It was just me and Joe over here at the big screen and he picked a multi-headed monster double header. Orichi The Eight Headed Dragon is also called Yamato Takeru. It's a 1994 Toho film from Japan. You can read a bit about the film on the previous links and about the myth behind it here and here on the Wikipedia, which also has 76 pages on dragons. Who doesn't like dragons? Damn, there's one of those trick questions again. I have to quit doin' that. I like dragons and that all that counts, huh.
There's a 1959 film starring Toshiro Mifuni called Nippon tanjo that has some of the same story. Here's the plot from IMDb:
The legend of the birth of Shintoism. In Fourth Century Japan, the Emperor Keikoh's son Ouso expects to succeed his father on the throne, but Otomo, the Emperor's vassal, prefers Ouso's stepbrother Waka, and conspires to have Ouso die on a dangerous mission he has contrived. But Ouso prevails in the mission and returns to his father's castle under a new name, Prince Yamato Takeru. Otomo plots to have the Prince sent into even greater danger, but Otomo is unaware that the gods have favored the Prince and the outcome is far from what any of them expected. Written by Jim Beaver.
It doesn't seem to mention dragons but I'm still a Mifuni fan and I'd like to see it. Maybe someday, but not today, right now we got Orichi breathing fire at the prince. That's one of the more exciting parts. Unfortunately, there are some lulls in the story. There's a lot of melodrama that happens between the fights and before we get to the final battle and the eight headed golden dragon. That seems to be what most people complain about in their reviews. That and the fair to middling special effects. They aren't much better or worse than the other Toho monster movies from the same mid-90's period. It seems a bit long at 104 minutes.
At 125 minutes Godzilla Final Wars is also pretty long. It dragged for me in the middle. I was pretty tired and keep nodding off but that passed as we swung into high gear and over 500 monsters fought to the death on the big screen. There weren't really that many monster in GFW but some of them do get killed. Gigan gets his head cut off twice. I blogged about this August 13, 2005. That was Friday Night Movies entry #20. Read more there.
Comments