Game Nerd’s report at:

http://screwattack.com/videos/AVGN-Godzilla-1

D. Jason Fleming

@BeckoningChasm

Those “dragon dog statues”? Lions. No, I can’t explain it, but that is what they’re supposed to be.

Gamera

Gee, ‘G:StE’ sounds even better than I thought it would be. I’m not good with the whole combos thing. ‘Crush, Crumble, Chomp’ came out in prehistoric times as computers go- aka 1977 and ‘Mail Order Monsters’ was 1986 or so for the Commodore 64 and Atari 800. I’m suprised no one has remade either since pretty much everything else has been remade by now.

I always thought the statues were Foo Dogs/Lions. Apparently the terms dog and lion are interchangable. King Caesar seemed to me based on the idea of one of these guardian statues coming to life.

The Rev.

Either that, or King Seesar was the guardian monster they based all those guardian foo dogs/lions on. Not that they really say either way, if I recall. But yeah, his look was definitely based on those statues.

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