PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Godzilla Vs Kong 2021

Godzilla Vs Kong 2021 Story by Terry Rossio, Michael Dougherty and Zach Shields, screenplay by Eric Pearson and Max Borenstein, directed by Adan Wingard.

Godzilla surfaces and attacks an Apex Cybernetics facility in Florida. A conspiracy theorist called Bernie thinks that's something is going on at that location. He's gotten a job there so he can spy on the company. He finds a dodgy shipping order in his search but isn't sure what it means. During the attack he stumbles onto a powerful device but has to leave because of Godzilla stomping about. Bernie joins up with one of his listeners and her pal to sneak into the Florida Alex location. They get shipped to Hong Kong in a secret underground transport system.

The Apex CEO hires Alexander Skarsgård to lead an expedition to the Hollow Earth. They take Kong along, he's sedated and lying on a barge. Godzilla attacks to convoy of ships, there's a massive punch up and big G puts Kong down. Alexander saves the ships from further attack by shutting down all the ships and pretending to be dead. The CEO believes Kong came from the HE. Turns out he was right. A good thing for the human's in their fancy high tech helicopters. Kong beats down some giant flying beasties that chomped on one of the fancy choppers. Lucky for us, the stars of the movie where in another chopper. It's dangerous working in corporate America.

CEO guy sent his daughter with the expedition to HE. She's a ruthless cold hearted type that comes to a bad end, at least from her POV, I was kind of digging the fire ball created by her chopper as it was crushed by Kong. Back in Hong Kong, the conspiracy trio have chanced upon a test of Mechagodzilla. Turns out that CEO guy is there and he's large and in charge. Godzilla pops up and opens a tunnel to the Hollow Earth. Kong and Godzilla yell at each other until Kong jumps into the hole and lands in Hong Kong. There's some big battle scenes and more people and places succumb to the monster mash. Eventually it's all sorted and Kong and his pals on on vacation until the next sequel.

Mostly entertaining but seems long winded even at 113 mins. There's a Blu-ray due in a couple of weeks, that should look better than the version I found online. I'll order one after the price falls a bit. I'd want to see it again.

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Godzilla 1985 Written by Shuichi Nagahara, Lisa Tomei, and an uncredited Tony Randel and Straw Weisman, directed by RJ Kizer and Koji Hashimoto.

I'm watching the Red Menace HD Reconstruction from the Internet Archive. It's a fan made wide screen release of the film. It's a massive 12.4GB file, it took over 8 hours to download. You can also watch it right on the Internet Archive with their player.

There's no Blu-ray or DVD release of the movie, some one tells me that the music rights are an issue that might never be resolved. Movie and music people are so greedy and stupid. There was a laser disc and VHS release but they were pan and scan

The movie is called Godzilla 1984 in Japan and, like the original 1954 Godzilla, it's been Americanized for release here. Godzilla surfaces again and the world is watching. Especially after he attacks and destroys a Russian submarine. The Russians are all mad and shouty, first they blame the Americans but they soon learn that it was Godzilla. 

Raymond Burr plays the same American reporter who appeared in the 1955 movie. He's called in as a consultant on Godzilla by the military. Both the Americans and the Russians want to nuke Godzilla but the Japanese Prime Minister says not while he's on Japanese soil. Secretly the Russians arm a nuke.

When Godzilla returns to Tokyo the military have their new Super-X Attack Plane and the scientists have an idea on how to lure Godzilla into a trap. There's plenty of collateral damage and stuff blowing up. I've see it a few times already but I enjoyed it again.

Gravy 2015 Written by James Roday and Todd Harthan, directed by James Roday. You might remember James from Psych. This is his first film. James and Dulé Hill make cameos in the film.

Jimmi Simpson, Micheal Weston and Lilly Cole are murdering cannibal psychopath scum, they seal everyone in a small Mexican restaurant for some late night torture and snacking. They get the drop on the staff and some of them die. The tide turns after a while when the bartender, Sutton Foster, starts fighting back. Still, hardly anyone gets out alive.

It's gruesome and gory with a twisted sick sense of humor. Certainly not going to be popular with some. I got to the end and thought it was sort of funny but barely average. I had bought the DVD a while back, so I have it, and I might watch it again someday.

Science Fiction Sunday 456

Dinosaurus is a 1960 Universal International film. I'd seen it, back in 2008, and hadn't watched it since. I missed buying a DVD, the Image DVD is out of print and now it's pretty pricey, there's one on Amazon for $54. A quick Google search netted a European copy, on eBay for 7 bucks, and another site had a copy for double but they were out of stock. It written by Dan E Weisburd and Jean Yeaworth, directed by Irvin Yeaworth and producer Jack H Harris provided the story idea. It's in the low-budget range for Universal, $450K, but that's still much better than your average AIP budget.

The story is about some dinos that are brought back to life after being found frozen in the sea by a Caribbean island. When the dinosaurs, a T-Rex and a Brontosaurus, were dragged up onto the island they brought up a frozen caveman too. He thaws out to play the comic relief. The T-Rex thaws out to play the monster but the Bronto is a nice guy. The stop motion is fairly good but no Harryhausen. The guy making the dinos, Marcel Delgado was promised 5-6 weeks to create them but 2 weeks in he was told they would need them now. They look remarkably good, considering.

There's some issues with the rear projection shots, sometimes they look so obvious, but it's not something to worry too much about. It's pretty lighthearted, even the T-Rex attacks cut away before things get too dicey. The caveman, a kid and the Bronto provide some laughs. 

There's a bit of danger as the T-Rex tromps around and the human's figure out how to fight the critter. It was fun enough, I got a few giggles out if it, and there's a bit of excitement during the battle between the shovel and the T-Rex. Not the best dino movie around but certainly watchable.

Footage from the movie was used in other productions: During special-effects work on this picture, the crew used their Brontosaurus model and miniature jungle set to film a shot for an episode of TV's The Twilight Zone (1959), called "The Odyssey of Flight 33". A shot of the Tyrannosaurus was borrowed as well for "The Secret of Gilligan's Island," a 3rd season episode of Gilligan's Island where Gilligan dreams the castaways are all cavepeople living on the island back in the stone age. -from the Wikipedia.

Giant Phantom Monster Agon is a four part Japanese TV series that aired January 2-8 1968 on Nippon Television. I found a copy on YouTube that's certainly watchable. The mini-series was filmed in 1964 but Toho Studios thought that the monster was too close to Godzilla and they held up the broadcast. After finding out that Shinichi Sekizawa and Fuminori Ohashi were involved, they lifted the ban. Shinichi wrote some of Toho's kaiju films and Fuminori was the apprentice of Eiji Tsuburaya, Toho's head of special effects. Toho somehow was convinced that the two men didn't intend to copy Godzilla.

It was filmed in B&W with a sepiatone tint. The website in the title above shows some samples of the tint but the version on YouTube is B&W. It's a bit shorter, 90:56 minutes, than the 96 minutes that the Wikipedia lists the film being. There's a 94 minute DVD on Amazon for 15 bucks. Not sure I need that for that price.

The story is typical big monster comes out of the sea and people run away stuff, but it does poke along. There's some good monster action and plenty of talking among the humans. Like some of the Godzilla movies, there's a kid that gets in trouble.

Never one to throw anything out the studio that made the TV series took the Agon monster suit, changed it a bit and used it for a dinosaur in an episode of The Space Giants. It was changed again and appeared a second time, this time the monster had a name, Giant Fire Monster Aron. After that that the suit was probably tossed out.

It's certainly not great but I watched it to the end. The monster is OK and the destruction is fairly descent for a TV production.

I'd recommend it to the Kaiju fan who might be interested in this sort of thing.

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Shin Godzilla was our first movie. It's the 29th film in the Godzilla series. Several of the recent re-makes have been sequels to the 1954 film, they ignore all the previous sequels, this new re-boot of the series starts fresh with no other previous giant monster action. It came out last year and it's the tallest Godzilla so far. Here's a size comparison.

The big fella arrives in a different state, that's him below. Like the first Godzilla movie this one takes some inspiration from a radioactive activity. In the 1954 Godzilla, hydrogen bombs detonated in the Pacific ocean created the original Godzilla. In 2016 scientists think Godzilla has been eating radioactive waste dumped into the ocean in the 1950s. Then he started mutating, now he's come a shore. Maybe he's looking for a date. Lonely in the ocean.

He's a funny looking guy at first, he seems hardly in control of his body. He crashes into anything in his way. After a while he heads back to sea. He returns a bit later, having mutated once again. Now he's looking like the guy below and he's doubled in size from the previous version. When he's busting a move, he's busting a building.

It's pretty chatty for a lot of the movie but once the big guy shows up it's full on destruction. Some of the best we've seen. The scientist gang works hard on a solution to kill or disable him. They come up with a good plan and save the day. The US pushes to nuke the monster and they set up a bomb and a plane. Just say the word, Prime Minister. The PM struggles with the nukes in Tokyo question. What will the people think?

People talking about the movie mention that the movie takes a poke at the way the government thinks and reacts to problems. It but what I found more interesting is that the scientist group and the government group acted differently to the problem when setting up the hierarchy for the groups. The government group follows the traditional way, pushing the decision every higher, and the scientist group gets rid of all the hierarchy in favor of everyone getting an equal say. When a woman scientist of lesser standing is giving an address to the government group she's set off to the side instead of addressing the group head on. It's a little thing but such a class system can't be good for anyone. The Japanese world is complex and I haven't got the patience to discuss it in detail.

Of course Tokyo takes a hefty punch in the goolies after Godzilla evolves fiery breath and rays from his fins. There are scenes in the movie that remind me of the first movie and some of the ones that followed. Often the feel of the movie is like the 1954 film. Even though the big guy is all CGI, his movement was captured from a motion control rig. The big guy's body even was made to look more like rubber than skin. The CGI is top notch. It's a gorgeous looking film.

Our second feature was Transformations, a 1988 SF film that was made in Italy at the Empire Studios. Mitch Brian wrote the script and Jay Kamen directed. This was Brian's second feature. He wouldn't have many more. It's Jay's only feature as a director. He mostly does sound work.

Rex Smith is a spaceman. He's got a little ship and in his sleep he's visited by a naked lady who's really some sort of monster. That's not the naked lady monster with him in the picture above. That's Lisa Langlois, she's got an all together different monster in her. After Rex has sex with the NLM, his ship has problems. He needs to land but the only place to do so is a prison mining planet.

That's the naked lady monster sitting on Rex there. On the prison planet, Lisa is the acting doctor, she born there, her mother was a prisoner. Lisa had been raised by a real Doctor, she knows some medical stuff. The doctor had died a bit before the movie starts and the new doctor hasn't arrived. She treats Rex and the monster in the script Lisa makes her fall in love with Rex and she wants him to take her with him when he leaves. Trouble is so do some of the criminals.

Patrick Macnee is a priest, somehow, he knows that evil is coming. Rex's fling with the naked lady monster has infected him with a space plague. Not listening to anyone, Rex visits the prisons night spots and spreads the space plague around the place. Don't worry Rex will be reborn in fire before the end of the movie and he'll be OK. Not everyone in the prison planet fares so well, especially after the riot and all.

It's sadly, a lack luster production with poor script and a few OK actors. They used sets from Arena and Robot Jox. It's been a while since I saw either so I don't know what was reused. I do know both of those films were somewhat more entertaining movies than Transformations. My watched movie list says I watched Transformations back in 1992 but I didn't comment on it at the time. I sort of thought it looked familiar while we were watching it. Amazing, since it's rather forgettable. It gets a 3.9 on the IMDb, I gave it a 4 but it's not going to be something I'll be chomping at the bit to go buy or re-watch.

Friday Night Movies 598

There's a new Blu-ray of Godzilla 1984 out here in the US, it came out last Tuesday, and it's the first time that the Japanese version of the movie has been commercially available here. It was released in the US as Godzilla 1985 with some changes. The movie was released in Japan as Godzilla on December 15 1984. It's also been called The Return of Godzilla. I'm sticking with the Godzilla 1984 moniker. Over the years since it's release I've acquired a number of copies of the film from various sources. I made a DVDr copy of both the English dubbed New World VHS tape and Laserdisc so I could get rid of those formats. There's a DVDr copy of someone's Japanese Laserdisc, it looks nice, but it has no English dub or subtitles. I have a Video Dakaiju VHS bootleg tape that I copied to DVDr, again to get rid of the tape which had the Japanese version of the movie with fan subtitles. Someone gave me an English dubbed version of the Japanese movie but it looks pretty poor and there are Dutch subtitles through the whole thing. I've got a DVDr bootleg from the Japanese DVD that has fan subs. It looks the best of the bootlegs. It's amazing what the fans will do to get the films they want, huh.

The movie starts with a ship at sea, it gets attacked, and Godzilla pops out of an island. He's also dropping giant 6 foot long fleas that suck the fluids out of humans. All the ships crew get killed but one guy. The government tries to keep a wrap on the story but nosy reporter guy comes along. The movie ignores the decades of sequels to the original 1954 film as if they had not happened. So it's 30 years after the first Godzilla appearance and he's returned. Something destroys a Russian sub and they think it was the US. Sabers rattle and the Japanese release info about Godzilla to stop a war. Once the Russians and US find out it was Godzilla they demand to drop a bomb on the critter. They toss their demands in the Japanese Prime Minister's face. The PM says No nukes!

The Japanese Defense Force has tanks, missiles and the Super-X. It's a big fat VTOL spaceship looking craft that's got some super deadly cadmium missiles that knock Godzilla out. The Russians have a ship in Tokyo Bay that is damaged when Godzilla strolls by and the automatic launch control goes out of wack and  launches a nuke. In the Godzilla 1985 version the nuke gets launched on purpose by the Russians. Luckily the US explodes it in upper atmosphere with a missile.

The radioactive fall out revives Godzilla and he beats the Super-X to the ground and pushes a building over on it. There's always plenty of work for the building trades after Godzilla comes knocking. The scientists figure out a way to lure Godzilla into a volcano and they blow it up with him inside.

Don't worry, he'll enjoy basking in that refreshing molten mass until next time. It's more like the early Godzilla films than the ones from the 1970's, somewhat more dark and much more deadly for the citizens unlucky enough to be out when Godzilla comes calling. It's a fun restart of the series and worth seeing.

I, Madman is a 1989 movie that was directed by Tibor Takacs. We had just watched his more recent movie Spiders. I, Madman is written by David Chaskin and while he didn't pen a masterpiece he did pen something more watchable than most of the low budget horror films that I've been seeing of late. I, Madman is a horror movie about a horror novel. That's the book from the movie on the still below. I'm guessing that they changed the book in the poster so there wouldn't be any near nude breasts on the poster.

Jenny Wright is a worker in a used bookstore. She's found a horror novel that she really got into, so much so that she starts hallucinating the killer from the book. I, Madman is by author Malcolm Brand. Jenny goes looking for any info on him. Brand's old published says he died years ago. Jenny's boyfriend Police Detective on a the trail of a killer who keeps slicing pieces off his victim's faces. Jenny tells the police that the killer is the Doctor from the book. You can imagine that didn't go down well. I always wonder why people don't lie when this sort of thing comes up. The police will always think you're crazy if you tell them it was a monster. There's plenty of murderin' and yellin' and runnin' about. I enjoyed it well enough and was glad to have seen it.

Friday Night Movies 591

Godzilla Battle Royale is a 2014 fan film and it sure looks like it. It's the work of Billy DeBose and it's a sad job to behold. He does have a lot of monsters on the screen but the movie is one long battle with little story to support the fighting. I got bored after a while and it was hard to keep from falling asleep. The monster suits are all fan made and some are better than others. Still they're mostly better than the amateur actors. The crew behind the camera are pretty poor. You can see how poor, the movie is posted on YouTube and I've provided a link to it.

The Curse 2: They Bite was our second feature. It's 1989 movie that I'm told isn't really a sequel to The Curse. I saw it and rated it as Crap on my watched movie list. There were a 3rd and 4th Curse films that also had nothing to do with the others. A young man and woman are traveling in New Mexico when they stop for gas. The attendant warns them not to take the short cut but the guy, an idiot, decides he knows better and off they go. They get a flat and while the guy is changing the tire a snake gets into the car. There's a super short scene at the beginning of the movie that hints of radiation tainted snakes. Later the guy gets bit and he starts to get sicker and sicker. The girl tries to get him to a hospital but he won't hear of it. Jamie Farr makes an appearance as a traveling salesman. He gives the bitten guy an snake bite antidote but it doesn't help. Eventually the guy gets a snake growing out of his hand and then the killing starts. Bo Swenson makes an appearance as a cop. It's pretty much below average and kind of familiar. It's only 98 minutes but kind of dull at times, we were getting restless near the end of the movie. You can see it at the link above but you probably don't need to bother. There are so many better movies to watch.

AAAAAGH!!!

A couple of people had posted this picture on Facebook so I went and found a nice big one and saved that. In case you missed it. Made me laugh.

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Our first feature was the 2013 Frank Pavic documentary Jodorowsky's Dune. Alejandro Jodorowsky is a Chilean-French director who attempted to adapt Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune in the mid-1970s. He hadn't actually read the book before he told his producer that he wanted to make a movie of Dune. Unfortunately Jodorowsky's idea of making a movie wasn't anything that people with money to make movies could understand. Frank Herbert said of the script "It was the size of a phonebook." The money people couldn't figure a way to make some cash on a 14 hour science fiction art film. Not being a commercial film, it never got made.

The documentary takes a brief look at Jodorowsky's early career in theater and film. Before Dune he'd directed Fando Y Lis, El Topo and The Holy Mountain. El Topo is credited as the first midnight movie hit but none of his movies were big money spinners. Still, he got about $10 million to make Dune. His idea was to make a movie about a prophet in a story that would be important to the citizens of the world. He got some "warriors" to help him. Chris Foss for space ship design, Moebius and H R Girger to design the settings and costumes, and Dan O'Bannion for the special effects. Those same guys would work together again on Alien. The film credits the unmade Dune as influencing some films that came later. Mostly they mention the films that those same artists had worked on. Certainly the publicity from working on Dune would have made the artists better known to Ridley Scott who hired them to work on Alien in 1979. Moebius did 3000 black and white story board drawings and they were printed, bound with his color costume illustrations, and sent around to the studios to drum up interest. Greg had just seen a copy of the book in a book store somewhere.

It's an enjoyable documentary, there are plenty interviews with Jodorowsky and he's fairly entertaining. They interview Chris Foss, Michel Seydoux, H. R. Giger, Nicolas Winding Refn, Amanda Lear and Richard Stanley. Nicholas and Richard are directors who didn't have anything to do with the Jodorowsky film but they're pretty certain that the movie would have been ground breaking and mind blowing. I'm rather more doubtful, the film makers had a grand cinematic experience in mind but they didn't have the money or the ability to make it.

 

Our second film is the Japanese BluRay of Godzilla 2000: Millennium. It's a bit longer than the US version and the movie has different dialog. Here's a bit about it from the Wikipedia:

There were two English dubbed versions of this film. As is standard practice for Toho, the film was originally dubbed in Hong Kong for use in Toho's international version. A few lines from the international dub can be heard in the theatrical trailer for Sony's theatrical release, although the film was entirely re-dubbed by Asian-American voice actors (Schlesinger deliberately made this choice because he did not want the characters to sound like they were "from Wisconsin."). Only one line from the international version ("As long as the beer's cold, who cares?") was used in the re-dubbed North American version. Toho apparently prefers the North American version so much that the international version has never been officially released anywhere in the world.

Tristar Pictures licensed Godzilla 2000 for theatrical distribution in North America. It would be the first and only Japanese Godzilla movie since Godzilla 1985 to be released in North American theaters. Mike Schlesinger, who supervised the North American release and adapted the script, said, "It (Godzilla 2000) was such a spectacular success in Japan, we decided it was worth taking a shot, maybe the time was right for Godzilla to come back to theaters." Sony spent approximately $1,000,000 to re-edit and dub the movie in English, and an addition $10–12 million to market.

The English dubbed version of the film runs 99 minutes - eight minutes shorter in comparison to the 107-minute Japanese version. Most of these were minor edits done to improve the pacing, and the sound design of the movie was completely re-worked. J. Peter Robinson composed some new music meant to supplement Takayuki Hattori's music. The dubbing has a somewhat humorous, tongue-in-cheek tone to it, apparently in homage to Godzilla dubs of the 60s and 70s, with lines such as "Great Caesar's Ghost!", "Bite me!" and "these missiles will go through Godzilla like crap through a goose!". Some fans have criticized the English dubbed version of Godzilla 2000 for camping up what they perceive as a "serious" movie; however, Toho and Takao Okawara approved all the changes to the film in advance, and various amusing sequences throughout the story (such as people comically surviving Godzilla's rampage early in the film) establish a light-hearted tone and make it evident that it wasn't meant to be taken seriously. In an interview in Video Watchdog #71, Schlesinger noted that people in real life tend to speak humorously; he also felt that giving audiences some intentionally funny dialogue would make them less inclined to laugh at the monster scenes, which were supposed to be taken seriously. Originally, the film ended with the words "The End?" in cartoonish lettering, but Mike Schlesinger and Toho rejected that. "The End?" was removed from later home video and television releases. The ending was mistakenly retained for the out of print Spanish-subtitled VHS of the film.

Maybe more than you might need to know about Godzilla 2000: Millennium. I've seen it several times now and it still holds up fairly well.

Godzilla Snickers Commercial

 

Sperhauk sent me a link to the new Godzilla Snickers ad. It's pretty silly. Mike sent a 1970's Japanese ad for a vacuum cleaner that's being pitched by Ultraman. I found some weird Korean commercials.

Science Fiction Sunday 205

 

I'm watching the 2 disc 2012 Criterion DVD set of Godzilla today. Instead of just watching the 2 movies I'm listening to the David Kalat commentary on the two movies that come in the set. One is the original 1954 Japanese film and the other is the 1956 US version. The dvd is packed with some nice features. Here is the list from the Criterion site:

• New high-definition digital restoration (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
• New high-definition digital restoration of Godzilla, King of the Monsters, Terry Morse’s 1956 reworking of the original (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
• Audio commentary for both movies by film historian David Kalat
• New interviews with actors Akira Takarada and Haruo Nakajima and special effects technicians Yoshio Irie and Eizo Kaimai
• Interview with legendary Godzilla score composer Akira Ifukube
• Featurette detailing Godzilla’s photographic effects, introduced by special effects director Koichi Kawakita and special effects photographer Motoyoshi Tomioka
• New interview with Japanese-film critic Tadao Sato
• The Unluckiest Dragon, an illustrated audio essay featuring historian Greg Pflugfelder describing the tragic fate of the fishing vessel Daigo Fukuryu Maru, a real-life event that inspired Godzilla
• Trailers for Godzilla and Godzilla, King of the Monsters
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic J. Hoberman.

Kalat's commentaries are rather chatty and personal but they have a lot of information and history on the films. The interviews and featurettes are good. You can learn more about the Lucky Dragon #5 and their encounter with the H-Bomb. The interview with Tadao Sato helps remind us of the importance of the original Godzilla film and the big guy's relevance today. I haven't read the essay yet. For those that like the big guy from Japan, or want to learn more about him, the set is a nice addition to your sf collection. Well worth picking up.