Tag Archives: Gamera

MCTW Podcast: Gamera vs. Jiger!

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3084393010_3e64c94602_bMonsters Conquer the World Podcast makes its first run at Gamera! 1970’s creature classic: Gamera vs. Jiger! I purposely told Ralph nothing about the movie going in–it is supremely fun experiencing it alongside a first-timer!

We sift through all the joyful insanity that is Gamera vs. Jiger and muse on Gamera’s capacity for baby fever, heroic child endangerment, a furious, heartbroken bouquet bashing, the disgusting beast Santa that we all hate, and that’s all before the final segment where we contemplate upcoming MCTW Podcast episodes!

Grab it on your podcatcher of choice, or slap this stinky linky for all the monster mashing mirth and mayhem:

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/monsters-conquer-the-world

It’s all part of the KAIJULY craziness! If you want even more MCTW Podcast for your (hopefully telephone-pole free) earholes, consider becoming a Patron at the $5 level! Doing so grants you access to the Illuminati-like inner circle where you can listen to the forbidden Shadow Episodes.  In this one we talk about the recent Child’s Play reboot!

Whether you plunge into the Shadow World or stay in the Light, I hope you enjoy our stuff!

MONSTERS CONQUER FACEBOOK

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Believe it or not, there is a March review in the works! I’m still trying to get back into my old monthly review groove, but I’m not quite there yet.  That makes this Facebook news all the more heartening:

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Holy balls!  I started planning a celebratory movie marathon when we hit 200 likes a month or two ago, and out of nowhere we blew right through three hundo!  In a world full of social media professionals, Instagram models,  Twitter influencers, YouTube celebs, and whatever the fuck TikTok is, 300 likes on ye olde Book-Face might not seem like a big deal.  But for me, a random dipshit excitedly cussing on the internet about Godzilla, it’s insanely cool and exciting.  So that marathon?! OH YEAH BUDDY IT’S HAPPENIN’

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Here’s a mind-bendingly subtle hint about one of the features in the lineup. Good luck solving this Da Vinci Code, fuckers.

This is our first marathon through Facebook’s Watch Party feature, so we’ll see how it goes! If it works as intended, it’ll probably be the future of MCTW movie marathons (easy to use, baked-in community text chat).  The mayhem starts Sunday, March 31st at 12 noon here: https://www.facebook.com/monstersconquertheworld/.  See you then!!!

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Don’t be a Gamera: Pooper Monster Check Out Gamera: Super Monster! (Part 2 of 2)

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hqdefaultAfter a long and unplanned hiatus, I’m back! And yes, I’m back specifically to finish my long-delayed review of Gamera: Super Monster.

Yes, that Super Monster.  Yes, I’m serious. Its purported badness draws me in like a Mothra to a flame,  but I also really like how fucking weird and doofy (but still sweet!) this flick is. There’s enough unique, charming strangeness here to merit a deep dive.

If you haven’t already, be sure to give part 1 a read here.  Or don’t?  That might be an intriguing/hilarious social experiment!  If you haven’t seen this movie and haven’t read part 1 of my review, go ahead and read this and see if anything that follows makes any fucking sense at all.  If it does, congratulations, you’re either having a nervous breakdown or you’ve achieved total consciousness.

Even if you have seen the movie and/or read the first part of my review, it can still seem like a delightful fever dream: size-shifting Space Women sleep in an invulnerable lunchbox, they operate flying vans and dimensional portals with Casios and look upon Gamera as he relives his greatest Showa-era battles…  who in turn sometimes looks upon random clips of anime… all while a Star Destroyer bombards them with threats and orbital laser strikes! Ready for more?!  TOO BAD!

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Don’t be a Gamera: Pooper Monster, Check Out Gamera: Super Monster! (Part 1 of 2)

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tumblr_ofl2y8k4wl1rwn81uo1_1280Ahhhh, Gamera: Super Monster, we meet at last! I had never seen the 1980 entry in the Gamera series until this last month.  Its reputation might lead you to believe I was avoiding it, but come on, you know me better than that!  I was saving this heaping helping of stock-footage fueled weirdness for a rainy (or Michigan-humid) day!

This is a good thing and a bad thing.  The good thing is that I had a lot of fun finally cracking this nut–I basically gifted myself a ridiculous cinematic dessert.  The bad thing is that by the time I snuggled in to watch Super Monster, I had already found out most of its best/strangest details.  In case you’ve never seen this thing and want to ensure you have the maximum WTF experience, I won’t spoil it by listing out all the madness here.  All you really need to know going in is that Super Monster was a blatantly desperate attempt to pump funds into the dying (now long-dead) Daiei studio and it was made on the shoestringiest of budgets (even by Gamera standards).

So fire up your electric organ, fly your magic van someplace safe, and start talkin’ to your watch, because we’re diving in to Gamera: Super Monster!

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Monsters Conquer the World Quadrennial Monsterthon!

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Monsters Conquer The World turns 4 tomorrow (holy shit)! To celebrate, I’m going to host a monsterrific marathon tomorrow starting at 1! Godzilla, Gamera, Ultraman, plus some oddballs and surprises! Drop in if you can!

https://www.rabb.it/MonstersConquerTheWorld

UPDATE (4/22/18, 9:25 PM)

Big ups to everyone who joined in on the festivities! We watched, enjoyed, riffed, and discussed:

Big marathons like this I’ll save for important anniversaries and stuff, but I definitely think there’s another Ultraseven viewing party in the not-to-distant future.  Watch this space (or Twitter or Facebook or whatever) for news on that front.

Thanks for reading for the last four years!  Here’s to another four… TRILLION

Get out of your Gamera the Cave, it’s time for Gamera the Brave!

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gamera-the-brave1The on-going experiment of reviewing the entire original Ultraman series has been an awesome ride, but it also has the weird side effect of pushing everything else back.  I didn’t even review a Godzilla movie until we were halfway through the year! When Godzilla gets pushed back, of course Gamera also gets pushed back.

But no more!  This month I’m checkin’ in with everybody’s favorite turtle titan by reviewing 2006’s overlooked Gamera the Brave.  It’s an incredibly heartfelt little monster movie that sidesteps the continuity of Shusuke Kaneko’s prior, terrific Gamera trilogy (I’ve reviewed parts 1 and 2!)… while still kind of paying homage to it!  It’s a fresh take on the character… that also feels like a spiritual successor to old school Gamera too!

We’ll dig into all that, plus GMK Godzilla’s secret presence in the film, Optimus Prime’s audio-only sorta-cameo, how it inadvertently spawned some obnoxious clickbait, and a whole bunch of other shit!  I hope you’re feeling (the) Brave friend, because it’s gonna be A BANG UP WORK (62)!

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Kaijuly Video Game Meltdown!

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Happy Kaijuly everybody!  If you’re wondering what the fuck Kaijuly is, wonder no longer! (or do, it’s a free country)

Kaijuly is one of those weird internet holidays like May the Fourth or Zelda Month, except you know, about kaiju instead of space aliens or forest-dwelling adventurers.

Obviously The Legend of Zelda (above left) is about eerie interplanetary beings, and Star Wars (above right) revolves around cute woodland dwellers.

From what I can tell, Kaijuly got its start over on Tumblr as an art challenge: create and share an original kaiju (or fan-art of an existing one) for every day in July! It’s been broadening every year since, including month-long discussion challenges (I’m doing one! Just posted for days 1-3!), and El Rey Network (the coolest channel almost no one gets) has run a “Kaijuly Roarth” Godzilla marathon for the last couple years!

G-Fest is in July too!  So yeah!  I’m ready to call Kaijuly “A Whole Thing”.  So much so that my Twitch channel, Super Apartment Friends, is going to celebrate by playing kaiju-themed video games all month!

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Even if it kills me! Which it might!

Keep reading for the full (insane) list of games that are under consideration!

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Gamera: Guardian of the TWOniverse (Part 2 of 2)

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gamera-guardian-of-the-universe2Welcome to Part Deux of my reveux of Gamera: Guardian of the Universe! If you haven’t read part 1, click here to massage your brain with all the appropriate words, pictures, and hyperlinks. Or don’t! It’s a free fuckin’ country, baby.

How about a little mood music to get you back in the swang of thangs?

Aw yeah, now we’re talkin’! In Part 1 I left us on a cliffhanger! Gyaos was on the verge of eating two of our leads (PLUS LITERALLY A RANDOM BABY), Gamera showed us his altruistic streak, and Asagi showed us the heavy toll she’d have to pay for that altruism! All that plus Roger Ebert’s weird-ass review and my stupid dick jokes await! What a time to be alive!

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Gamera: Guardian of the Galaxy I MEAN UNIVERSE PLEASE DON’T SUE ME DISNEY/MARVEL (Part 1 of 2)

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downloadLooking back on the unmitigated diaper fire that is 2016, I noticed I’ve only done one Gamera review this year!  I’ve got something ultra special planned for next month, so I had to squeeze in some more titanic turtle before the year is up!  Being November, I naturally picked one where our chivalrous chelonian roasts some turkeys!

Gamera: Guardian of the Universe (or its Japanese title Gamera: Giant Monster Midair Battle) was unleashed in 1995 and successfully rebooted the Gamera series. Directed by Shusuke “GMK!” Kaneko, scored by Kow “GM-FUCKING-K!!!!” Otani, with special effects by Shinji “did the fighter jet scene in GMK!”  Higuchi.

I really really like GMK, and Gammy here is what most of that dream team was doing pre-GMK.  If you’re playing a drinking game where you take a shot every time you read GMK, please call 911.  If you’re still conscious, great! This movie is a ton of fun, gave Gamera the second chance he always deserved, and in a lot of ways outshined Toho’s Godzilla output of the time.  Keep reading to find out how!

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Eye of the Jiger

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Jigerposter1Hope you had a good (or at least not-shitty) Varantimes Day!  I always like to try and tie my reviews to something current-ish, so this month I went hunting for a little giant monster romance! Last year worked out great with Rodan‘s star-crossed terror-dactyls. This year… let’s just say kaiju generally aren’t lovey-dovey creatures.

Gamera gets pragnent in this one! Implies a little hanky-panky, yeah?  Except Gamera is a boy and there’s no sex, just a (non-erotic) shanking.  Also two kids abort the murderous monster-baby.  Hahaha, hoo boy.  This is truly one of the craziest, most fun entries in the classic Gamera series, and that’s saying a lot considering we got shit like this in a previous installment.

So light some candles, put on some slow jams, and check yourself for ancient curses and/or monstrous parasites, because we’re talking about 1970’s Gamera vs. Jiger!

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