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MASKED AVENGER VERSUS ULTRA-VILLAIN IN THE LAIR OF THE NAKED BIKINI

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Masked Avenger Versus Ultra-Villain In The Lair of The Naked Bikini ~ 2000, Mark Savage, Australia

maskedavengerversusultravillain-ei1 (VHSCollector.com)

Whew boy… To start with, if you’re easily offended, please… Maybe just sit this one out. I’ve tried to avoid some of the more adult oriented films out there for a while, but we were always going to have to cross this line eventually. Now’s the time.

SO… The first thing we need to address with this film is the damn title. Masked Avenger Versus Ultra-Villain In The Lair of the Naked Bikini. Makes absolutely no sense. What the hell is a ‘Naked Bikini,’ and how would it have a lair? Never mind the fact that our masked hero isn’t avenging anyone, and our bad guy is never referred to as “Ultra-Villain.” He’s definitely a villain, I’ll give them that, but he’s really not all that ultra. Pretty much, he’s just a balding German dude who really wants to impregnate a virgin. Believe me, folks, theres nothing special about that. Luckily, we can clear up this confusing mess rather quickly; Masked Avenger Versus Ultra-Villain In The Lair of the Naked Bikini is not the film’s original title. This movie was originally supposed to be called (drum roll) The Masturbating Gunman. Yep. Now, obviously, not a whole lot of distributors are going to want to touch a movie with a title like that, so at some point, we wind up getting the name of the picture swapped for something more commercial that doesn’t actually have anything to do with the movie itself. It is unfortunate on many levels that in actuality, the original title would have been much more appropriate. Yeah….

THE PLOT: All across Australia, criminals know to fear the name “The Masturbating Gunman” above all else… A cunning and relentless detective with the physical strength of a gladiator and the nose of a ravenous blood hound, The Masturbating Gunman is a formidable combatant, and if you should find yourself on the wrong side of the law, he will stop at nothing until he brings you to justice… That is, unless he finds himself even the slightest bit sexually aroused, at which point he will fall to the ground and masturbate frantically for several minutes until.. Well, until he’s finished. It’s super gross, and it happens several times in the movie. Why nobody ever manages to blow his head off while he’s just going to town on himself is never adequately explained, but I guess the universe helps those who help themselves.

Anyway. So, that’s our main dude. Our villain, however, is just some evil, balding German dude, which, honestly, is just the very definition of generic. Guess it was slim pickin’s at the super-villain outlet store or something. Try harder, you guys. Anyway. Early on, our “Ultra-Villain” is released from prison, and because birds gotta fly, bee’s gotta sting, and Germans gotta conquer the Earth, he immediately launches his latest and greatest diabolical scheme- and it’s a doozy. Not really, he just wants to impregnate a virgin because he thinks that the birth of his son will usher in a new age for humanity or some such shit. Pretty boiler plate. Sadly, this is already a new age for humanity, and a lot has changed since our man got his tuckus tossed in the clink. For one thing, virgins are a hell of a lot harder to come by.

ANDY WARHOL'S DRACULA, Udo Kier, 1974

“Yeah, tell me about it!” (wonk wonk!)

Hoping for the best against all odds, Ultra-Villain sends his goons out to retrieve the future mother of his offspring, and try as thry might, they keep coming up empty handed, much to his teutonic chagrin. Finally, somebody has the brilliant idea to run out and nab a nun, figuring that’s damn near a sure thing, so far as virgin-napping is concerned. This plan seems pretty solid at first, and they actually  manage to successfully capture a nun without much fuss, but in a most inopportune coincidence, the nun they grab just so happens to be the sister of… The damn Masturbating Gunman. Rut roh, Rhaggy! Logically, a confrontation between the good guy and the bad guy is now inevitable, and that’s the movie.

So, clearly, this is a weird one. For those of you with more puritanical sensibilities, you’re probably better off obeying your instincts and steering clear, but it is worth mentioning that this is a comedy, with relatively scant nudity. Masked Avenger Versus Ultra-Villain In The Lair Of The Naked Bikini isn’t ever really trying to be sexy, the adult content is always played for laughs, and never to titillate. It gets pretty gross, but it doesn’t really ever feel smutty, more just super, duper crude. If you regularly watch South Park, then odds are you’ve been through worse than this already.

It’s also really, really low budget, and quite poorly made. The soundtrack is all cheap, horrible synth muzak, the sort that the British Commonwealth seems to be immune to, but which all Americans fear like kryptonite. It’s shot on video, and the photography is amateurish, to say the least. The audio throughout is uneven, and sometimes quite poor, and all of the action sequences require a lot of forgiveness, and more than a little imagination to follow. You’ll be surprised that this thing was released in the year 2000. Even with all of that already factored in, probably the single worst thing the film has working against it is how agonizingly drawn out everything is. Sequences drag on slower than a newborn turtle dragging an anchor across a freeway, and you could probably cut everything down to a crisp 45 minutes without losing any real content, if you really wanted to.

For some reason, however, I’m hesitant to look these many issues and count them as a mark against the quality of the picture, which seems weird. In watching MAVUBITLOFNB (to save time), one get’s the sneaking suspicion that the director is fucking with us. It’s just so at peace with how badly it sucks…  I just can’t shake the notion that for some reason, this is exactly the movie Savage wanted to make. Maybe I’m wrong, but it certainly seems to fit with the film’s sense of humor, and there is enough wit evident throughout the movie to suggest that the intellect behind this whole thing wouldn’t make some of these puzzling decisions without adequate deliberation. Mark Savage isn’t stupid enough to suck this badly. He’s punking us, you guys. Every time I watch it, I feel like there’s someone hiding behind a curtain and laughing their ass off at the frustrated expression on my face like it’s just freaking hysterical.

And actually, the film IS pretty funny! MAVUTITLOTNB is horribly crude, overly long, and badly crafted, but I’ve willingly sat through it a handful of times, and I’m happy that I own a copy. This movie sucks… and that’s… awesome? This paradox will destroy me if I think about it any longer, so with that, I conclude this review.

Actually, one more thing before I go; why in the hell does the main character’s “super hero” costume look almost exactly like the outfits worn by the bad guy’s henchmen? Seriously, that would be like if Luke Skywalker was indistinguishable from a Storm trooper. They both wear big, loose, blue jumpsuits and black face masks. This can’t have been an accident. It’s totally bizarre. Why would anyone do this!? I really can’t wrap my mind around it. Okay, I seriously better back off now. I can hear the sound of my sanity starting to crack under the weight of this movie’s nonsensical girth.

B-

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BLOOD FEAST!

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Blood Feast ~ 1963, Herschell Gordon Lewis, USA

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Clocking in at just over an hour, and with a reported budget of only $24,500, Blood Feast is the achievement that would forever enshrine Herschell Gordon Lewis as a name revered amongst horror aficionados the world over. While on first inspection, the lion’s share of this film sucks like friggin’ crazy, it actually can’t be overstated how ahead of it’s time Blood Feast really was. Often cited as the first ever legitimate gore film, this movie began a period of Lewis’ professional life where he would pioneer a new level of blood and guts based exploitation, and would eventually earn the honorary title “The Godfather of Gore.” Today, Blood Feast is over 50 years old, and is still far gnarlier and more explicit than most modern horror films. Time to step up your game, Hollywood.

THE PLOT~ Fuad Ramses, caterer, religious fanatic and serial teenage girl dismemberer, opens up a highly regarded catering business in what appears to be a sexless episode of Mad Men. Knowing that America is the land of religious freedom, he takes advantage of his newly acquired civil liberties and beings to horribly mutilate the shit out of young women- you know- for Ishtar. Can the police stop him before he finishes doing whatever the hell it is he’s trying to achieve? Hell yeah, but first a bunch of girls get the shit murdered out of them, and we watch it all in off-puttingly drawn out sequences of next-level motion picture violence.

How violent and bloody is Blood Feast? Well, today, the vilest, more despicable low budget splat merchants still use this as a benchmark, and I imagine John Waters probably thought it was the best thing ever when he was 16. So, it’s pretty bad.

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Lewis often said that he considered himself a business man, not an artist, so he viewed his motion picture work as an entirely commercial endevour. Kudos for honesty, but this attitude is reflected in every aspect of Blood Feast’s production, this is an artless, by the numbers motion picture that put very little energy into appeasing film theorists. Start to finish, Blood Feast is plagued with boring compositions, “just enough to get it done” dialog, horrendous acting, and thick, red acrylic paint substituting for blood. All of this juxtaposed against the disturbingly retro quaintness of the early 1960’s makes this film feel like some form of Satanic kitch, like a 1950’s themed burger joint operated by Jason Voorhees. The weird thing is that I wouldn’t want it any other way, if the acting were actually good, it would probably be really, really disturbing. Blood Feast is definitely a “bad” film if you hold it up to any artistic scrutiny, but it just feels so right. This is the humble birth of gore cinema, if it didn’t sort of suck, wouldn’t that just feel inappropriate somehow?

 

Additionally, time has been very kind to Blood Feast. The novelty of an early 1960’s gore film existing at all is tremendous, but its clumsy production, lousy story, and prehistoric tropes make the film markedly more fun today than it has ever been before, by all accounts, this is a movie that will continue to gain entertaining value as it becomes more and more antiquated. There’s just so much to laugh at! In the movie, one of our would-be mutilation victims is dating a policeman, who appears to be in his late 40’s- and that’s weird, because I think she’s in high school. Also, at the end of the picture, our bad guy dies in exactly the same way that The Shredder does in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, so I really want to believe that Eastman and Laird owned a battered VHS copy of Blood Feast back in the 80’s. Really, I want that to be true.

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There’s really no argument to be had for Blood Feast’s artistic merit. It wasn’t better than other gore films, it was just “first,” but that’s still important. At the end of the day, people don’t like Lewis’ output for its artistic merit anyway, and Blood Feast is a fun movie that deserves the worship it receives.

FeastFeatB-

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QUEEN OF BLACK MAGIC!!!!!

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Queen of Black Magic (AKA Black Magic Terror, apparently.) ~ 1983, Liliek Sudjio

Black Magic Terror US Twilight Video VHS

In the 1970’s and 80’s, Asia kicked it up a notch and hit us, the people of Planet Earth, with nigh countless bad ass genre films in a variety of enjoyable and distinct subgenres. One such subgenre was the magic/superstition/horror movie, which produced a number of rock solid genre classics, like Black Magic, Seeing of a Ghost, and Eternal Evil of Asia. Queen of Black Magic is an Indonesian contribution to this rich horror lexicon, and while it’s clearly a less technically sophisticated production than many of it’s Chinese predecessors, damn if it’s not impressive and entertaining all the same. Queen of Black Magic in particular has earned a reputation over the decades for it’s special effects, which are both gruesome, and impressive, given the film’s low budget, and scant resources.

Honestly, all of these movies are at least a little bit entertaining, because they draw on such a rich and fascinating folk tradition, which most Westerners are totally unfamiliar with. And there are hundreds of them! Probably most American horror fans have never even dipped their toe in the Asian Magic Horror Film well, and that well is deeper than you could ever imagine. Time to dive in.

THE PLOT~ Times are tough for Murni. Some time ago, Kohar, local lady-killer extraordinaire, charmed his way into her Jungle Pants, and she was powerless to resist his advances, because he is Kohar. Actually, let’s get to know this guy a little bit before we proceed.

GETTING TO KNOW KOHAR: UNDISPUTED STUD-MUFFIN OF SOUTHEAST ASIA

No woman can resist Kohar. Here are some of his finer points.

eyesback daggerkiltstacheThese qualities speak for themselves, Kohar is manhood incarnate, and a force to be reckoned with. The sad truth, though, is that he’s also a total dick. Having successfully executed Operation: “Bang Murni,” Kohar decides to temporarily pacify his deeply upset female conquest with the promise that everything was totally okay, because he was for sure gonna mary her real soon, Scount’s honor. Well, looks like the only Merit-Badges Kohar ever earned were in seducing ladies, Dope-Ass Back-Daggers, and being a fucking liar, because here we are, present day, and he’s marrying some other girl, while Murni is stuck sitting around like chopped liver. Totally uncool!

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I can’t tell if she’s crying because she’s sad, or if it’s because of that giant onion she’s caressing.

She’s pretty broken up about it, obviously, but Murni needn’t be too jealous for very long. You see, unbeknownst to anyone in the village, this here wedding is about to get kyboshed super hard, black magic style, because some unknown third party has decided to place a gnarly curse on Kohar’s blushing bride to be, thereby disrupting these nuptials but good. Enraged, Kohar decides he wants to bring justice to whoever the hell just ruined his big day; but, sadly, he has no idea who that person could be. “I’ll just blame Murni,” he thinks. “I probably haven’t ruined enough of her life yet, anyway.” Using his raw animal charisma and remarkable gift for public speaking, Kohar convinces a good chunk of his fellow villagers that there is at least a 15% chance that Murni totally did this, and is definitley a witch. Instantly, a mob is formed, and Kohar leads his fellow villagers through the balmy jungles of Indonesia on a quest to brutally murder an innocent girl who he had personally de-virginized only weeks prior. Long story short, neither Murni, or her mother, whom she lives with, end up having a very nice evening. Murni is drug out, beaten, and tossed off a cliff. When her mother pleads with the group to have mercy on Murni, Kohar slaps her unconscious and burns her house down. He’s a friggin’ dick.

kohar doucheSo, Murni tumbles down the cliff, shattering every bone in her body on the countless branches and stone outcroppings that she strikes on the way down, but thank goodness, some weird jungle hermit somehow catches her and takes her back to his secluded hell-cave, which just so happens to be littered with spooky black magic paraphernalia. No big deal! This Satanic Samaritan kindly nurses Murni back to health, before he hits her with some hardline, Darth Sidious style manipulation. “Listen, yo,” he says. “Them fools tried to kill you. You gotta get your revenge- black magic style! And I’ll train you in the ways of the dark side, so you can totally do it. You have to kill all of those people, or else.” Murni isn’t exactly elated with this proposal, but manipulative douche bags seem to have a way with her, and she agrees. Soon, Murni returns to the village to get her vengeance, which, and I can’t stress this enough, is really awesome. Highlights include a man who grows giant, disgusting blood blisters all over his face and arms, and of course, the demise of Kohar, who is actually forced to yank his own head off.

blister diegnarly drownedkohar no head 1Kohar no head 2Just… Just so, so awesome.

But the movie isn’t over. Next, a pious stranger from the city arrives in town, eager to pray at the local mosque, which the superstitious locals have long since abandoned. When he learns of the many black magic related issues the village has been dealing with in days of late, this wandering holy man decides that all they really need to turn it all around is some good ol’ fashioned churchin’ up. He takes it upon himself to lead this wayward flock back into the light, which actually kinda works, and that just pisses off Murni’s reclusive jungle mentor like you can’t believe. It’s clear that this town ain’t big enough for the two of them. Can these two opposing forces embrace one another and learn to coexist, or will the bad guy literally explode at the end of the movie?!?

Spoiler alert

Spoiler alert?

So, Queen of Black Magic is a story about redemption, but it’s also about resisting temptation. Murni’s problems all stem from how easily swayed she is, first by Kohar, and next by her black magic mentor man… Which, admittedly, murdering people with the powers of hell is a lot worse than banging some skeezeball, but it’s the same basic principles. In the end, the moral also stresses the importance of owning up to the wrongs you have committed, and accepting the punishments associated with them. Also, Murni almost marries her brother, but incest doesn’t really seem like a problem in this film’s self contained universe. Listen, just go watch this movie, it’s awesome.

As I mentioned above, the special effects in Queen of Black Magic really stand out as being pretty excellent for a low budget film of this caliber. They’re bloody, imaginative, and fantastically well executed, meaning that amateur films being made today have absolutely no excuse for shitty CG effects. You’re all lazy, do better.

Highly recommended.

B+

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MAHAKAAL!!!!

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Mahakaal (AKA The Monster) – 1993, Shyam Ramsay and Tulsi Ramsay

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Hey, did anybody out there enjoy Nightmare on Elm Street? Yes? Any chance that you might wanna see it again, only this time from India? No? Too bad, here it is, Mahakaal The Monster, which is, you guessed it, an Indian made rip-off the A Nightmare on Elm Street, produced by famed film-making super-siblings The Ramsay Brothers. Excited? No? Too bad!

Mahakaal the Monster is a poem written in mullets; there’s like, one man in this entire movie who doesn’t have AT LEAST one mullet, and his hair situation is even more suspicious.

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Tell me,  oh, wise one, do the carpets match the drapes?

The Plot~ When a murderous bogeyman starts to haunt the dreams of local youths, it is discovered that Shakaal, a black magic practicing child murderer who had been slain twenty years ago by an irate parent, has returned from the dead for vengeance. So, so much other shit happens in this movie also, but none of that is worth talking about. You see, Bollywood films are often three hours or more in length, and that’s a feat made possible by the addition of hours worth of total nonsense. You’ll be watching, and you’ll think, “okay, I know where we are in the story, we probably have like, 15 minutes left at most.” Wrong, how about an hour and a half? Almost none of which serves the film’s actual story, because again, these movies are padded more than Justin Bieber’s crotch.

Anyway, in terms of the plot, yeah, it’s literally just A Nightmare on Elm Street but with Indian people. If you want proof, just take a look at our dream killer, who in this film is named Shakaal:

shakaal old gregg combo

Shakaal on the left, and- shit, sorry, wrong guy…

shakaal freddy combo

There we go- Shakaal on the left, Freddy on the right.

Some deviations from the American original are worth mentioning; for instance; this time, the Indian version of Johnny Depp survives, and appears to have at least a basic understanding of Kung Fu (as do all male characters- get ready for some badly correographed fight scenes). Also, the final confrontation between our characters and Shakaal is overwhelmingly less creative than pulling him out of the dreamworld and  battling him in your Home Alone style boobytrap house, which is what happens in the American version. In Mahakaal, they just go find Shakaal in his torture pad and kill him with his own dungeon equipment, which was already set up for them and everything.

There are also major differences between Freddy Kruger, star of the actual Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, and Shakaal, our Bollywood off-brand dream slasher. Freddy, for instance, sports that cool, molten flesh look because he was burned to death by the pissed off parents of Springwood, and that is not at all the case in Mahakaal. Shakaal is already horribly scarred BEFORE he is “killed,” though we’re never really told why, and he isn’t burned to death by a mob, either. In Mahakaal, when the one Indian parent ballsy enough to take the law into his own hands finally goes after Shakaal, he doesn’t kill him at all, he instead just chucks the guy into a big crate and then attempts to burry him alive. When I say “attempts to,” it’s because this crate is really big, probably four feet tall and six fit long, so, large enough for an adult man to fit comfortably inside. When our lone avenging parent tries to burry his now captured nemesis, the hole he digs is very obviously less than two feet deep.

crate 1What do you think? Deep enough?

The crate doesn’t even come close to fitting. The worst part is that we even see him kick at it in utter futility, as if he could somehow rock the crate into place and get it to fall into a hole that he never dug. It’s embarrassing.

crate 2

Oh, Mahakaal. Come on.

Being a typical Bollywood film, Mahakaal is also ripe with exotic Indian flair, including the oft spoken of zest for Romance, for which the Indian people are well known.

romanceNice.

And there’s also music; plenty of it. Before you get too excited, no, Shakaal does not play guitar or host a rap battle, so you can forget about that dream becoming a reality right now. Our teens definitely get down, though; they launch awkwardly into several lengthy song and dance numbers, mostly about love and being happy; which might sound odd to you when you consider that you’re watching a fucking horror movie, but if you only learn one thing today, let it be this: Bollywood Films have NO problem with shifting tone constantly and artlessly, like a Hummingbird high on Cocaine. They will jump from frightening sequences of atmospheric, doom-laiden horror, to giddy, beach-party joy-overloads without hesitation or warning. They will do that over and over again, and that’s just the end of it.

Now… The music…It’s just terrible. In fact, it’s THIS terrible, but it IS still actual music, which makes it several rungs above American pop landscape on the long, gruesome ladder into the Hell’s lowest circle. This isn’t like when Nikki Minaj just Vanilla Iced Sir. Mixalot and then pretended like she wrote a song, no, these ARE real songs, however lame they might be. Mahakaal should be commended for that, but you are for sure going to hate every one of them. They’re annoying, lame, super loud, and badly produced… Getting through them is difficult.

And then we have the “comic relief….” In Mahakaal The Monster, we are constantly exposed to a character called Canteen, who is for sure, the movie’s real monster. Holy shit, dude, this guy is annoying. Like, “Steve Urkel during a writer’s strike” level annoying. The producers must have thought he’d be good for some real high-quality Hindi-Hillarity, cuz he’s in here goofin’ nonstop for hours upon hours, but I swear to you, he is the furthest thing from amusing. I really can’t stress this enough, I’d rather be water-boarded than watch this asshole clown around. If any of you were locked in a room with Canteen for over a minute, neither of you would come out alive. That’s where we’re at with him.

canteen 1Stare into his face and know despair.

And it gets worse. At one point in the film, our gang experiences car trouble after a rousing beach party singalong, and are thus forced to stay the night in a nearby hotel. Sounds like a promising horror movie setup, right? Well, it’s far too horrifying for my tastes, because when they arrive and meet the hotel’s manager, it’s just fucking Canteen with a Hitler mustache. canteen number 2Oh, shit, please, no…

Apparently this second Canteen is actually a long lost sibling, because, as Canteen #2 explains, when their father was a young buck he used to just rail and bail all over India, so now he’s got illegitimate children all over the freaking country. Let me tell you what, the apple could not have fallen farther from the tree, because Canteen will NEVER get laid, EVER. He signed up for a sex-ed class once, and it turned him down. Then, when he tried to get on the waiting list, it got a restraining order. Anyway, long story short, there are now TWO Canteens, meaning double the annoyance, which is a development so unspeakably dark that it would make Hellraiser’s Pinhead piss in his little gimp kilt.

I won’t harp on Canteen any further, because I think I’ve made my point, and anyway, there’s plenty of other things in this movie that are probably going to piss you off. From the painful musical numbers, to the alarmingly off-target attempts at humor, to the budgetary restrictions which remain evident start to finish, this film just isn’t an experience 99% of Americans are going to be able to sit through sober. The problem with that, though, is that you can’t judge Mahakaal as a movie by the reaction American have to it. Special considerations have to be made.

By the traditional, near globally-accepted academic criteria of how cinema works, Mahakaal, and indeed most Bollywood films, are staggeringly poor examples of the medium. These movies are as definable by their constant shortcomings as they are by their cultural origin, for reals. The problem with that way of thinking is that trying to assess a Bollywood film based upon traditional Hollywood standards is a fool’s errand to begin with, and could be compared to assessing the quality of a Motorcycle based on a criteria designed to judge pickup trucks. First question: Does it have four wheels? Answer: No. Verdict: This is a shitty pickup truck. Well, maybe, but it’s still an awesome motorcycle! Similarly, it’s not fair to dog on Bollywood because it doesn’t work like American movies do. What we have here is a product designed for a specific culture who want different things from their movie-going experience, and who are we to judge?

The truth is, it’s exactly the same flaws which Americans would see as glaringly wrong with the film that are, in fact, non-negotiable requirements for a Bollywood movie. They are, in no small way, demanded by the audience, who want long, rambling story structures which meander from one genre to the next, and which offer a bold mix of comedy, action, romance, and horror. Aside from the modest budget and excruciating exposure to Canteen, there are actually very few flaws here in Mahakaal which aren’t immediately nullified when one takes into account the honest fact that this is what India wants out of a movie. I believe the phrase often used these days is that “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.”

So, that explains the radically unorthodox structure found in Mahakaal, as well as the awkward blend of genres, but there are still many things about this film that I cannot explain. Behold:

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There, on the right: What the hell is that? An Iron Maiden Polo/Sweater hybrid?!!? Why would that ever exist anywhere?!!

Also;

cheer leader bear4What is this picture she’s hanging?! A cheerleader and a bear?! What the fuck?!

So, excusing all of it’s perceived “flaws” which are, in fact, required genre conventions, what can be said of Mahakaal’s individual merits? Well, it’s pretty damn fun, actually. How wild is it that a Bollywood rip off of A Nightmare on Elm Street even exists? That’s special! And also, it’s worth bringing up that although we’re excusing the fact that Mahakaal breaks many, many rules Western cinema has established as a protective mechanism to keep your movie from sucking, if we DIDN’T excuse those Bollywood traits, Mahakaal would STILL be better than many, many American movies which DO play by our rules. Compare this thing to…. say…. Horror of the Blood Monsters, or Sucker Punch, and Mahakaal comes out in the distant lead no matter what grading scale you use. The truth is, I wish India ripped off American movies more often. It’s kinda fun.

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B+

Attack of the Beast Creatures!!!

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Attack of the Beast Creatures ~ 1985, Michael Stanley

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Attack of the Beast Creatures is:

A) Not very much fun to re-watch
B) Not very much fun to write about
And
C) Notorious.

That’s a bad combo, from my perspective, but I’m gonna try and power through this one anyway, since I’m essentially obligated to by the Film Nerd’s Code. Which is all secret, so don’t ask about it.

The truth of the matter is that not a hell of a lot happens in this movie. It’s ridiculous, and I guess sorta fun to watch, but Attack of the Beast Creatures is also nothing more than a straight forward, A-to-B monster flick with essentially no subtext to analyze whatsoever. The plot concerns a life-boat full of well-to-do Americans who wind up shipwrecked on a mysterious Island somewhere in the North Atlantic. Upon reaching these grim and foreboding shores, there is immediately dischord amongst the castaways, most of which is generated by a single grumpy old bitch named Mr. Morgan. Morgan later becomes the group’s resident liability when he suffers a debilitating leg injury, and is also a total sack of assholes.

Shaken by their time at sea but still hoping to be rescued, the group establishes a sort of base-camp on the beach and splits up to look for food, shelter, and water. One of our thirsty explorers heads off into the forest on just such a mission and quickly stumbles upon what looks to be a standing body of fresh water, which is good, since, you know, humans drink water and stuff. BOOM, guess what, doofus, that ain’t water, it’s flesh melting acid that looks exactly like water! Now you’re melting to death! Yeah, apparently Beast Creatures Island has little acid lagoons and ponds all over it, so locating drinkable water that doesn’t go all Hennesy Viper on you when you drink it is instantly bumped up to priority one. At least, until the damn Beast Creatures show up.

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The Beast Creatures are, no surprise, the film’s real claim to fame- these little guys are famous for being some of the most feebly attempted movie monsters of the entire 1980’s. They look like cannibal themed treasure trolls which were probably purchased in bulk from a dollar store, and they can barely even move. They scurry around and gobble up people like terrestrial, humanoid pirahna, and are also apparently intelligent enough to practice some form of idol worship, but their most noteworthy contribution to the human experience is just that they looks fucking ridiculous. Without question, seeing a large group of adults clutching these toy figurines to their bodies and pretending that they’re being eaten alive is nothing short of hilarious, and realistically that’s the highlight of the movie. Thank you, Beast Creatures, the ways in which you have chosen to suck has brought much laughter and mirth to a world burdened with harsh, cruel realities, and we appreciate the much needed distraction you have provided.

CEb-U4CGkKGrHqEOKnEzw9fVWQBNR3WVG5Zw0_3What’s actually more shocking about Attack of the Beast Creatures is the various ways in which this movie doesn’t suck. The script is short on subtext, yes, but certainly much more coherent than what you might see in comparable, more respected films (like Pieces, or anything by Jess Franco, for instance), and a lot of the dialogue is well written and surprisingly naturalistic. Even some of the acting and photography is decent or better, so Attack of the Beast Creatures kinda feels like a full length version of a first-term film-school assignment, where the over-achievers are randomly grouped together with future drop outs to create a project, with radically unbalanced results. Some people here did a good job…. Others certainly didn’t. The end result is a strange beast indeed.

The music is an oddity too, it sucks for reals, yet contributes to the film’s atmosphere in a way that is more successful than almost any other single factor in play. It sort of sounds like the Magnum Opus of some dude who auditioned for Gary Numan’s backing band but couldn’t make the cut. It’s almost good, what we have here is a lush, haunting synth oddyssey that runs more or less the entire length of the picture, and feels appropriate for the spooky, erie vibe the movie is going for. I think it works, it almost feels like an ultra dumbed-down version of the score for Werner Herzog’s Aguirre: der Zorn Gottes, which is, admittedly, a really bizarre comparion to make, but here we are. I kinda want it on my iPod, and it feels like what Nicolas Winding Refn was probably jamming to in ’85.tumblr_m1w49dG27w1qi7zhio1_500

This movie has a reputation which is too deeply ingrained and widely dispersed to be in anyway effected by what I say here, and if you were ever going to watch this film, your opinion wasn’t going to be influenced by my review one way or the other. You know the drill, this movie took a running jump at “scary” and landed in “hilarious,” but it’s plenty fun all the same if you’re into that kind of thing. Worth watching if you and your friends dig the DIY MST3K experience, but if you’re a more centered cinema enthusiast, Attack of the Beast Creatures would probably just fuck up your night.

RECOMENDED DOUBLE FEATURE: Attack of the Beast Creatures and Piñata Survival Island.

B-

Godzilla: Toyko S.O.S.

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Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. – 2003, Masaaki Tezuka – Japan
tokyosos Wow! I had some low expectations for this one, but Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. is actually pretty solid!

The formula is good; Toho said “Hey, let’s make a Godzilla movie, but let’s have it be more like Top Gun, only without all the blatant homo-eroticism.” So they did. And it was cool! The air force setting really helps to keep our human characters interesting, they all have something going on that feels less stale than characters from other films in the series. We also have a dude from the original Mothra movie popping in as a secondary character in this one, which is done pretty well and helps the movie feel connected to the Showa era in a fun way.

As is tradition with post Showa era Godzilla flicks, Tokyo S.O.S. picks and chooses which film continuities it observes, this time serving as a direct sequel to Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla, but also acknowledging Gojira, and Mothra. In this continuity, Mechagodzilla is a man made weapon designed to take down Big Daddy G, and constructed partially from the skeleton of the monster from the original Godzilla film. Mothra and her tiny, magical, unison speaking fairy girls are not cool with this. Apparently, using the corpse of a slain monster to create the world’s most fearsome war machine is kinda pushing it, from an ethics standpoint, and Mothra wants a proper burial at sea for Godzilla senior, pronto. That’s trouble for we humans, though, because it would mean dismantling Mechagodzilla when we still desperately need him to defend our oh, so stompable human bodies from all the beast rampages we keep experiencing. Mothra respects that, so in order to sweeten the deal, she promises to protect mankind from Godzilla if we comply with her wishes, but also to kill us all if we fail to comply. Mothra is not good at negotiating. But anyway, it’s a good thing we called her bluff, because later in the film Godzilla kicks Mothra’s ass and without Mechagodzilla to save us we’d have been totally f’ed.

So, it’s pretty good. The monsters are well done, the human stuff is cool, and the whole movie is well made. There is an apparent desire to rely on practical effects and costume monsters over CG this time, and damn, keep it comin’, Toho, because Godzilla and Mothra look great. Probably the worst effect in the movie is the composite job used to make Mothra’s envoy look tiny, but even that is fine. We’ve seen that effect suck for 50 years now. We’re used to it.

Tokyo S.O.S. is yet another solid achievement for the Millennium Era, and, like it’s immediate predecessor, I’d call it one of the best post-Showa Godzilla movies yet made.  recommended for fans of the series.

B-

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Rebirth of Mothra III!!!!

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Rebirth of Mothra III – 1998, Okihiro Yoneda – Japan

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Alright, you guys… This is it. This is the tie breaker! This movie decides the fate of the Heisei Mothra trilogy… So far, we’ve got a kick ass first film and one sucky ass sequel. Rebirth of Mothra III is destined to tip the scales and be the deciding factor; will this trilogy will follow the Indianna Jones model (two rad films sandwiching a less than awesome middle movie) or if it will go the way of the Matrix franchise (one classic followed by two humiliating turds.)? There’s a lot riding on this film. What’s it gonna be, Toho? Can Rebirth of Mothra III salvage this series!?!

And the answer is: Well… Kinda. I guess.

The PLOT: Belvera, the villainous sister of our two tiny singing Mothra Maidens, hatches what must be her two billionth plan to rid the Earth of humans once and for all, and this time her evil scheme involves summoning King Ghidorah, here identified as the King of Terror, to come do her dirty work for her. Apparently, Ghidorah is actually the force which drove all dinosaur life to extinction way back before recorded history, so Belvera figures he’d be really good at doing the same thing to the human race. What she didn’t expect is that Ghidorah’s technique this time around would involve eating all the children of Japan on day one of his dragon occupation, which is pretty brutal. In order to do this, he first sucks them up into the sky using what appears to be magic and somehow transports them into a large, membranous dome, for safe keeping, kind of like a giant kaiju cookie jar. He also uses his evil psychic influence to possess Lora, one of the good little Mothra people, and turns her against her sister Mol. Some lines get crossed this time around that we haven’t seen crossed before, which really elevates the drama. Off to a good start!

Meanwhile, our principle human character is Shota Sonoda, a moody, sensitive boy who, I would approximate to be in the tween or early teen demographic… Can’t say for sure. Anyhow, Shota’s super mopey, and he has recently decided that he just isn’t going to go to school anymore, which, inexplicably, seems to be accepted as a decision he has the right to make by his parents and society. Can you do that in Japan? Just not go to school? Thank goodness you don’t have that option in America. The literacy rate would drop to zero within one generation’s time. Anyway, Shota’s aversion to school actually pays off when Ghidorah pays a little visit to the one place in town that promises the best crop of young’un’s for his giant dragon snack drawer, but his little brother and sister are not so lucky. They get sucked away into Ghidorah’s magical kid transportation device, and Shota decides he’s gotta do something about it.

Shota is also meant to hold together the narrative and provide a connection between the human world and the monster filled world of the Elias (that’s what the tiny women are actually called), which he does effectively. The Elias sisters really do have quite a lot going on in RoMIII, and it’s not inaccurate to suggest that they sort of occupy center stage for most of the film. After Lora has her brain invaded by the cold, menacing stare of Ghidorah and goes all stab happy on Mol, she and Belvera both wind up stuck inside Ghidorah’s Snack pod, destined to be munched up by a nigh impervious, three-headed hell dragon from space in the very near future. That shit ain’t good. Mol is, at this point, at her lowest, and isolated from her two sisters the same way that Shota is from his family, so the two of them happen upon one another and decide to join forces and summon Mothra to come save the day. This all sounds promising enough, but we’re coming up on a major hurdle that RoMIII doesn’t exactly clear, so heads up.

You see, other than some unforgivably bad CG, this movie has managed to to kick ass pretty reliably up until this point, but this is the moment where Rebirth of Mothra III really starts to push its luck. It kinda goes without saying that Mothra on his/her best day really is no match for Ghidorah, perhaps the most formidable of Godzilla’s scaley, giant rogues gallery, and understanding this to be true, Mol announces a plan to give Mothra an edge. This plan relies heavily upon…

…Time travel.

Fuck.

The last, and only other time Toho has attempted to work time travel into one of their ‘Zilla-Verse films was the horrible, jaw-droppingly stupid Godzilla VS King Ghidorah, which was released seven years prior. Godzilla VS King Ghidorah made no sense whatsoever, it was an unmitigated disaster, a direct insult to human intelligence, and the single worst time travel film I have ever seen in my life. For Toho to be halfway home with the best instalment of a better than average trilogy and then to borrow so heavily from one of its worst fumbles of all time is a decision I can’t possibly wrap my mind around. Who thought this was a good idea? If I was reading this script my heart would have stopped the first time I saw “back in time” printed on a page. Oh, hell no, not again…

But here we are, with our second Toho film of the 1990’s to include both time travel and King Ghidorah. So… How does Rebirth of Mothra III compare to the epic fart in an elevator that was Godzilla Vs King Ghidorah?

Much, much better, thankfully, but that’s saying almost nothing. Godzilla Vs King Ghidorah suffered from a terminally convoluted plot and time travel that was excruciatingly nonsensical. In this movie, they handle the basic concepts involved with traveling through time much better (as in, the movie doesn’t seem like it was written by a six year old), but the story is still plagued by strange and embarrassing lapses in basic logic. Truth time: Toho should just stay the fuck away from time travel. No good has ever come of it, they just don’t seem to understand it, and they sure as shit don’t know how to use it in a story. I love that studio, and I make this statement out of a desire to see them do well, but so far, these attempts at time travel movies have been shameful detours into a world of madness and stupidity, and I just think enough is enough.

Anyway… Mothra goes back in time to throw down with a slightly younger Ghidorah, who is, at that time, munching down on some super dumb looking dinosaur hand puppets. The two monsters start to kick one another’s ass, and we periodically cut back to present day, where we see Ghidorah thrashing about in pain, basically the time travel equivalent of “Oh, I remember when that moth dude fought me back in the Cretaceous era, I’m really upset about that now!” Amongst all of this commotion, fire, death, destruction, and kidnapped, hysterical Japanese children, Belevera suddenly has her moment of clarity. Apparently, when she worked tirelessly toward a species wide genocide for all those countless centuries, she just wasn’t really thinking it through. Now that it looks like she managed to actually pull it off, Belvera starts get’s cold feet and opts to pull the plug on the whole deal.

This is a major emotional beat in the movie, and it’s what basically justifies the argument that Belvera is our main character. Now totally a good guy after all, Belvera does a historic flip flop back to Team Mothra, thereby uniting all of our principle cast against the menace of King Ghidorah, who currently getting his ass kicked millions of years ago by Mothra, but only just now is reacting to it, apparently.

Back in the Dino-Days, Mothra manages to toss Baby Ghidorah into a volcano, a means of monster disposal with a less than stellar success rate, but we still pretend that this was a victory and that Ghidorah is totally dead. The cost was high, however; critically injured in the showdown, Mothra crashes into the Earth, essentially down for the count. He/She/It is soon saved by the mercifull cocoons of some wiggley little Mothra Larvae who happen upon him/her, and there Mothra waits, cloaked in the nourishing embrace of caterpillar silk. until present day, when he can explode out of the Earth like a shiny, winged Jack-In-The-Box.

So, things seem all good with our happy little characters back in modern day Japan, but everyone is a little confused about how they even know who Ghidorah is if he had been killed millions of years ago. I count this as a major victory, because it illustrates a much more advanced understanding of what going back in time would actually do than was ever evident in the aforementioned Godzilla Vs King Ghidorah, which was, again, the ramblings of a simpleton made celluloid, and I totally am willing to dismiss the fact that if King Ghidorah was the thing that killed off all the dinosaurs, then killing him back in the Cretaceous period would therefore result in a future still dominated by giant lizards and humans probably wouldn’t exist. That’s, like, the kind of stuff Toho will learn about in school next year, but at least they’re progressing.

Suddenly, and in an abuse of common sense which is mild in serverity, a firey, volcano charged King Ghidorah suddenly appears in the center of a floating ball of flame, and all the kids get zapped right back into his alternate universe dragon cookie jar or whatever. “Oh, shit, what now?!” Everyone says. Just then, a mountainside gives way, revealing Mothra’s ancient cocoon, and it cracks open to reveal a new, shiny, super Mothra, which kicks Ghidorah’s ass. This final Mothra redesign feels lame and over the top to me. If the four winged Mothra from the last movie is X-Wing Mothra, this is basically Jason X Mothra. Anyway. So, super metal future Mothra kills Ghidorah, oh boy, happy ending.

From an early point it’s obvious that this was a movie with a lot more talent behind it than Rebirth of Mothra II was, and you can really feel the jump in quality just pouring out of the screen from the very start of the picture. Without question, we’ve left that regrettable middle child of a film in the dust, and that’s excellent news. As for wether or not this beats the first film in the trilogy; I think the jury is still out, but it’s close. The foray into time travel is a hard blow to overcome, it’s not a mortal wound exactly, we can cope, but this thing would have been King of Mothra mountain and now it really can’t make that claim. As for how the rest of the film holds up, many of the effects are pretty lousy, which is par for the course from Toho’s post Showa output, but it’s shot really well and the plot feels much more dramatic, which is excellent. The time travel thing really is RoMIII greatest flaw, but beyond that, it’s one of Toho’s better films out of the 1990’s, and it’s certainly better than many of Godzilla’s more recent adventures.

The themes we see in Rebirth of Mothra III are, much like the first film, themes of unity, and the reconciliation of the family. Our humans, the Sonoda family, are a refreshing departure from the Gotoh family (our characters in the first movie), because they’re not in the least bit fractured by emotional issues or inter-personal drama. This is a family who is close emotionally, and so they are instead separated physically, by a damn dragon. Regarding our other characters, we get a much closer look into the family drama facing the three Elias sisters than we have in the past, and the film is very much about the redemption of Belvera and the healing of whatever rift tore the three of them apart to begin with, which is interesting. Oddly enough, RoMIII is much less interested in exploring environmental ethics than it’s two predecessors, which is a curious switch up. Up till this point it seemed like this was Toho’s Eco-concious fable trilogy, but those ideas have been pushed way off into the background here, for whatever reason. I don’t miss them, honestly.

It’s pretty strong, all in all, but Rebirth of Mothra III suffers from it’s time travel gaffs and would have been better off without the over-complication. Still recommended!

B-

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Godzilla Vs Mothra AKA Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle For Earth!

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Godzilla Vs Mothra AKA Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle For Earth– 1992, Takao Okawara – Japan

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So… If “MOTHra” is a MOTH… Then “BATtra” is a bat?

Nope! Battra is also a damn moth. Sorry, suckers. That would have been cool, though.

Anyway…

After the painfully convoluted Godzilla VS King Ghidorah, a time travel movie that doesn’t understand time travel, we have Godzilla VS Mothra– a much more streamlined, point A to point B story, with no time travel and no frumpy ginger androids. Hooray!

Godzilla VS Mothra is another environmental fable style Godzilla flick, and this time they really play up the spiritual aspects of Mothra that have been touched on and/or implied in past movies. In this film, Mothra’s role has been redefined as a quasi ethereal guardian monster, one of the tools the Earth uses to maintain balance. Mothra and Co. become representations of Nature, and are presented as above our subjective concepts of morality, instead serving as mechanisms for a more universal, inarguable form of natural justice. As such, even when they make the hard choices that seem difficult to we feeble humans, they are still framed as being “The good guys,” because that’s just how it has to be. Therefore, Godzilla, by default, slides into his role as “the bad guy,” and represents science, hubris, and the tragically meddlesome nature of the human race. It’s sort of funny, at this point in the franchise, Toho has really turned on science in general. It’s hard to imagine the same Futurist attitude seen in Son Of Godzilla or Destroy All Monsters belonging to the same franchise as GVM; and by this point the series appears to advocate an almost neopaganist return to nature and spiritualism, something eerily in step with the Neopaganist movement in Europe at that time. Those same sentiments exist today, so if anything Godzilla VS Mothra is more meaningful now than it ever was.

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THE PLOT- Meet Taukya Fujita- the Japanese Indianna Jones! As a rugged, “Devil May Care” tomb raider/scoundrel, Takuya’s adventurer’s spirit gives him the wherewithal to survive inhospitable jungles and dodge ancient booby traps, as well as child support payments! That’s right, Takuya has totally and completely skipped out on raising his daughter, a fact brought to our attention when he is sprung out of jail by his babymomma Masako, as well as by a sniveling, spineless yes-man called Kenji. The two represent some giant Japanese land developing corporation, and they need Takuya’s help investigating an island owned by their employers. Although Masako resents Takuya for his failures as a parent, she knows him to be a capable jungle adventurer, and she bites the bullet and puts her feelings aside for the near-term. Taykua, however, is predictably scoundrel-like in his behavior, yet he eventually agrees to help, and so the three set out to Infant Island, who fans of the Showa Godzilla films will remember as the island where Mothra lives. I think the plan was that both parents should leave for this dangerous island, so that that way if anything happened, their child would be left orphaned. It’s a “put all your eggs in one basket and then ship that basket to a dangerous island” strategy. SPEAKING OF EGGS; that’s what they discover on infant island, Mothra’s egg. It seems that a recent meteorite impact along a fault line in the ocean triggered landslides and Earthquakes which had uncovered Mothra’s egg, as well as the egg of Battra; an evil, spikier, cooler moth monster. Although Infant Island is uninhabited (or is it?), ancient cave paintings are discovered by our team, and from these they learn about Mothra and Battra, two sides of the same monster coin, destined to bring balance to the force, or the Earth, or whatever. They also encounter the two tiny women of Infant Island, Mothra staples from past Toho films.

The tiny ladies tell us a little bit more about the situation at hand. Apparently, they are called “Cosmos,” and are actually ancient creatures from space. Sounds about right. Also, the Earth is hurting and we’re mean to it or whatever. Whatever, Cosmos- Hey, you guys, I know; let’s yank this giant egg out the Earth and see if we can make money off it somehow! So, that’s what they do.

Mothra’s egg never makes it to Japan, however. That same meteorite that shook up Infant Island also woke up and pissed off Godzilla, and he’s eager to let everyone know how giant and angry he is. From here, we have a three way monster confrontation stretched out over the rest of the film. Battra shows up, and he/she/it is pretty darn cool. Initially, Mothra and Battra are at each others throats, until Godzilla intervenes and appears poised to slay Battra. Mothra saves Battra’s life, and after some weird, tender kaiju moth exchanges which we can never hope to understand and probably wouldn’t want to if we could, Battra and Mothra reconcile, accepting one another’s role as being crucial to the survival of the Earth. They then team up and kick Godzilla’s ass. This metaphor is repeated, and solidified, through the reconciliation of Takuya and Masako, who patch things up and accept that their duties as parents to their daughter supersede their own selfish ambitions. Following this metaphor through to finish, this makes the daughter a representation of the Earth, and at the end of Godzilla Versus Mothra, mankind pledges to be less of a shit head in our role as stewards of our planet. I’m sure that lasted like, a week, then we steam rolled Tibet to make way for a parking structure.

So, the central metaphor for Godzilla VS Mothra is fairly well pronounced, and the composition is solid. Beyond this, we have a mixed bag of ups and downs, but over all the film is pretty good. I think I’m going to list this.

THE GOOD

  • Battra is a cool, interesting new character. He might seem more original than he actually is, given that he’s just an evil Mothra doppelgänger, but he still feels like an expansion of the Mothra universe, and not just a retred.
  • Our human characters are enjoyable, especially Takuya.
  • The more spiritual/cosmic angle on Mothra feels appropriate, and it solidifies Mothra as being distinct and unique next to her kaiju colleagues.
  • This is the first time Mothra looked like she could actually put up a decent fight against Godzilla.

THE BAD

  • The monsters don’t really look very good. Godzilla’s once rubbery hyde now looks too shiny and plastic, as do the other monsters. They look more like something your kid would play on in a McDonald’s Playplace, and their motions look jerky and robotic.
  • The movie could stand to have a little more monster action.

Over all, a pretty good entry for the Heisei series.

B+

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Godzilla VS Biollante

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Godzilla VS Biollante ~ 1989, Kazuki Ohmori – Japan

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Ah, 1989…. The year the Berlin Wall fell. The year Nintendo released the first model of it’s popular Gameboy system, and the year when Godzilla would face off against a gigantic plant monster, cloned from a fusion of his own cells, plant DNA, and the mysteriously captured soul of a dead Japanese woman. Ah, memories! Plus, Batman came out that year!

Yes, over thirty years had passed since Godzilla’s debut in 1954, and Big Green was now going strong in a rebooted franchise, called the ‘Heisei series” by film fans and the terminally nerdy. Godzilla VS Biolante is a direct sequel to Return of Godzilla/Godzilla 1985, and it’s pretty darn strong. Also, my BluRay informed me that this film was rated PG for “Traditional Godzilla violence,” so that’s a major victory, I feel.

THE PLOT~ Following Godzilla’s attack on Tokyo in Return of Godzilla, numerous little chunks of ‘Zilla flesh which had been blasted off of his leathery hide are found around the now desolated city. These chunks become highly prized because of their applications in science, and terrorism, and thus multiple nations and private entities enter into small scale violent conflicts to obtain them. As is always the case, one particular chunk of Godzilla cells finds it’s way into the hands of a weasely man in fingerless gloves, who returns them to his employer in the fictional Middle Eastern nation of Saradia. Saradia has ecological plans for the Godzilla cells, and hands them over to their go-to science man, the Japanese scientist Dr. Shiragami. However, before any sort of crazy biological nightmare can be crafted, the Saradian Institute of Technology is straight up bombed, Shirigami’s lab is destroyed, and his daughter Erika is killed. No big deal, though, cuz somehow he splices her DNA with some flowers. “That outta take care of it.”

So, fast forward a few years, Shirigami is living in Japan again with his flowers, which he believes have his daughters soul in them. Miki, a psychic from Japan’s “Mental Science Exploitation Center” (good name guys) is invited out to pow-wow with Shirigami’s garden, because she apparently can talk to plants really good. Whatever. Long story short, scientists uncover a new application for the Godzilla cells; theoretically, they can be used to genetically engineer a new form of bacteria which like to gobble up radiation, and that could help neutralize the threat of atomic warfare, as well as kill Godzilla himself, if he ever crawls out of that volcano you chucked him in back in the last movie. Again, numerous government and private entities enter into a deadly game of espionage and terrorism to obtain the known Godzilla cell samples, and eventually some find their way into Shirigami’s hands yet again. “I’m totally adding these to my flower/daughter,” he thinks. And he does. Oh my goodness, what do you know, giant Godzilla/plant monster is created. Dr. Shiragami, you have outdone yourself this time. Your efforts to save your daughter have transformed her tortured soul into a towering, hideous insult to God that must be killed. I expect you to toss that “World’s #1 Dad” mug right in the damn garbage, you twisted son of a bitch.

The monster, called Biolante, mostly just hangs out in a lake until Godzilla comes and kicks it’s ass, causing it to turn into glowing spores and fly into space (For real, this is what happens.) Then, it’s up to Japan to defeat Godzilla, which they work really hard to do, but can’t seem to accomplish. Finally, Biolante Spore-Warps back down from space, now in an improved, less plant/more monster type shape, and beats on Godzilla real hard until he just can’t take it anymore, and then he hops back into the ocean.

In case watching giant, awesome monsters scrabbling to kill each other isn’t the reason you chose to watch a Godzilla movie, Toho has your back, and this battle is followed up by what we all have really been waiting for, two adult men in expensive suits fighting clumsily in the mud. Also, at the very end we see Biolante has transformed into a giant rose and is floating around in outer space. Whatever, that’s stupid as hell, but the movie is still pretty cool, and at least there aren’t any aliens in it.

It really is pretty good. The miniature sets are sub-par, but the monster effects are great. Biolante is an excellent monster, the design is very well done, reminding one of The Deadly Spawn more than a little, and the idea behind the creature makes her the most original monster Godzilla has faced since Hedorah, easily. In fact, Biolante opens up the door for the franchise to explore the moral implications of genetic tampering, which is an issue we couldn’t have adequately addressed in the Showa era, yet the theme seems to be very “at home” within the Godzilla metaphor. After all, he’s a damn mutated dinosaur, so in a way, the issue of biological experimentation has kinda piggy-backed it’s way through the franchise, waiting for science to catch up, so we could really get into the nitty gritty. It’s pretty great.

Also, the monster dental work in this movie is first rate. Those teeth look gross, and shiny, and also kinda real. Good job, monster-tooth technician, whoever you are.

B+

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Terror of Mechagodzilla!!!

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Terror of Mechagodzilla ~ 1975, Ishiro Honda – Japan

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After twenty-one years and fifteen movies, the original Godzilla franchise comes to an end with the solid, yet sadly anti-climactic Terror of Mechagodzilla. This is also the first Godzilla film Ishiro Honda has directed since 1969’s Godzilla’s Revenge, and it’s good to see him back for the finale. Honda pulls out all the stops this time around, embracing more dynamic quick cuts and dramatic camera angles, as well as some hip 70’s split screen techniques, all more typical of fellow Godzilla director Jun Fukuda’s work than of his own. It’s almost like he wanted one more opportunity to prove that he could beat these youngsters at their own game, and it does certainly level the playing field a bit. While Honda’s work is invaluable to the kaiju lexicon, his composition was always governed by more classic sensibilities. With Terror of Mechagodzilla we’ve got that masterful Honda style, but with a little of Fukuda’s zazz thrown in. That’s a strong mix, yo.

The downside: It’s damn aliens again.

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THE PLOT~ After the destruction of Godzilla’s robot doppelgänger in Godzilla Vs Mechagodzilla, Japanese scientists travel to the supposed undersea wreckage site, in hopes of retrieving the pieces of said robot so that they can use them to do terrible, terrible things (I’m sure), but to their surprise, they instead find Titanosaurus, a huge, aquatic dinosaur, right where Mechagodzilla should be. Oh hell! Titanosaurus’ existence was theorized years ago by a prominent scientist named Dr. Shinji Mafune (played by franchise favorite Akihiko Hirata!), to which the scientific community responded “A dinosaur?! What are you, crazy? Get this guy out of here!” I don’t really understand anyone’s reaction to Titanosaurus in this movie, even the present day scientists act like the discovery of a living dinosaur is a huge deal, when Japan is decimated by warring dinosaurs like, twice a week at this point. Remember, guys? You see dinosaurs every day? You all probably know someone who has been killed by a dinosaur at this point? Why is one more dinosaur so damn mind blowing? Whatever, you guys. Anyway. We Earthlings would soon regret our treatment of Mafune, because after years in isolation and disgrace, this hombre has gone coo coo for cocoa puffs, big time. It’s so bad that he’s actually betrayed mankind and formed a partnership with dastardly space aliens, here to conquer the Earth and wipe out human civilization, so we really should have been nicer to him about his freaking dinosaur.

These aliens need Mafune, because his intellect is so substantial that even a race of beings who have mastered space travel think he’s pretty damn smart. Logically, however, they have to know that they can trust him, so as a means of further guaranteeing Mafune’s loyalty to their evil cause, these aliens use their far-out space-technology to revive his daughter Katsura after she is killed in a lab accident. Granted, she’s a damn cyborg now, but Mafune is good with this. He and the aliens then hatch a two-fold invasion plan; one; Mafune’s state of the art “animal controlling device” is rigged up and used to manipulate Titanosaurus into smashin’ shit and killin’ folks. Two; using technology based on Mafune’s designs, Mechagodzilla is repaired and deployed for a similar purpose. Without Mafune’s knowledge, however, the aliens bind Mafine’s robo-daughter to Mechagodzilla, meaning that if one of them dies, so does the other, just in case the good doctor should decide to flip flop back over to Team Earthling. Looks like Mafune’s really in it for the long haul now.

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Meanwhile, Interpol, aided by a marine biologist called Akira Ichinose, have been sniffin’ around Titanosaurus, as well as the missing Mechagodzilla pieces, and soon the two sides meet in a dance of espionage, gunfire, and shiny, spaceman costumes with stupid helmets. Ichinose develops romantic feelings for Katsura Mafune, unaware that she is 1; In league with would be Earth conquerors from space and 2; A damn cyborg. My favorite line in the movie comes toward the end, when Ichinose discovers the truth about Katusra, and tells her “Even if you are a cyborg, I love you.” We shouldn’t be surprised, this is a culture where grown men have developed committed, romantic relationships with body pillows. A cyborg is like a body pillow in many ways.

Also, Godzilla eventually shows up. He’s not in this thing enough. That’s a major beef for me.

It’s all a mixed bag, as always. While it’s impossible to ignore the significant updates Honda has made to his screen language repertoire, he doesn’t ever employ the use of these more jazzy techniques to the degree that Fukuda does, and they actually stand out more because they’re so isolated to key sequences, like when Titanosarus rises up out of the sea. Fukuda had also pushed the envelope in how violent the monster battles were allowed to get, which included the use blood effects, and that really heightened the drama, Those effect shots are largely absent from this entry (although Mecha-G’s revolving finger-rocket punches a hole in Godzilla’s chest at one point, and that’s pretty heavy). While I don’t want to say that blood is mandatory for Godzilla movies now or ever, it did help add a sense of desperation and risk to the conflicts when it was used well in the past, and it’s hard to step backwards from that without losing some of the momentum the audience has now come to expect.

One thing that Honda does do that surprised me more than a bit; Damn android nipples! While Katsura is being fiddled with and modified by our aliens, we get a weird, uncomfortable gander at her bare chest. Now, see here, Toho, we Westerners have demonized the hell out of that whole region of the female anatomy for centuries, so toss a blanket over her or something. Get back to widespread destruction and the death of human beings, what a woman has under her clothes is a most dark and sinful thing, and we want no part of your freaking space martian peep-show.

Also problematic; the aliens themselves. They don’t even appear to be the same aliens from the prior film, which would really have helped sugarcoat the situation. These aliens come from “Black hole third planet,” and are profoundly uninteresting. Past Godzilla films have done a much better job making their aliens distinct, as well as elevating the Earth Vs Aliens conflict to make it feel more global, and more dramatic. The best example of this was probably Destroy All Monsters, but the aliens in Terror of Mechagodzilla are maybe my least favorite of all the Showa E.T. Interlopers. Truly, they are nothing special, and when you do something over and over and over again for years and years, dammit, you need to make it special somehow.

A highlight I wanted to mention; Akihiko Hirata’s performance as Dr. Mafune. Firstly, he’s been with the franchise from the beginning, so it’s cool having him back in a prominent role as this series comes to a close. He also does a good job in this role even without acknowledging his position as an original cast member, and he’s likely to stand out as especially memorable even if this is the first Godzilla film you watch. He looks like a Japanese Einstein, and his portrayal of a brilliant mind driven to madness is enjoyably manic. While most of the cast is likable, he stands above the rest in Terror of Mechagodzilla as being a real asset.

Beyond it’s glaringly scant Godzilla and monster screen time, the film is pretty solid, but not perfect. Even excluding Gojira, Honda has shot much, much better Godzilla films before this one, And Terror Of Mechagodzilla doesn’t feel like a big enough deal. Past entries in the Showa cannon were made with the understanding that they would be the final Godzilla film, so they managed to go out with a bang in a way that Terror of Mechagodzilla doesn’t. It’s no kind of finale, and it doesn’t even feel deliberately open-ended, the film just ends, as its predecessors had done, and that was that. Given that this was the last time audiences would see Big G for a while, it would have been nice to enjoy a better send off, but I suppose we aren’t often given that luxury in life.

I’m getting all philosophic here!

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