Gamera Vs Gyaos!!!

Gamera Vs Gyaos – 1967, Noriaki Yuasa, Japan

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Daiei continues the slow, lumbering turtle March into the realm of ever-improved sequels with Gamera’s third outing, the fun, yet two-thirds insane Gamera Vs Gyaos. At this stage in the game, Daiei had indeed succeeded in steadily improving their product and tightening the quality gap that separated their Brand X monsters from the “designer jeans” beasts of Toho’s Godzilla-Verse, but they’re also starting to out themselves as being batshit wacky in the process. I don’t really regard that as being a problem, but it’s for sure worth discussing.

THE PLOT~ Tension is high. The residents of a rural, Japanese mountain village have blocked the construction of a proposed super-highway that would lead right through the heart of the pristine forest they call home. The construction can’t continue until these people all agree to sell, so the big  muckymucks back in the city tell their head foreman to really put the pressure on these guys to force a deal, but nobody is budging. We come to learn that this is because a respected elder in the village has organized this standoff deliberately, not because these people want to stay in their village, but because they all see this as an opportunity to get super rich, and they believe that the longer they hold out, the more crazy yen they stand to receive from the increasingly desperate land developers. It’s funny how sometimes life can throw you curveballs… One day, you’re leading your friends and neighbors in a crusade to get rich quick, and the next, your Grandson is riding through the sky on the back of a giant turtle, and a three hundred foot tall vampire monster is barking death rays at fighter jets in your back yard. You just never know how life is going to play out, so it’s important to keep your shit straight while you can, I guess.
Anyway, that’s what happens, a volcanic eruption (that old chestnut) opens an ancient cavern in the side of the mountain, from whence Gyaos emerges, a huge, weirdly plane shaped bat type monster who eats humans and causes crazy damage. Luckily, by this point Gamera has apparently totally reformed and is now our big, green homie, so things sort of work out for the best in the end.

The film’s moral is all about greed- as in, don’t be greedy, dude, but it also views the natural world as a cut and dry commodity and states that the deliberate burning of old growth timber is an issue only because that wood is worth money, so Gamera Vs Gyaos isn’t really going to teach you too many lessons you actually want to learn. It’s mostly just fun because it’s full of big, stupid looking monsters who really fuck each other up.

It’s pretty good, though. If you’re into these films, this one is going to give you what you want and expect from the Gamera series, and in greater quantities than the prior two films (Although I did dig Barugon.) The budget also looks stepped up again, but the single biggest change you’ll feel with Gamera Vs Gyaos is how vivid the color pallete is. This movie is very artistic and playful with the colors used, the art department appears to have been tasked with producing props and set dressing which would jazz up the film’s visuals considerably, and they absolutely have; Gamera’s old rival Godzilla wouldn’t be featured in a film which got this ambitious with color until Godzilla Vs Megalon, and even then, the colors that movie used were more basic primaries and much less inventive or stylish. Honestly, there are frames of this film that look like a fucking Wes Anderson movie, and that’s a kaiju first.

Screen Shot 2015-02-23 at 1.59.43 PMIf Steve Zissou were piloting that, who would be surprised?

The topic I most feel needs to be addressed, however, is Gyaos; how weird he is, how everything about this whole series now seems very weird in retrospect, and how Daiei must be run by complete and utter madmen. Let’s sit down and talk about this.

So, it’s now painfully, glaringly obvious that Daiei fills their movies up with really, really weird monsters. I feel like I should have noticed this before. They seem to just invent new, bizarre, and totally unrelated abilities for their kaiju on a whim, and the results are really, really strange. Barugon was weird, I’m realizing. He had purple blood. He sprayed frosty gas out of a long tongue, blasted murder rainbows out of his back, and he dissolved in water… Gamera just straight up eats fire- that’s like a treat to him! Now, Gyaos pops in, and he’s plenty weird, too. Gyaos spits powerful death rays, drinks human blood, can regrow severed limbs like it’s no big thang, and sprays yellow powder out of his nipples, which extinguish flames instantly- yet he cannot rotate his head left or right, and is alergic to sunlight. Oh, yeah, and the reason he can’t turn his head is because he has two throats. Yeah, so Gyaos is a garbled Chimera of a creature worthy of Dr. Seues’ darkest nightmares, is pretty much what I’m getting at, and the same nonchalant insanity that created him rears it’s head over and over again throughout this film. At one point, the Japanese Powers-That-Be honestly think that the best plan they have for killing the Gyaos is by getting it really, really dizzy. They set up a fountain that dispenses artificial human blood on a rotating platform, crank up the juice, and prey like hell that he fucking dies somehow. It doesn’t work, of course, probably because that plan sounds like it was conceived by a nine year old, but they try, and we watch them do it. Of course, when they come up with an idea that actually does work, and it literally IS conceived by a nine year old, so I guess whatever. The point is that this movie is pretty much bonkers, and after seeing it, you start to realize just exactly how wacky this whole Gamera thing has been from day one. I now feel somehow uneasy about the time I have spent with Gamera… Like the sensation one must feel when they’ve just dropped off a hitchhiker with whom they’ve enjoyed a long chat, only to then turn on the radio and hear a news bulletin about a dangerous, escaped mental patient matching the hitchhikers description…

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I guess maybe there were a few warning signs…

Anyway… Moving on.

As I mentioned before, this movie also further establishes Gamera as a friendly guardian to all mankind, so it comes across as more kid friendly than it’s predecessors, but there’s actually sort of a lot of monster blood in this. None of it is red, though, which seems to mater. Gamera’s blood is green and Gyaos’ is purple, so maybe that didn’t seem like actual gore in the eyes of our distant ancestors, but there’s no buts about it, these monsters are gounging and tearing at each other pretty agressivley. Honestly, that’s not gonna hurt a kid, they need to be exposed to this sort of thing sooner or later. Let your kids watch turtles getting death ray blasted at home, or some other kid is just going to show them at school, and there it’ll be out of context.

Anyway. This is another good one, and so far, these movies are getting better and better,

B+

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Godzilla Vs Spacegodzilla

Godzilla VS Spacegodzilla – 1994, Kensho Yamashita – Japan

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(ACTUAL CONVERSATION RECORDED INSIDE THE OFFICES OF TOHO)

“Dude…We’ve had Godzilla fight like… lots of stuff already.”
“Yeah, I know….”
“… What if we just had him fight… like… another Godzilla?”
“…You mean, like, Mechagodzilla?”
“…Yeah.”
“Uhhhhh…. I dunno, man. We just did that…”
“Okay, okay, not like, a Mecha one… What about, like… Like….Ummmmmm….. Oh, how ‘bout like, a space one?!”
“……..A spacegodzila?”
“…Yeah!”
“…Can it have like… A shit load of crystals all over it?”
“Hell yeah, it can.”
“….Okay. Sure, we can do that.”

AND…. it was underwhelming. Spacegodzilla, the character, is face-palmingly over the top. If you wanted an illustrative comparison between the shift in how the original Godzilla was designed in 1954, and the school of thought informing the creation of Spacegodzilla 40 years later, I offer forth this comparison; Consider that the original Godzilla from Gojira is like Japanese Kabuki theater; Strange, grim, and haunting, yet somehow beautiful and understated. Now, in terms of the energy that went into the conceptual design behind Spacegodzilla, on the other hand, consider every track ever recorded by the band Dragonforce playing simultaneously at a volume that would guarantee hearing loss. That’s what it would be like. Have you seen those crystal poking out of his damn sholders? Freaking ridiculous. And while we’re making comparisons, if you were looking for an appropriate forerunner for this film from the Showa era, Godzilla Vs Spacegodzilla is both the Godzilla Vs Gigan, and the Godzilla Vs Megalon of the Heisei series. That’s not great, guys. And you’re about to know it.

THE PLOT~ Japan has two plans now; and they’re gonna try them both. We’ve got Project T, and Project M. Breakin’ it down:

PROJECT T- Remember Mikki, the psychic girl who has been in every damn one of these movies but hasn’t really contributed in any solid way whatsoever? Well, they want to lodge a damn satelite dish in Godzilla’s neck and see if she can hijack his brain. Spoiler alert; She can’t.

PROJECT M– Remember how we just did the whole Mechagodzilla thing, and it failed? Well, how about sinking another couple billion tax yen into a second giant, metal robot to fight Godzilla? “Thought you’d never ask,” Says G-Force. What we end up with is Moguera, and yes, it’s another giant, vaugley monster shaped robot, but Moguera is different. What’s strange about Mogera is that he sort of seems like whoever designed him had weird priorities. Like, yeah, he’s got some weaponary on him, but he really seems like he was intended for 50% monster combat and 50% digging hella tunnels. I’m not sure why he would ever need to dig hella tunnels, but hey, who knows? Maybe if they had outfitted Mechagodzilla with the ability to just burrow like a mother fucker we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. And anyway, Moguera represents progress, because it’s a sign that G-Force is finally starting to understand that you don’t necessarily have to design your weapon to look exactly like your target for it to be effective. I mean, a gun isn’t shaped like a human, but it sure can put one down real good. Just food for thought, G-Force.

Anyway.

So, in hopes of getting things under control and eliminating the need to deploy an enormous mechanized war machine on a highly populated city, Project T kicks off their Godzilla brain hijacking mission first by sending a small group of G-Force personnel off to Birth Island, where Godzilla kinda sorta lives. Among this group we have:

Miki – Who cares? (Actually, Miki sucks a lot less in this movie than she does in any other Heisei film.)
Shinjo and Sato – Two knucklehead soldiers who are sorta like the Merry and Pippin of the Godzilla cannon. These two are actually kinda fun, and I like them quite a bit.
Dr. Gondo – This lady is the sister of Lieutenant Goro Gondo, who got Godzilla’d to death back in Return of Godzilla. Naturally, she hates Big Green, and she wants his scaly ass six feet under… Or, I guess, six miles under?
Other people– who cares?

When our rag tag team of G-Force bozos hits the beach on Birth Island, they encounter it’s two full time residents. They are:

Little Godzilla– “Baby” has grown up a little, which oddly enough has made him look drastically more infantile. Whatever, it’s an improvement, when he first appeared in Godzilla Vs Mechagodzilla II, he looked both stupid, and hideous. This redesign has him looking a little bit more like the baby from the Dinosaurs sitcom, but also a little more like Minilla, which I think is a plus, somehow. That being said, he still looks cartoonish, and not very believable. Really, Toho did a better job pulling off Minillia way back in Son Of Godzilla, and in general the special effects in Godzilla Vs Spacegodzilla feel shabby as shit.

Major Yuki– This character is the real star of Godzilla Vs Spacegodzilla in my mind. Yuki is a grizzled, angry old bad ass/maverick who has been camped out on Birth Island with the intent of murdering Godzilla single handedly, because Godzilla killed his best friend, the previously mentioned Lieutenant Gondo. Damn, Gondo was apparently just the wrong dude for Godzilla to kill, I guess.

Anyway, the failure of Project T (Yeah, it fails) really just serves to bring this group of people closer together, and they form our core characters throughout the rest of the movie.

Actually, it’s maybe worth mentioning that when our team gets to Birth Island, there are also these giant, moving, jagged crystal protrusions that shoot green lightning into the sky in the middle of the island, but none of our characters really seem to think they’re anything special. I would have been alarmed, but I guess what do I know? Except that I was right, these would have been worth investigating, because pretty soon Spacegodzilla turns up and this formation is apparently his space dragon landing pad. Birth Island really isn’t big enough to support two skyscraper sized battle-monsters, so pretty much immediately Godzilla comes face to face with Spacegodzilla, and he does not fare well in the confrontation- it ends with Spacegodzilla depositing Little Godzilla inside one of his weird, crystal chambers, which seems like a bad thing since Godzilla definitely did not want him to do that. These two are now enemies.

So, just what in the fuck is Spacegodzilla? Well, I’ll tell you; he is, theoretically, some sort of weird, galactic anomaly formed from wayward Godzilla DNA carried into space via Mothra or Biolante (Even though Biolante never happened at this point, as it was undone in the events depicted in the utterly stupid Godzilla Vs King Ghidorah) which mixed with like, space gasses, or crystals, or slime, or something. Some kind of space stuff. So, he’s genetically similar to Godzilla, but spacier. This is bad for our decidedly less-spacey Earth Godzilla, who ends up slugging it out with Spacegodzilla again on mainland Japan. Godzilla may not have stood a chance against his interplanetary sibling, but luckily control of Mogera had at this point been handed over to Shinjo, Sato and Yuki, and the three manage to work with Godzilla to kick the shit out of Spacegodzilla until he freaking dies. Awesome, actually. I can’t believe how cool Moguera ends up being in this movie, and it even gets to dig some tunnels, which is useful to our team, believe it or not.

So, what’s good, and what’s bad? This movie has a healthy portion of both, so we need to sift through it before he iron out an assessment.

THE GOOD:

Moguera! More accuratley, Shinjo, Sato, and Yuki, the three soliders tasked with the job of piloting Moguera in his attack on Spacegodzilla. When Mechagodzilla frumped on out to throw-down on Big G in Godzilla Vs Mechagodzilla II, it had several pilots, and we only really knew and gave a shit about one of them. Hell, even he wasn’t that likable, to be honest. This time around, we keep our crew small, and we’ve already spent a bit of time getting to know each of them before they suit up and hop behind the wheel, so in this way the fate of Moguera feels like something we’re much more invested in. And Moguera doesn’t come out unscathed, this confrontation feels desperate and dirty in a way that I haven’t seen done this effectively since Destroy All Monsters, and we actually care about the outcome.

Also remarkable is how much better Miki is in this film than she has ever been before. She plays into the plot in a way that doesn’t feel nearly as unnecessary or tacked on as it has in the past, plus she ends up with an emotional investment in another human character, and contributes to the outcome of events in a way that felt warranted, and valuable. So, that’s one out of six, Miki… Still a failing grade… But this is your movie.

The bad, on the other hand, mostly comes down to production value… And it’s sort of a long list. Here we go.

THE BAD:

Number one; Spacegodzilla… You suck. Spacegodzilla is both super, super over the top, and surprisingly boring. It’s like the whole “X-TREME!” thing from the tail end of the 90’s, just being “X-TREME” really isn’t enough, you also have to not suck ass. That’s the lesson of Spacegodzilla, who feels neither original, nor well developed enough to hold our interest. The one hope you have of giving a shit is if you somehow have a weird, psychological malfunction that makes you just fucking gaga for Space Crystals, because that’s one thing Spacegodzilla does do, he brings the Space Crystals like no one else. Beyond that, this is a snooze fest- population: Spacegodzilla. You’re garbage,

Secondly, the effects…. Holy shit, they’re terrible. This movie feels cheapier, shoddier, and more like an episode of Power Rangers than any Godzilla movie ever before or since. This really is the relative low water mark for special effects in a Godzilla movie. Firstly, the composite shots- wow. Maybe the technology just wasn’t there in the 90’s, but these stand out as being fails unworthy of the franchise, without question. Next, all of the outer space sequences in this film are unforgivably hokey and dated. Spacegodzilla’s assault on the Nasa spacestation, and Moguera’s subsequent outer space battle with Spacegodzilla are both embarrassing and look like they belong in the non-theater sequences of Mystery Science Theater 3000– the black sheet background with dangling planets and monsters on strings just can’t be pardoned. This is an example of an effect that has been obsolete since the 70’s, and I can’t wrap my mind around the fact that we see them here in a film from the 90’s. It’s just pitiful how badly these sequences were done, given the quality we expect from Toho at this point.

And it’s far from isolated just to those sequences, all of Godzilla Vs Spacegodzilla is just sorta shitty looking all over. This film is so much closer to a 1960’s B-movie than any ACTUAL Toho 1960’s B-movie ever was, and it doesn’t feel like this was done deliberately at all, there is an element of crappiness that just permeates this film’s production value completely and cheapens it beyond redemption, which is a total shame, because Godzilla deserves better.

That being said, there is one arena where this film shines, and that is in it’s tail puppetry. Godzilla’s tail is like, freaking miles long, and it wiggles about like a live trout, stranded on a rock. Toho did not let the quality of their tail puppetry droop with the rest of the production value, and it has to be acknowledged, they are the absolute unrivaled masters of tail puppetry on this planet. All hail the true Tail Puppetmasters.

So, GvSG sucks in all the areas you’d expect it to excel, but somehow manages to kind of break even in the least predictable way; by giving us human characters we like and care about, including one who has been around a while now without much to show for it before this film (that would be Miki, of course.) Additionally, Moguera, who sucked like crazy in The Mysterians, is kinda cool in this, so Godzilla Vs Spacegodzilla is a real curveball. In the end, it’s still one more nail in the coffin for the underperforming Heisei series, which honestly, I wanted to enjoy a lot more than I do.

C-

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Godzilla Vs Mechagodzilla!

Godzilla Vs Mechagodzilla ~ 1974, Jun Fukuda – Japan

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It’s 1974, and Godzilla Vs Megalon is now a year behind us. Toho, no doubt still coping with the grief of knowing they had birthed Jet Jaguar into the world, decides to get right back on the horse and gives us some of that same old same old; Godzilla Vs Mechagodzilla; yet another movie that would pit Godzilla against a monster controlled by invaders from space. Returning director Jun Fukuda, who had salvaged past alien invader Godzilla films with his Zazzy directing, piles on the Zazz like a damn Zazz-machine, but at this point we’ve seen this exact plot so many times that keeping it zazzy is now easier said than done. I mean, they pile on that zazz, but right now, what we need is a new story. Not zazz.

…It’s still pretty fun, though.

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THE PLOT~ While exploring the Japanese Island of Okinawa, archeologists uncover a centuries old mural hidden in deep underground in an ancient cave system. This mural tells of a chilling prophecy, the exact wording escapes me, but essentially it boils down to this:

“A monster is gonna show up to kill everybody, but then more monsters are gonna show up, so it’ll all be cool.”

Everybody flips out when this is discovered, even though by my count that prophecy has already come true like, a million times. Whatever. They also find some Space Titanium in the cave, and some serious science shit goes down. How wild and advanced is the science in Godzilla Vs Mechagodzilla? Why, it’s so out there that the Subtitles can’t even keep up!

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The subtitles didn’t even want to try on that word!

Soon, Godzilla pops in for his daily raid. It’s assumed immediately that Big G is the monster spoken of in the aforementioned prophecy, but something isn’t adding up. This new Godzilla sounds sorta funny, he doesn’t have the all too familiar Skreeonk style roar the Japanese have come to recognize… His spines are also shinier, and his dragon breath has a vague space-alien type quality to it… Plus, when Anguirus shows up to spend some quality dino time with his best buddy, Godzilla brutally kicks the shit out of him, which is totally out of character (Godzilla Raids Again). What the hell is going on?

Godzilla-vs-Mechagodzilla-fightHoly smokes! Another Godzilla shows up! The Japanese people’s collective mind is blown. After a short throw down between the two warring twin Godzillas, we discover the truth, the first Godzilla was a mechanized imposter, a robotic replica of Godzilla, who was coated in a false skin, not unlike Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator, and also probably in real life. Of course, this robot Godzilla, forever known as Mechagodzilla, is part of an alien plot to conquer the Earth. The aliens involved are pretty lame. They’re shape shifting gorilla people.

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So, As part of the prophecy, King Caesar, the shaggy, lethargic guardian monster of Okinawa, is awoken, and he and Godzilla team up against Mechagodzilla. King Caesar is kind of cool, he’s a bipedal, somewhat humanoid dog/lion type creature, and I’ve never been secretive about my longstanding bias towards monsters with floppy ears. King Caesar makes Jet Jaguar look like a serious mountain of shit, but we don’t actually spend too much time with him, so he isn’t given much of an opportunity to shine. Additionally, his “guardian monster” status is slightly reminiscent of an underdeveloped Mothra, so what little we do get from him isn’t really breaking new ground. King Caesar is a bit of a missed opportunity.

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Anyway, Godzilla and King Caesar put the beat down on Mechagodzilla something fierce, and eventually Earth is saved yet again. The final battle is sorta bloody by Kaiju standards, which is pretty cool. On the profoundly lame and bizarre end of the spectrum, however, Godzilla’s premeditated scheme to take down Mechagodzilla involves him absorbing electricity during a lightning storm so that he can magnetize his body and temporarily(?) possess metal based super powers like Magneto. I don’t know if you were able to actually read that without hemorrhaging, but the same thing happens in Ernest Goes to Jail, so I want you to think about that long and hard before you go to sleep tonight.

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Really, the biggest thing this movie has going for it is that it introduced Mechagodzilla, a character who would become a favorite among Godzilla movie buffs. Aside from that, it’s really sort of a lesser entry in the series. The recycled plot is, by this point a pretty major problem to contend with, and nothing else brought to the table feels fresh enough to compensate. What’s here is pretty good, but honestly, not having it be aliens would have made a world of difference at this point. Really, anything else would be better.

We have one more Showa era Godzilla film left, and then Big Green takes a long break.

C+

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