Category Archives: Godzilla

I go for a Spin Godzilla with Shin Godzilla

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Holy shit guys, there’s a brand new Godzilla movie! Shin Godzilla, straight from Toho Studios.  The first Japanese Godzilla flick in twelve years, it made a big splash in Japan critically and commercially, and it came to the States for a limited engagement.

If you’re a monster fan like me you’ve probably peeked at some production art and promotional stills, checked out the trailers, and wondered how it all fit together while trying (and in my case failing) to dance around spoilers.  Godzilla himself looks particularly shocking, with an aggressively ghoulish, gruesome design that evokes charred, burning flesh and exposed bloody muscle. He looks like Burning Godzilla and Lord Zedd had a baby and then peed on it.  I truly mean that as a compliment.

It’s a look that wouldn’t work for a kaiju-battling hero monster or a majestic beast meant to be an agent of natural chaos, but it works pretty perfectly for an unsettling, looming horror monster.  But despite all appearances, Shin Godzilla isn’t the full-on creature-horror experience I was expecting. It’s something substantially drier and denser, with a surprising amount of wry humor.

It’s all spoilers all the time from here on in, so if you’re okay with that read on! If you’re not okay with that, I guess like… you could go play Frog Fractions. Oooh, or Wonderputt!

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Don’t be a snitch, scratch that Twitch itch!

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Just popping up with a neat little news nugget before this month’s review! This weekend I picked up a Playstation 4 and finally dug into an idea that’s been percolating for a few months:

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It’s a Twitch channel! Don’t worry, this project won’t take me away from MONSTERS CONQUER THE WORLD (this month’s review is actually ahead of schedule for once!), and at the moment is actually supplementing it.  I’ve been livestreaming the Godzilla PS4 game!

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Sure it’s shallow and repetitive, but the Godzilla Shie is an unlockable move! 10/10, GOTY 2015.

SUPER APARTMENT FRIENDS won’t exclusively be kaiju/monster-related gaming, but it is for now! I’ll be back online Wednesday night if you want to catch me live and we can have a good cry over the fact that Minya isn’t playable. You can also watch all the past streams on the Super Apartment Friends YouTube page!

OMG GMK LOL BBQ DTF

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Guys, I’m fucking pumped.  This month I’m reviewing one of my all-time favorite movies: godzilla-GMK-posterGodzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (or GMK for short). It’s a movie as rad as its title is long.  Directed by Gamera wunderkind Shūsuke Kaneko, this 2001 movie masterfully mashes together monsters, magic, and mystery.  It stars a deliciously evil Godzilla, bolstered by heady themes, spectacular visuals, engrossing human characters, and slam-bang oh-shit monster wrassling insanity.

Let’s pick apart what makes it so fucking awesome, find all the juicy little Easter egg-y nuggets, talk about how we almost got Godzilla vs. The Mutated Spaceman instead, and reveal which GMK star spent the 70s shredding in a funk band!  Kick over some little statues and absorb some souls, it’s time to All-Out Attack!

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Gimme some more-ah Hedorah!

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5354832036_bbcaab4cb6_bEarth Day and 4/20 were this month, so I had to review 1971’s oddball eco-conscious epic, Godzilla vs. Hedorah! This seems to be a love it or hate it entry in the Godzilla series. It boasts artsy weirdness, scenes of kid-friendly wackiness immediately contrasted with people-melting mass-murder, a gelatinous dookie beast from outer space, trippy cartoon segments, and I’m gonna go ahead and spoil it because it’s so fucking rad: Godzilla shoots his atomic breath at the ground to take flight. Seriously, if you haven’t seen the movie, you gotta at least watch this 30 second clip of the best thing in the universe.

If you haven’t guessed already, I fall squarely in the “love it” camp.  I have good company, too! Legendary film critic Roger Ebert listed it as his favorite Godzilla film.  Series producer Tomoyuki Tanaka wasn’t so pleased: upon viewing the rough cut, he fired Hedorah writer-director Yoshimitsu Banno.  We’ll talk about that, how the suit actor portraying Hedorah had to get surgery–while still in the monster suit!–how Hedorah indirectly spawned 2014’s Godzilla, and all kinds of other fun insanity! Get on the floor-ah, here comes Hedorah!

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Custody Battle Royale (with cheese): Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II

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Godzilla_vs._MechaGodzilla_2_Poster_Japan_4I’ve been cranking out Monsters Conquer the World for a little over a year now, and I noticed two glaring omissions in my output so far: I have yet to cover a “Heisei” era movie, and more importantly, I haven’t yet covered a Mechagodzilla movie.  Obviously Godzilla’s robot doppelganger is a big deal, but what the hell does the current emperor of Japan have to do with kaiju movies?  I’ll answer that by picking apart 1993’s Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II! Which confusingly enough is not a direct sequel to Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, nor is it even the second film to feature Mechagodzilla, it’s the third.  

Plus, it’s Godzilla’s official 40th anniversary movie (despite being off by a year)! We’ll blast through a primer on the Godzilla series in the late 80s and early 90s, talk about some of Toho’s crazy unused ideas for the movie, psychics, deliciously bad CGI, singing plants, butt-brains, and more, so strap in! Mechagodzilla is go for launch!

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I did my best to be a pest at G-Fest

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That’s right dongers and she-dongers, I went to G-Fest earlier this month! “What’s G-Fest?!” I hear you sloppily sputter out in outraged confusion. Well, wipe the rage-saliva off your mouth and keyboard and phone and pots and pans and chairs and tables and electric screwdrivers and wigs and I’ll clue you in!

Here, this drawing of an exploding dragon flanked by names you've never seen before should explain everything.

Here, this drawing of an exploding dragon flanked by names you’ve never seen before should explain everything.

G-Fest is the biggest convention for kaiju fans in North America, and probably the whole damn world.   It usually clocks in at about 1000 attendees, but last year brought in around 3000 starry-eyed monster nerds (monstnerds?), and I wouldn’t be surprised if this year did that well or better!  I’ve got all the sick deets plus about a brazillion pictures after the jump!

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Get Some Minya in Ya

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son-of-godzilla-movie-poster-1967-1020251389We’re at the end of June! A whole month of dads and grads! Toho was kind enough to create a Godzilla film that revolves around themes of fatherhood (dads), coming of age (grads), and general summery fun (glads). 1967’s Son of Godzilla is this month’s movie, and if my constant championing of my main man Minya didn’t tip you off, this is legit one of my favorite Godzilla movies. Son of Godzilla represents a couple important turning points for the franchise.  This is the series’ hard left into kid country, and also the movie that finally completes Godzilla’s transformation from villain to (grouchy) hero: likely in response to the enormous success of TV’s Ultraman, which started the year prior.  But even with a greater emphasis on colorful comedy and kid appeal, SoG has a really solid sci-fi story, and some of the coolest monster action in the early series.  And also the absolutely, hilariously worst Godzilla suit ever. So bust out your lead umbrella, because a radioactive typhoon is brewing on Sollgel Island!

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Godzilla vs Mothra vs her split personality “The Thing”

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1964-mvsg-poster-jon-2Easter’s come and gone, but in the spirit of the holiday (and spring in general) I just had to review Mothra vs Godzilla.  It hits all the right notes! A pastel-colored stripey egg, themes of birth, death and rebirth, more eggs, a giant pink humanoid rabbit shitting out jelly beans, and tiny singing ladies.  Okay, maybe not those last two. More importantly, MvG is straight up one of the best Godzilla films, and an absolute classic giant creature feature.  It takes the blueprint Toho shakily put down in the previous King Kong vs Godzilla and refines it into the now-standard monster vs. monster formula while perfectly tying together Toho’s two most famous beasts.  It’s also the first Godzilla flick to make it more or less unscathed to the States, with the exception of a schlocky marketing gimmick. Steal the Reese’s eggs out of your loved ones’ Easter baskets and cuddle up with an electrified steel net, because we’re talking about Mothra vs. Godzilla!

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Fraudzilla Won’t Fulfillya

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Godzilla 1998 posterSo thanks to my friends and the Rifftrax crew, I watched the 1998 American Godzilla movie last month. While I had originally planned to put it off until later… a lot later, I figured I might as well use this viewing on the big screen as my research for MONSTERS CONQUER THE WORLD  and knock out the review while it’s still pretty fresh in my mind. Depending on who you ask, the movie is either a nostalgic 90s guilty pleasure or the most disappointing movie that isn’t Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Godzilla actually has a lot in common with Phantom Menace: both were hotly anticipated, with months of hype and seemingly limitless potential to be awesome, tons of CG effects, lots of which don’t hold up today, and both made tons of money, despite being filmic diarrhea reviled by fans and critics alike.  But while Phantom Menace is a complete failure at filmmaking and storytelling on even the most basic levels, Godzilla fails in ways that are less catastrophic, but just as unsatisfying.

All that said, there are flashes, glimmers, and glimpses of moments where the movie actually works.  If it wasn’t pretending to be a Godzilla movie, and wasn’t so desperately mimicking Jurassic Park, it’d be a decent creature feature.  We’ll talk about all that, how the movie sat in development hell since the 80s, the bitchin’ early versions of the movie we almost got instead, and that fucking Taco Bell dog.  Grab your Chernobyl worms, a can of Josta, and COME WITH ME.

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Monsters announced for Godzilla 2! King Kong prequel! Godzilla video games! Exclamation Points!

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This post will be a little different from my previous few.

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I haven’t watched my next movie yet, and that’s partially because I had some folks show interest in watching it with me, so you know, schedules and shit.  Daigoro vs. Goliath is definitely next.  Mainly because I’m 3 reviews in, and haven’t even touched the rich veins of camp and cheese that run through this genre.  That’s okay though, because there’s a whole bunch of other giant monster shit to talk about!  Come on and slam and welcome to the jam!

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