Tag Archives: Guilala

Godzilla Commercials Part 2

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This entry chronicles commercials starring Godzilla-like creatures and other kaiju. We got some wacky-looking monsters and some just different enough to not get sued monsters both trying to get us to buy their wares. Check out Part 1 for more commercials, and stay tuned for Part 3, which will be where I totally nerd out so much it will frighten some of you.

Bembos – I had no idea what Bembos was until I saw this
not only is there a King Kong creature running through the city, but a Godzilla-ish monster shows up at the end!
Bembos is a hamburger chain somewhere in South America, and make big hamburgers. The only thing big enough to satisfy this gorilla, who grabs one and bites and bites, finally getting stuffed. Too stuffed to play with the raspy Godzilla clone at the end. That Godzilla clone has the most demonic voice I have ever heard. It is crazy. I like it!

[FLOWPLAYER=http://tarstarkas.net/movies/gc/BEMBOS.flv,320,270]

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The Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G8 Summit Picture Review

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[adrotate banner=”1″]If you want to read a version of this review set up like a normal TarsTarkas.NET review, go here. This is a picture-heavy version made to show off some of the visuals and be used on a message board.

The Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G8 Summit is less of a giant monster movie and more of a giant political satire. This many confuse many people who think it will be 90 minutes of a goofy-looking chicken monster tearing up Japan. Instead, it is 90 minutes of goofy looking politicians throwing one failed scheme after another at Guilala (the monster) until finally journalism and small town values save the day again. The film is directed by cult movie maker Minoru Kawasaki of Crab Goalkeeper and Executive Koala fame. The monster Guilala was in the old 1967 film The X from Outer Space and wasn’t seen again until this 2008 film. Probably because Guiala is one of the most ridiculous looking monsters ever.

Let us begin!

Welcome to the G8 Summit! The G8 in 2008!

Can you name all eight world leaders?

Italian Prime Minster Silvio Berlusconi ate a sour meatball

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is from Canada so let’s feel sorry for him, eh!

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is the hottest German Chancellor in the film!

French President Nicolas Sarkozy spends this film nailing a Japanese model instead of the French one he nails in real life.

American President Berger – That’s right, he isn’t a real person only a representative of a person! That’s because George W. Bush sucks soooooo much they had to replace him with a completely fake person to keep Bush from ruining the movie by existing in it.

Russian President Putin looks nothing like the real Putin but they call him that and he does secret spy assassin stuff so it must be him.

This is Japanese Prime Minister Ibe, who is the fake name for Former Prime Minister Abe, who resigned shortly before the G8 in real life due to diarrhea! The producers were already ticked off that they cast this guy so they give him diarrhea also.

I’m that Brown guy from the UK and I like to point.

Let’s get the freaking movie started!

Two reporters stumble across a village doing crazy dances to their crazy moon god

There is not God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet..

Back in G8 Meeting Land, the French President is getting his J-Seduction on!

When suddenly a Chinese spaceship crashes!

It carried a spore that grew into a giant monster named Guilala! Frakking Chinese!

Not this again!

China, you will have to pay for those power lines!

Guilala then begins to glow!

Because he turned into a beack ball and is flying to a volcano so the movie can save money by not building a giant miniature city set!

The G8 Panel watches, then American President Berger convinces them to become an A-Team and take out Guilala so they can all get reelected!

They come up with a battle plan…

Kenny disagrees with the plan…

Get the Hell out, Kenny!

The three generals who are all veteran kaiju actors get some help

from a scientist guy on a tv screen

Meanwhile, the free market is hard at work producing jobs selling Guilala Spam. Go capitalism!

Generals talk

The monster squawks

Let’s blow this freakazoid up, Japan style!

Oh, snap, he’s eating the missile!

The Japanese PM Abe quits, but is replaces by the Former Japanese PM Koizumi! Circle of life…

Let Italy plan the next attack because they used to be Rome (what the hell kind of logic is that?)

So we lure this monster…

With a missile…

That spins around!!!

Then he falls in a hole! Wait, he just climbs out?? Damn! No wonder Rome fell…

Italy fails, so now Russia will try.

We shall assassinate him with radioactive elements…and deny it.

We saw what you wrote about us in the newspaper, Guilala!

Chase the flying dragon!

Hey, he just falls asleep but doesn’t die! Russia fails at killing the monster like they fail at being a democracy.

Now Germany will give it a go…

Ich bin ein Guilala

Germany gassing someone? I never saw it coming!

Guilala just laughs at their pathetic gas attempt!

So let’s dance!

Germany just got served.

Meanwhile, those reporters remember two wooden planks in the village…Guilala

…And another monster!

Let’s ask this old guy who is probably a famous actor I don’t know

He shows them the magic ancient parchment with monsters on it.

This causes the female reporter to hallucinate paintings of her favorite actor Beat Takeshi

Still hallucinating. Japanese women are crazy.

Check out this villager!

Anyway, this is the god they worship

Let us do crazy ethnic rituals to appease the golden idol while our world leaders fail due to failures that are us appointing them!

The new plan (from Britain) is to give Guilala some headphones!

WTF, Linkin Park???

NOOOooooOOOOooOOOoOOOOO!!!!!

But the plan fails when the headphones fall off. Churchill would kick your butt, Brown!

Suddenly, Koizumi rips off his mask…

He’s Kim Jong-Il!!!

Yes, really!

Shock and Awe!

And all the translators are North Korean Agents

Even this one that Sarkozy is banging instead of being captured. She let’s him know that they are all spies!

Guilala smashes up more stuff

As North Korea plans to nuke the monster!

All nuclear missiles are controlled by a giant red button.

I, the French President, will defeat you by opening my towel!

Real shock and awe!

For once it works and France saves the day for the first time since the Revolutionary War!

President Berger says to Kim Jong-Il “Sucks to be you!” He really says that.

The agent girls laugh knowing that Kim Jong-Il has activated the secret missile button in his glasses! Japan is doomed!

TV Scientist guy explains..

If Guilala is nuked, each piece will grow into a new Guilala thanks to the power of nuclear radiation! Sort of like Gremlins.

The missile is coming, Japan is frakked!

Oh no!

Oh no!! Wait, that’s not a mushroom…

It’s some gold dude! Goldar?

Buh???

Whu?

It is Take-majin, the guy that village was worshipping!

And the missile is stuck up his butt!

Guilala is shocked at this sodomy humor!

Take-Majin starts to toss Guilala around like any good moon god should!

He’s also crossed-eyed

Take-Majin was on WWE for many years

Now to go all Krull on you!!

Totally a practical weapon!

The spinning blade of death flies…

Guilala loses his head over it!

And his body blows up! But in the way that doesn’t make lots of other Guilalas. Just go with it, okay?

And we all learned a valuable lesson: all politicians are dumb, but crazy regional religions will save the world from Chinese space chickens.

The end!

Credits dance!

The Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G8 Summit (Review)

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The Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G8 Summit

aka Girara no gyakushû: Tôya-ko Samitto kikiippatsu aka Guilala’s Counterattack: Lake Toya Summit Crisis

2008
Directed by Minoru Kawasaki

Minoru Kawasaki has been given the nickname of late as the “Ed Wood of Japan.” I think this nickname is misleading, because Minoru Kawasaki’s films aren’t bad, they are just really weird. The kind of weird that plays well to international cult audiences but if you try to describe them to your coworkers they just look at you weird and then avoid talking movies with you in future conversations. He first burst in the international scene with Calamari Wrestler in 2004, about a squid that showed up at wrestling matches. His other films include Executive Koala – about a koala executive who may have murdered his wife, Crab Goalkeeper – about a crab that is a goalkeeper on a soccer team, The World Sinks Except Japan – a parody of The Sinking of Japan film (this was also Kawasaki’s first film filled with political satire), Kabuto-O Beetle – another wrestling film with a giant beetle, The Rug Cop – a parody of 1970’s Japanese cop tv shows involving a living toupee, and the upcoming Neko Râmen Taishô – about a cat who runs a Ramen stand. This resume makes him the perfect person to helm the return film for the giant monster Guilala. (He actually did work with giant monsters on Ultraman Tiga.)

Guilala first appeared in 1967’s The X from Outer Space (aka Uchi Daikaiju Girara, literally Giant Space Monster Guilala.) This was the first daikaiju film from Shochiku. After Guilala was brought to Earth as a spore it grew into a giant monster and rampaged until it was coated with Guilalalium, which returned it into a spore and it was shot back into space. The goofy monster design is probably what the film is best remembered for. There have been rumors for years of Guilala returning, most noticeably the long-standing rumor that he would fight Gappa, another Japanese monster who was a one-shot deal from the Nikkatsu studios. And now Guilala reappears years later in The Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G8 Summit (as well as a promotional exercise video released around the time of the movie’s release in theaters in 2008 that I have been unable to track down!) After the film was released in Japan, Guilala showed up again in the US in a commercial for Ladders, some job website.

The Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G8 Summit is not a daikaiju movie in so much as it is political satire set against the backdrop of a monster attack. The political caricatures are independent enough that you don’t need to know who they are to follow along, but if you are versed in foreign affairs than you get a whole new layer of jokes that others will miss.

The G8 Summit is a forum for governments of eight nations of the northern hemisphere. The leaders of the eight member nations each get represented here as exaggerated caricatures, though how exaggerated you are can vary. There is also a few changes from who actually attended the G8 Summitt due to political changes in power that happened after the script was already in production. The most noticeably is that Prime Minister Shinz? Abe hosts the summit here, while in reality the 2008 G8 Summit in Japan was actually hosted by former Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, who took over after Abe’s surprise resignation. The Russian president is also called Putin, though the Russian president at the time of the meeting was Dmitri Medvedev (and the actor resembles him more than Putin.) All other minor differences are listed below in the Social Studies 101 section. But first we need to introduce the non-political characters:

Sumire Sumidagawa (Natsuki Kato) – A reporter who stumbles across a village that worships the one thing that can save mankind from the evil Guilala.
Sanpei Toyama (Kazuki Kato) – A cameraman for Sumire who joins her in her discovery of Take-Majin and the prophecy.
Guilala (Hurricane Ryu) – Guilala returns 31 years after being sent back into space to strike again at mankind. The leaders of the free world are defeated by him one by one. But can a small village defeat Guilala?
Take-Majin (??? and Beat Takeshi (voice)) – Called The Legendary Savior. Fights Guilala after being awakened by the prayers of the Lake Toya villagers. 50 meters tall weighing 10,000 tons. Take-Majin is a takeoff of the Daimajin monster.



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