Monster of the Day #239

Updated on April 21, 2011 By Ken Begg 22 Comments

“We’re Batmen!”

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  • Gamera

    You know, with Ceasar Romero to lead them I’d have thought these guys would have been invincible…

  • I don’t know. He murdered his own sadistic, kill-crazy mistress, then put her brain into an embiggened, flying lion. That’s about the second worst mad scientist scheme I’ve ever come across.

  • Mr. Rational

    The set of posts from this week is starting to remind me of “Spartacus” for some reason.

  • Mr. Rational

    And just out of curiosity, Ken, what’s the WORST?

  • Gamera

    Well, you have to give him a hand for a thinking outside the box if not much in the way of common sense…

    Call him Ceasar Romero: The Bat Whisperer.

  • Ericb

    These remind me of Will Ferrell for some reason.

  • roger h

    I seemed to think I hadn’t seen this until you mentioned the flying lion and then I remembered Joseph Cotton and his wife being in it. Drive-in 43 years ago, boy does that make me feel old.

  • roger h

    How about a hug for the ol’ ALFer

  • C’mon Ken, let’s have a Worst Master Plan contest.

    My pick is the strategy to kill Gyaos in Gamera vs. Gyaos. The scientists find out that Gyaos is vulnerable to sunlight. So they come out with two conflicting plans.

    Plan A – make big UV spotlights and aim them on Gyaos.

    Plan B – get hundreds of gallons of blood (frmo where?) and put it on top of a giant record turntable. When Gyaos flies down to drink the blood the turntable will make him dizzy and he won’t be able to get back to his lair before sunrise.

    To my eternal delight, they choose plan B. Not even MY roleplaying game team would go for that plan. (And they once went with a plan that involved turning the party leader into a howler monkey.)

  • Rock Baker

    On the Gaos plan: As a scientist explains, giant UV lamps are not workable in the effort to kill Gaos. Were one constructed powerful enough to use against Gaos, it would be too large to make mobile. Therefore Operation Merry-go-round was their only option. At least the AIP dub bothers to mention that the structure of the revolving building is being re-enforced and powered up (where as the other version just has the building able to make such ridiculous revolutions without explination). They also establish that the ‘blood’ is synthetic, developed in the lab during the on-site work to prepare Operation Merry-go-round.

    While goofy, the plan actually makes logical sense in keeping an indestructible giant monster exposed to the rising sun long enough to kill it. Weird, though, as I never thought I’d be trying to defend the use of Operation Merry-go-round!

  • Rock Baker

    “How about a hug for the ol’ ALFer”

    HAH!

  • Sandy — The blood was a new artificial blood that Japanese scientists had luckily recently whipped up. Also, I should note the plan nearly works, until a generator gives out. And the ‘giant record turntable’ as you so snidely call it was in fact a rotating restaurant.

    My favorite bad plan (although the aforementioned Latitude Zero scheme is mighty close) would be from Devil Fish / Monster Shark. There Sharktopus’ ancestral relative pops up eating sundry people, and the heroes learn to their horror that it self-replicates pretty regularly. I can’t remember how often, but let’s say every 28 hours or something. So eventually it turns out that Devil Fish was invented by a Mad Scientist, who explains that his plan was to set this thing loose—again, a voracious monster that basically would self-replicate exponentially until it pushed all the water out of the oceans–because this would somehow allow him, in his words, “to control the world’s oceans!” or somesuch.

    This is one of the greatest early examples of Underpants Gnome Planning:

    1) Release endlessly hungry, relentlessly self-replicating monster into nearby shoreline.
    2)
    3) Control the world’s oceans!

  • Oops, I see Rock already covered most of this. My bad.

  • Mr. Rational

    Maybe I’m missing something. So the UV spotlight wasn’t mobile. So what? Why not just use the blood to draw Gyaos to the lamp, like they did to lure him to the restaurant?

    And Sandy, thanks for the huge favor.

  • Mr. R, this is why you’ll never be a Japanese scientist!

  • Rock Baker

    I think the dumbest plot to enslave the world was used by the Virasions in Destroy All Planets. Hold two boys ransom and the price for their freedom is the complete surrender of the entire planet. This only works because they’re negotiating with the United Nations.

  • Gamera

    Gee guys, my comment was more a snide remark about Malic’s leadership qualities. Never meant to start an argument (no matter how good natured it has been).

  • Mr. Rational

    Ken: There’s more than one reason for that. Like, my not being Japanese. :)

  • And with that attitude, you never will be!

  • I think the fact that ANYONE was willing to defend the plan in Gamera vs. Gyaos speaks for itself.

    The Devil Fish plan is a good one too though.

    Another top-tier plan is that portrayed in DR. JEKYLL AND THE WEREWOLF in which Dr. Jekyll’s plan to cure Waldemar Daninsky of his lycanthropy is to inject Waldemar with the Hyde formula. Then when the full moon comes, Mr. Hyde will war with the werewolf “and they will destroy each other”. I can’t see ANY way that this plan could possibly succeed.

  • Rock Baker

    Say what you will about the Gammera movies (I certainly do), but I will stick up for the first three films. They were nearly as good as the Toho films. Destroy All Planets on, however, one can make no defence.

  • The Rev.

    No doubt, Rock. The first three of the Showa series are good to great. It’s sad about the other five, despite Guiron being at least outrageously bad versus boring bad. I have to admit to a certain fondness for Super Monster, if only because I can see all the fights together in between bouts of The Adventures of the World’s Most Uselss Superheroes.