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Godzilla vs. Megalon comic book
We got a March of Godzilla 2011 bonus item!
In these scans swiped from Magic Carpet Burn (a blog you should read or I’ll call you an idiot!), Prof. Grewbeard shares with us his four page Godzilla vs. Megalon souvenir comic book he got when he saw the film in the theaters. Featuring Jet Jaguar named Robotman for some reason, and Gigan is going by the name Borodan, probably because he is pretty boring. Yes, I still hate you Gigan!
Click for HUGE-O-RAMA!!!
Destroy All Monsters (Review)
Destroy All Monsters
aka Attack of the Marching Monsters aka Kaiju soshingeki
1968
Directed by Ishiro Honda
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Godzilla before that first morning coffee.
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When I was but a wee lad first learning about the Godzilla experience, catching Super Scary Saturday showings of G-flicks, buying Godzilla films on VHS that weren’t showing up on tv, recording films airing on the local UHF station, I was also reading up on every monster movie related book I could read. My favorites were by a guy named Daniel Cohen*, who wrote such books as Super-Monsters and Science Fiction’s Greatest Monsters, well-read copies of which still lie somewhere in my mom’s attic. There was also another set of books at the library that were neon orange with a book each for Dracula, the Mummy, King Kong, Godzilla, and a few other monsters. The thing was, every library in the area did NOT have the Godzilla book! I was so angry! Imagine 8 year old Tars so mad he purposefully murdered his entire Oregon Trail travel party. Some say I went too far, but they say so only via their gravestone markers…
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Manda and Godzilla set up their slot car racers!
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But is there a point to that rambling first paragraph? Yes! You see, of the Godzilla flicks and lore of Godzilla flicks, knowledge of a movie containing all sorts of Toho monsters was spread. This mythical, magical movie, had like all sorts of monsters, including monsters I had never heard of, beat the tar out of each other and aliens attack. It was Destroy All Monsters. And it never aired on TV anywhere near me. So sad! It also wasn’t at any video store. Destroy All Monsters became a mocking ghost, forever out of reach. Until one day in college suddenly it was on VHS tape. I was like “HELL YEAH!” and bought me some Destroy All Monsters, watched it, loved it, and now don’t know where the tape is because a DVD version was released shortly thereafter. So yeah. And now I have this cool version, which has the AIP dub merged with a widescreen format custom made by some guy on the internet. Because I’m awesome like that.
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Check out this curve, ladies!
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Was Destroy All Monsters worth the 14 years of questing to find? Damn straight it was! Though it isn’t perfect, it is entertaining. It’s got alien invasions, an awesome monster fight finale, Akira Kubo, alien chicks in silver hoodies and capes, 1960s astromen costumes in bright primary colors, attempts to make rocket propulsion scientifically accurate, lasers, and Minya! The only thing missing from this film is Don Frye, but he pops up in another flick years later to make it all right.
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Gah this water’s too cold! Back to the blanket for me!
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I save the whales….for dessert!
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Monster Roll Call!
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Moonbase Mission Control stole it’s color scheme from TarsTarkas.NET!
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Son of Godzilla (Review)
Son of Godzilla
aka Monster Island’s Decisive Battle: Godzilla’s Son aka Kaiju-shima no Kessen Gojira no Musuko
1967
Directed by Jun Fukuda
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Hey, what the hell are you doing in my shower??
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Son of Godzilla is a damn awesome film, but it is also a film that you pretty much need to see as a kid. Looking back on the film as an adult, there are plenty of things wrong, but there are plenty of things right. And as the waves of nostalgia wash over you, even the few problems you see melt away into the bliss of Minya. I can imagine people viewing this for the first times as adults, and much of the magic will be gone.
I still have the VHS tape of Son of Godzilla I bought with my own money as a small kid. I didn’t want to wait for the film to pop up on TBS’s Super Scary Saturday or the local station KLJB-TV which would sometimes show Godzilla movies during their Sunday “we gotta air SOMETHING!” programming. I watched that tape like crazy, it getting just as much play as Godzilla’s Revenge, Ghidrah, and a few other Godzilla flicks I watched religiously.
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That’s right, baby. Not ten minutes old and chicks are lining up to serve me!
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Minya was designed to appeal to kids, and it worked beautifully. He’s the ultimate lure to get kids even more excited to watch the monster films. It’s the same old gimmick as masked crimefighters having young kid sidekicks. Minya isn’t even the first monster kid, Kong had a son decades before Godzilla was even a reality. But Minya has stood the test of time and even survived a brief attempt to usurp him of his role as Godzilla’s son. Suck it, Godzilla Junior, you’re just a second rate extra from Dinosaurs!
Son of Godzilla features two other new monsters, Kumonga and Kamacuras, aka Speiga and Gimantis. Both are creepy bug monsters, preventing anyone becoming attached to them instead of Minya or Godzilla as the heroes. Sure, there are people who are into spiders and insects, and even Mothra is a hero, but the gut reaction of the bugs vs. the cute kid is obviously what they were going for.
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Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!
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Just FYI, I’m calling them Minya, Speiga, and Gimantis through the plot section. None of that Minilla, Kumonga, or Kamacuras crap. That’s because these are the names I grew up with. And this is my review, so I can do what I want! Nyeh nyeh nyeh!
The remote island location with the small science crew allows for some lower budget action. They realize they need a character to have everything explained to, so in airdrops the standard reporter character. Godzilla films need reporter and scientist characters, it is the peanut butter and chocolate on the kaiju bread. Despite many of the characters getting no lines and just wandering around in the background, some of them are pretty heavy hitters.
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LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLadies!
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So I did my best with the cast list, several of the researchers don’t really get names or personalities, so I played mix and match.
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Kaiju Roll Call!
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I’m totally gonna Serve you, Gimantis! I see some haters grillin’ I see some ladies chillin’ I see that girlie I’ve been plottin’ to get She can hop in the whip And we can Pump p p Pump Pump it up
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Future Fighters
Future Fighters Official Site
Future Fighters is some sort of live action mecha film set in the future featuring a who’s who of geek favorite Asian actors. In fact, the film seems to be heavily promoting itself in the geek community, constantly mentioning it’s Comic Con connections in press releases and geek connections of the actors, producers, and directors.
“In the 22nd Century the darkest region of space lies in the hearts of men.” The fate of all humanity rests with a small clutch of brave soldiers, and their sophisticated intra-stellar fighting machines, as they must defend the free solar system from a sinister invading force, in order to fight… for their future. But when allies become enemies and enemies become allies, battle-lines and allegiances are blurred as humanity races to save itself… from its own utter destruction.
Future Fighters has actors from the US, Hong Kong, and Japan, and is really trying to be a big co-production. There are a surprising number of these huge event films being announced in the past year or so – all 3D as well. Empires of the Deep is another one that comes to mind, except replace “mechas” and “space” with “mermaids” and “underwater.” I’ve gotten to the point of being burnt out on most of these huge productions, because most of them just aren’t any good. Remember how excited we all were when Kung Fu Cyborg was being announced and had rad production art? And then it sucked. I stopped paying attention to the huge sprawling war epics that were coming out of China after they were so boring that my wife, who will watch anything with Chinese people in it, got bored and went back to YouTube. I’m not saying this will be a bad film, I’m just saying it has a lot of work to do to not be a huge borefest. But one of these huge things should be good, via the law of averages. So get to work, Future Fighters, and be that one that’s good.
Who is starring? We got Yasuaki Kurata (Blood: The Last Vampire), Reuben Langdon (Devil May Cry video games), Gordon Liu (Kill Bill), Ray Park (Phantom Menace, GI Joe), Eriko Sato (Cutie Honey), Rina Takeda (High-Kick Girl!), and Lisa Sa (aka Lisa Cheng, a female body builder who has only had bit parts so far)
I’m not sure what these martial arts people are supposed to be doing in a mecha film. Rina Takeda’s job is to kick people in the face, you can’t really do that will strapped into a cockpit – okay, MAYBE Rina could… Ray Park and Gordon Liu are also people who should be showing off instead of piloting robots. In any event, this smells more like gimmick casting than actual real casting, and the bigger names will probably have smaller roles to the dudes we’ve never heard of. And maybe there is kicking in the face.
At least the production art looks cool (click for way too huge!):
Also put on your 3D glasses to see this in 3D:
So far all that is done is a preview trailer that isn’t part of the actual film:
Attack of the Galactic Monsters (Review)
Attack of the Galactic Monsters
1983 (Yeah, whatever!)
Directed by Godzilla, probably. Maybe. Just an educated guess!
Attack of the Galactic Monsters is one of two (so far) movies that have popped up recently purporting to be edited for American TV movies (usually attributed to Hawaiian TV if a location is mentioned), the other being Monster King Godzilla. This one popped up on the Archive.org website (!) and is largely a paste job set around the 1977 Toho movie War in Space. UPDATE: It looks like the Archive.org link is now dead. Be sad=( If you though War in Space was too boring and far too long, and had far too much characterization of the cast, this this is the movie for you! It chops out over 2/3rds of War in Space, and inserts footage of Godzilla kicking various monster butts from the TV series Zone Fighter, a tokusatsu series that guest starred Godzilla occasionally.
Both Attack of the Galactic Monsters and Monster King Godzilla have little real information about them. People theorize that they are legit, or they are a hoax, or mention that they may have seen the tapes at bootleg stands at cons. No one has any real proof in any way. If these are a big hoax, someone spent a lot of time on them, including transferring everything to a VHS tape before digitally saving it for the masses on the internet. One thing that is suspicious is there is no obvious gaps for commercials. I had lots of experience taping things off TV as a lad and know what a tape looks like when it’s paused to cut out commercials, and there are none of those artifacts that I can see. It is possible it was taped with commercials intact, but then they were digitally edited out before the upload. It is also possible that this is the master tape so of course there are no commercials. But neither explains the odd running time, 55 minutes is not really a good running time for a tv show with commercials. So who knows? What I know is I got some extra Godzilla flicks to review on here, and that is totally jawesome.
As so much is cut out from the War in Space film to shorten it and add in Godzilla fights, the movie makes little sense. They barely explain any of the characters’ names, and instead rely on you just going with it. So just go with it! I haven’t seen War in Space in like 20 years, so I needed a cheat sheet, but there should be enough info below to let you know what is going on if you have seen the film or not. Basically, in War in Space, aliens invade the Earth and blow the crap out of it. so Captain Takegawa and the flying drill ship the Gotem (design based on Atragon‘s Gotengo ship) goes to the alien planet to blow up some alien jerks. And there is a horned Wookiee with an axe. Go team Let the Wookiee Win!
The other stuff you need to know is about Zone Fighter, Toho’s best known tokusatsu series from the 1970s, where the Zone Family fought the evil Garogas, who attempted to conquer Earth via sending giant monsters. Zone Fighter and sometimes Godzilla would then horribly murder the monsters, until everyone was defeated by being canceled in the middle of the series. This movie uses up most of the Godzilla appearances and barely uses Zone Fighter at all, except for one sequence where he fights Godzilla. Will there be more info on Zone Fighter episodes shortly? Maybe….
People Roll Call!
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Monster Roll Call!
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