Thursday, December 1, 2011

Kaiju Reviews #19 - Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah [Written by skull902]


The Heisei series can wait for one man, but this man it can not! Hi, it's me again. skull902. ...I really gotta make myself one of these Blogspot thingies, they seem nice. Anyway, I've been given the official job of Heisei Godzilla reviews. AIN'T THAT COOL? This is "Godzilla VS King Ghidorah", what I'm considering a remake of the 1964 classic, "Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster". This movie was originally released in Japanese theatres in 1991, then on American DVD/VHS in 1998 (to capitalize on the popularity of something that is so awful I can't even describe it...yet, anyway).

The movie opens with peoplez. From the future. Over-looking the corpse of a certain two- err, three-headed monster who was involved in a lil' scuffle with our old pal Godzilla. They discuss it for a moment until the movie decides to jump to something else.

Some newspaper writer guy gets a phone call from a publisher who wants him to write a story about aliens for the paper. He declines (even though his previous writings have made him a rich man), saying he doesn't write fiction anymore. Wait, seriously? Aliens have been around before! Multiple times! And this guy can't get a fucking clue about- wait, what's that? Different cannon? But that doesn't make- ...oh well.

We jump again to this crazy guy, lecturing the public of a...bus stop I think? About...something and is considered too damn crazy to continue. He's escorted forcefully out of...wherever he made the lecture by security guards. Turns out he and his garrison were saved on Lagos Island in World War II by a dinosaur. Nothing out of the ordinary for a monster film- WAIT. I said "World War II". That was during the 1940s (for the most part)! And Godzilla didn't first appear until 1954! And if "Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla"'s telling of events is correct, then 1954 was the first noted happening of a monster attack! So that means...IT IS OUT OF THE ORDINARY!

After some...stuff, I guess, some "Futurians" (who consist of a guy, a girl, and an android) arrive and are like "We wanna meet the Prime Minister tomorrow." Even though he probably has one of the world's busiest schedules, the Japanese Prime Minister is able to pencil them in for a meeting. Then they have the meeting. With the author guy. The Futurians have a book written by Mr. Author about Godzilla that was published...IN THE FUTURE! Turns out in the future nobody gave a shit about his crappy book. They conclude that getting rid of the dinosaur that would be later affected by nuclear testing would be the solution to getting rid of Godzilla. So the Futurians, the author guy and- OH MY GOD! That psychic chick! Yeah, turns out Miki here is in every movie from "Biollante" until "Destroyah". Anyway, they all go to that fateful day in 1944. They don't bring the crazy guy with them, because two of him in the same place would cause one to be erased from existance...which, in all honesty, doesn't sound like a huge problem.

So they get there and blast by some Americans who are dubbed over even though the actors are speaking English. One of them is Stephen Speilberg, by the way. Or rather, a younger version of him. Anyway, they teleport away Godzillasaurus (...LAME), sending him somewhere else and the one future chick replaces it with three little Dorats unbeknownst to the non-Futurians. Guess who they become? Yeah, the nuclear test on the island still happens.

Anyway, after all that shit's done they get back to 1991 and the future chick bullshits- err, I mean informs the author guy about how in the year 2204 Japan is the largest and richest country in the world. Yay. Then soon enough a monster attack happens and it's King Ghidorah. It was a setup the whole time! Yeah, the future guy wanted King Ghidorah attacking to ruin Japan's ecenomy and therefore affecting it's growth in the future! ...And Godzilla WASN'T doing this in the first place?

So the future chick sneaks in and re-programs the android (who was on future guy's side before) and they team up with the author to stop this travesty. Godzilla apparently was made by some Russians when THEY were testing out their nukes and he kicks Ghidorah's ass, killing him. Hooray the terror's over! Oh no! The terror has begun! Yeah so Godzilla's back. He kills some dudes (including future guy and Mr. Crazy, after Crazy THOUGHT Godzilla was being his friend when they met for a short moment) and the future chick comes up with the idea to go to the future. Why? It's not like they can bring Ghidorah back to li- HOLY SHIT IT'S MECHA-KING GHIDORAH. Shit. Just. Got. REAL!

Godzilla and Mecha-King Ghidorah have an awesome fight and Godzilla is driven back to the sea, presumed dead. The future chick goes back to her time and all seems well. Until it's shown that Godzilla is still alive. Yeah, dawg.

Some say that this movie is one of the best in the whole Godzilla franchise and I certainly agree. It's got a great amount of action and a decent plot, too.

Score: 4.5/5.0

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Kaiju Reviews #18 - Terror of Mechagodzilla

Alright, time for the final movie in the Showa series... and more title trivia! In this case, the movie was named Terror of GODZILLA in the US... even though the villain was obviously Mechagodzilla... what the hell was wrong with the people that were titling these things?! But anyway, about 90% of this movie focuses on the human perspective... this is gonna be other shortie, that's for sure. We start off with guys working on a thing that go to a place looking for a doctor because of the recent arrival of a creature known as Titanosaurus, which he supposedly discovered many years ago... but no one believed his theory (despite the fact that you can hardly walk for 2 mins. without seeing a giant monster in these movies), so he decided to become a mad scientist. But, instead of encountering the mad scientist guy, the two reporter people end up meeting his daughter. She's important, BTW... because her mind controls Mechagodzilla. Yeah, you read that right. The alien ape guys teamed up with mad scientist (who's manually controlling Titanosaurus) and put Mechagodzilla's controls in her brain or something. That be wacked up, yo. So yeah, at some point, mad scientist sends Titanosaurus to destroy Tokyo... Godzilla kicks his ass. He runs away. Then like a million years later (or atleast that's what it felt like to me), Titanosaurus and Mechagodzilla team up to destroy the random abandoned country side... because model buildings are expensive to make. Fortunately, Godzilla comes along to save the day... except he didn't bring a partner along. O DAM. Due to being outmatched, Godzilla ends up not doing too well in the fight. Though in a morbid turn of events, mad scientist's daughter ends up killing herself so that Mechagodzilla could no longer function. So yeah, Godzilla ends up destroying him. He also defeats Titanosaurus shortly after, once the army figures out that Titanosaurus is weak against sonics. As a celebration of his victory, Godzilla then goes back to the ocean, taking a much deserved rest... which is fitting, considering that he'll be retired for atleast 10 more years.

Rating:
3-something maybe
I don't know; like Destroy All Monsters, most of this is human stuff... though this is more dramatic and well-written (though that still doesn't keep it from being kind of boring) and the monster scenes, while being pretty compelling, are few and far between. Not bad for what it is, but... yeahhh, he definitely needed that rest big time... and perhaps I deserve a rest from all of this Godzilla stuff, for now. The Heisei series can just wait; it's not going anywhere!

Kaiju Reviews #17 - Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla

To start off on a randomly interesting tidbit, this movie had somewhat of an identity crisis in the US, as it was also titled as "Godzilla vs. The Bionic Monster" and "Godzilla vs. The Cosmic Monster". What's wrong with "Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla"?! Oh well, we start this off as someone gets a [strangely accurate] fortune from something or other that says something like "If one sees a black mountain in the clouds, a monster will try to destroy the world... and two will rise to save the world" or something like that. I don't know if that's it exactly, but that's what happens... not that it matters since I usually only describe monster scenes most of the time, even when I say I'm not going to. So, on that note, our harbinger of death is none other than... GODZILLA?! ... Uh-huh... because surely you'd fall for that despite the title, right? So, shortly after "Godzilla" starts wreaking havoc, Anguirus comes along and battles him, only to leave with a broken jaw... but not before destroying some of Godzilla's "skin", revealing that he's really made of a material known as... Space Titanium... right... I guess the writers were feeling particularly lazy that day. Eventually, this fake Godzilla makes its way over to a populated city... only to encounter the REAL Godzilla! The fake Godzilla then gets rid of its disguise, revealing itself to be none other than Mechagodzilla, made by a race of aliens... yes, there's MORE aliens.
This time they're Gorilla-Men things! ... So yeah, Mechagodzilla was made so they could conquer the world (OFCOURSE!) or destroy it, if the prophecy is anything to go by. But anyway, Godzilla and Mechagodzilla do battle, which eventually ends in a tie (due to both of them being severely injured). But after much exposition (and quasi-ripoffs of James Bond sequences) the 2nd savior of the Earth is awakened: King Caesar, the lion/dog/god thing! So ya, King Caesar fights Mecha-G, gets his booty handed to him, Godzilla comes along and teams up with him (though Godzilla ends up doing most of the work anyway), and Mechagodzilla is defeated... until the sequel.

Rating:
3.5/5.0
I got very lazy on the plot description, but I thought that this was one of the better Showa movies... especially seeing as this one had [basically] no stock footage.

Friday, September 30, 2011

Kaiju Reviews #16 - Godzilla vs. Megalon

Uh-oh! Be prepared for some crazy-ass shit, because THIS IS GODZILLA VS. MEGALON, BITCH! We start off with two male lovers--erm... I mean scientists, who are developing a robot known only as JET JAGUAR. Oh yeah, you know that this is gonna be balls-to-the-walls. Elsewhere, however, there lives an underground race of Z-Grade Actors known as the Seatopians. They're pissed about the testing of nuclear bombs that's slowly destroying their home. As such, they end up summoning Megalon and naturally sends him to attack Japan... even though nukes aren't even allowed there... yeah... Anyway, Megalon flies throughout the skies of Tokyo (I'm assuming) and uses stock footage of King Ghidorah's lightning bolts to destroy the city... And then he has the nerve to destroy a dam! THE FIEND... Jet Jaguar knows that mindless actions such as this cannot be tolerated, so he overrides his own programming, grows in size, and flies over to Megalon, ready to do battle... Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that Megalon is a really STUPID monster? So yeah, Jet Jaguar actually has the upper hand. The Seatopians then start to panic and politely ask the Cockroach Aliens (who are SUPPOSED to be dead, if I remember correctly...) if they can borrow Gigan (who's SUPPOSED to be out of the Aliens' control, if I remember correctly...) for a minute or two. The Cockroaches agree and Gigan ends up arriving after a little while, teaming up with Megalon. Given that this is a 2-on-1 battle, they naturally make quick work of Jet Jaguar, who ends up flying to Monster Island. He then ends up using the power of charades to communicate with Godzilla, who agrees to team up with our hydraulic hero, IN ORDER TO SAVE THE... well... random abandoned country side. Godzilla & Jets end up making their way over there and encounter Megalon and Gigan once more, beginning their battle of epic proportions... and stock footage. With so much stock footage in the movie, I bet you could even believe that this movie was shot in only 3 weeks... which it was. But ANYHOO, seeing as the rest of the movie is pretty much just the monsters battling, I'm going to mention several highlights, such as:
THE RING OF FIRE THAT GODZILLA SHOULD BE ABLE TO GET OUT OF BUT CAN'T FOR SOME REASON!
& (everyone's favorite)
THE SLIDING KICK! HOO-WAAAAA (There's even an instant replay!)

Somewhere along the line, however, Gigan ends up retreating first (again) and Megalon follows suit shortly after, tunneling back to his underground home. As a way to celebrate their victory, Godzilla ends up inviting Jet Jaguar over to his place for some champagne (not RLY), but he declines, opting to sing The Jet Jaguar Song intead (YA RLY). Goddamn, this is awesome.

Score:
A score wouldn't do this movie justice. It must be seen to be believed... I mean, yeah, it's bad (and I mean BAD) but it's a so-bad-it's-good kind of bad. It's the kind of thing to watch with a friend and make fun of it the whole time... which I guess is why it was featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Kaiju Reviews #15 - Godzilla vs. Gigan

Time for yet another alien-centric movie! You're not getting tired of that yet, are you? I hope not, because there's still several more of these. Anyway, OUR STORY BEGINS... with a comic book artist. He's hired to do something for a new theme park that's being constructed, based off of the giant monsters and once it's completed, the owners will go to Monster Island and... destroy the real monsters... okay, shouldn't this at least a TAD bit suspicious?
1. Anything the humans tried have (more often than not) no effect whatsoever other than just pissing them off... and that's the army; scientists, even! So, how would these "amusement park owners" suddenly be able to kill all (let alone any) of them?
2. Why would everyone be okay with this? Sure, they often cost the city thousands of dollars, but they're good guys, who's going to save Japan when an evil monster suddenly comes strolling along?
So yeah, anyway, Mr. Comic Book Artist Guy manages to find some random tape player that was lying around and decides to play the tape for shiz and gigglez. When he does this, however, Godzilla and Anguirus manage to hear the tape from Monster Island... somehow... and it gives them the ability to talk... Um... okay...? Not much can really top Godzilla dancing and flying, so I guess I can go with this... Anyhow, Godzilla (being the lazy bastard he is) decides to send Anguirus to Tokyo to figure out what in the hell is going on. That doesn't seem to work out to well, as the JSDF blasts the hell out of Angy, making him go back with his tail between his legs. Meanwhile, Comic Book Artist Guy recruits some allies, who I shall hereby dub "Love Interest" and "Hippie-Dude". After a lot of snooping, our intrepid trio discovers that the themepark owners are infact ALIENS! What a shock! They are from the Nebula M-17 quadrant (maybe they know our good friend Ultraman?) and are actually Cockroaches... okay, what a shock! They also happen to hold control over our titular monster Gigan, as well as our ever-recurring antagonist, King Ghidorah! This bodes well for Japanese contractors, as the aliens end up having to send their monster menagerie down to Tokyo earlier than planned. As such, Gigan and Ghidorah happily oblige and spread carnage and mayhem throughout the strangely empty city (I guess everyone's so used to giant monster attacks that they evacuate before they even need to). Eventually, after the monsters destroy most of the city anyway, Godzilla and Anguirus arrive to save the day! ... Though they don't do too good of a job at first. Gigan beats the living hell out of our two heroes (which, if you can't already tell from his weapons, causes the first instances of bloodshed in the series), while Ghidorah kind of just watches and occasionally uses the power of stock footage. After about half an hour of getting his arse kicked, Godzilla ends up losing the strength to fight... at least until he smashes a tower resembling his likeness... which just so happens to be where the aliens are, as well as the devices that are controlling Gigan and King Ghidorah! So now they'll leave everyone alone, right? Erm... no such luck. Turns out that it didn't particularly matter whether they were controlled or not, because they're already evil anyway. Oh well. Though eventually, after MOAR battling, Gigan ends up flying back into space, leaving his friend in the dust... atleast until Godzilla and Anguirus stopped beating the crap out of him, anyway. Ofcourse, Ghidorah immediately takes this chance and follows Gigan back into the cold depths of space (though they must have gotten separated somewhere along the way...). Godzilla and Anguirus then celebrate their victory by heading off into the sunset with a weirdass Japanese song... just to make this movie even more weird, I guess.

Score:
3.0/5.0:
The fact that almost all of Ghidorah's screen-time is made up of stock footage is kind of annoying and the set-up is... a bit long, but otherwise it's pretty good. And despite the prescense of giant cockroach aliens disguised as humans, this movie (along with the previous one) has a darker tone than alot of the previous movies... So, you would think that this is the start of a trend, right? UM... We'll see about that...

Kaiju Reviews #14 - Godzilla vs. Hedorah

After these last few movies, this one is an... improvement... and unlike Destroy All Monsters, this one actually takes place back during the time it was made (same goes for the movies made after this... GROOVY). But anyway, we start off with some giant tadpole-looking thing terrorizing anyone who is stupid enough to get near it. I guess there's more stupid people in Japan than I thought, because Hedorah ends up taking a lot of victims. As the movie goes on, though, it turns out he ISN'T a tadpole, as he has the ability to turn into different forms (the "tadpole" being one of them). His other forms are his standard one (on the poster, genius) and a flying form, which curiously looks like a UFO. Foreshadowing, anyone? ... Probably not, but I guess I should tell you about his origins anyway, since I'm blabbering on. From what I gather after watching the movie, Hedorah is some sort of extraterrestrial life form that somehow made its way to Earth and ended up getting mutated by pollution. As such, he feeds off of it (regularly strolling over to the nearest factory and inhaling some nice, nutritious smog). Hedorah can also cause/secrete pollution, but it's fatal to humans (it just seems to be an inconvenience to others, such as Godzilla... and kittens). Meanwhile though, after Hedorah makes several rounds of genocide, Godzilla arrives to save the day! ... And gets his ass handed to him. After Godzilla receives his royal smackdown, Hedorah ends up spraying his eye with sludge, which ends up partially blinding him for the rest of the movie (I still think that Godzilla should have taken advantage of this and wear an eyepatch). Sometime later, a bunch of people start to party hardy on Mt. Fuji. Though apparently, Hedorah didn't get an invite, as he came along to crash the party and tries to kill MOAR people, this time in a more powerful form. Thankfully for the partygoers, Godzilla arrives to save the day just in time and fights Hedorah once more. Unfortunately, Godzilla ends up losing again, but that's remedied as the people already retreated before the battle was over. Eventually, after some serious contemplation and surreal montages, the humans finally find a way to defeat Hedorah... by frying the hell out of him with electrodes! BOO-YAH. So, when they lure him to the completed electrode macine thingies... they don't work. CRAP. Thankfully, the King of the Monsters steps in once again, using his atomic breath to power the machines. This ends up sending Hedorah into a shit-fit and he flies away. But ofcourse, this doesn't phase Godzilla one bit, who just simply defies the laws of physics and flies after him LIKE A BOSS! After that show of silly badassery, Godzilla manages to catch Hedorah and hold him down, letting the machines fry him to death. He even just rips some of his guts out just because he f*cking feels like it. AWWWWWW YEAH... Oh yeah and there's a cliffhanger ending that says there's another Hedorah somewhere but Godzilla simply can't be bothered with that.

Score:
3.0/5.0

Kaiju Reviews #13 - Godzilla's Revenge

OH GOD, NOT THIS ONE... ANYTHING BUT THIS ONE! ... Oh well, I might as well get it over with...

Like the last movie, this one has a lot of monsters too! ... But that's just to fool people skimming the back of the DVD. Most of them only appear for a second or two... but even when some of them are more prominent, the majority of the monster scenes are just stock footage anyway. Yeah, that's right, this is pretty much just one big clip show, with a sub-plot involving a Kenny (see my Gamera review for info regarding the original Kenny). It starts out with the Kenny (Ichiro) getting his ass handed to him by some bullies, the leader of which is named Gabara. I bet you're wondering why I thought this important enough to share with you, eh? ... Well stop interrupting me for once, I'm getting there. Anyway, he wanders over to some guy's house and goes off to bed, soon drifting into dreamland... (No, not THAT Dreamland! ... Or this one.) Now, the movie introduces us to Monster Island... in a non-canonical film, but I'll roll with it. Generally the only difference between Monster Island and Monsterland is that Monster Island seems to have more monsters on it... and no way to keep them from getting off the island... yeah, good idea there, guys. Anyway, while in his dream, Ichiro soon meets Minilla, who now seems to be the after-product of watching WAY too much Barney the Dinosaur... or maybe drugs. It's hard to tell the difference. So, yeah, Minilla's newfound abilities in this dream include changing size at will (ya, RLY) and... the capability of speech. Yes, he can talk. So, after Ichiro and Minilla bullshit around for a little bit, they encounter stock footage of other monsters, including the Big G himself fighting various other creatures (Ebirah, Kamacuras, and Kumongoa). During all of this though, they eventually encounter a new (!) monster named... Gabara... you can see where this going, right? So, yeah, after various stuff happens in the real world that I don't particularly care about, Minilla fights Gabara several times until Godzilla finally decides to step in and kick some ass... only to find out that it wouldn't be quite as easy as he thought (Gabara has electrical powers, ya' see!).
After the lengthy battle, Minilla ends up using the power of deus ex machina to drive Gabara away once and for all, forever ending his reign of terror... which I'm assuming due to the fact that he never appears in any more movies. After these [strangely inter-connected] series of dreams, Ichiro uses the wisdom and experience gained from them and gets rid of the bullies once and for all... by beating the crap out of them. What a great moral!

Score:
This was made for very young children... so the score that I would most likely give it wouldn't be very fair... though I suppose you could just look at my scores for "Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster" and "Son of Godzilla", seeing as most of the stock footage came from those movies anyway. I'll admit that I did enjoy this when I was younger (around 9 or 10) when I didn't have these movies, so I guess it technically hit its mark. It gets a pass.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Kaiju Reviews #12 - Destroy All Monsters

Holy crap! This thing has at least 11 monsters in it! This is gonna be a balls-to-the-walls all-out monster jamboree, right?! ... Right...?

We now flash forward to the distant future of 1999 (which still looks more like the 60's than anything else), where they introduce us to Monsterland, an island paradise that houses most of the world's monsters... and a rocket that some guys built, BUT WHO CARES ABOUT THAT WHEN THERE'S ALL OF THESE MONSTERS?! Apparently the movie somewhat agrees with me, as an alien race known as the Kilaaks (who curiously all look like women dressed in sparkly clothing) quickly take control of the monsters and set them loose on major metropolitan areas, such as New York (Godzilla), Paris (Gorosaurus), and Singapore (Manda). So, I bet you think that the bulk of the movie is going to be the monsters' rampages around the world, right? ... Well, to put it bluntly, no. No, it's not. Instead, the majority of the film revolves around the humans and their attempt to stop the aliens, so instead of describing all of that boring crap, I'm just going to say that they eventually do... by pursuing them to an inaccurately-depicted Moon. So, yeah, once the humans break the monsters out of the Kilaaks' control, Godzilla & Co. band together to stop the alien menace... and speaking of alien menaces, the Kilaaks end up summoning King Ghidorah as a last resort! And... erm... no one else... so... yeah, given that he's fighting at least 7 monsters at once... he's kinda screwed. He does manage to hold his own for several minutes, and I'll give him that, but the battle is concluded with our heroes vanquishing King Ghidorah once and for all... atleast until the next movie, anyway. So after that, the Kilaaks unleash their Last-Last Resort, the Fire Dragon... which is really just a UFO with fire around it. So after the pointless scene goes on for awhile, the UFO is destroyed and Godzilla manages to find the Kilaaks' base... that gets destroyed too, if you're not noticing the pattern. So, yeah, Godzilla and his happy bunch that I'm too lazy to mention individually by name then go back to Monsterland and live happily ever after... and that's about it. By the way, a new DVD/Blu-Ray release (WITH SPECIAL FEATURES OMG) of this is going to be released next month, by Media Blasters. I didn't intend this post to happen around that time, it just turned out that way. So... yeah.

Score:
3.0/5.0 - The [few] scenes with monsters are really good and that alone raises it up a point. Oh well, at least the aforementioned video release is going to have an Audio Commentary...

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Kaiju Reviews #11 - Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla [Written by skull902]








HA HA! Hijacking the Kaiju review series. Or rather, the creator of the blog let me write something because it was my birthday...um...nonetheless, here's a review of "Godzilla VS Space Godzilla", which originally premeired in Japanese theatres in 1994, and American DVD in 2000.

So it opens up with Godzilla underwater. Wonderful. Then it cuts to the building of a robot named MOGERA (which stands for M...whatever), designed to destroy Godzilla. They send MOGERA to space to stop this entity coming to Earth. It fails after a short battle and hardly makes it back for repairs.

One jump-cut later, we see scientist/military people overlooking a telepath and her students. They ask this telepath to be a part of their new strategic plan to control Godzilla using telepathy, and insist that if she doesn't, they'll use one of the students. The telepath says they aren't ready and goes into deep thought about what to do.

A military ship brings these weirdly-dubbed guys to a smaller ship so they can go to Infant Island, Godzilla's current vacation residence. While on the island, they meet another dude who wants to kill Godzilla because of the casualty of his brother, and thinks that the military guys' plan is a waste of resources. He also has some sort of knowing of Godzilla's son, who they call Little Godzilla in this movie.

Meanwhile on the mainland, Mothra's twin fairies, gone since 1992 come to warn the telepath of a dangerous being headed for Earth (connection?) that Mothra was just too busy to take care of and couldn't be bothered. The big Earth-devastating meteor was of a bigger priority. They say that she's the only one who can save the Earth by guiding Godzilla to destroy this menace. No pressure, though. She choses to do the mission.

The military guys and this renegade dig holes and put tear gas in them so when Godzilla steps on them, it'll make his eyes burn. Eventually, the telepath and her little group head out to Infant Island. Little Godzilla falls for the tear gas though, so that plan's out. Godzilla comes to have his court-ordered visiting time with Junior, and gets shot at and has a connection thingy implanted in his neck so the lady can control him. It doesn't work, and she gets knocked the hell out. As Godzilla's walking on the island, Space Godzilla (the space entity mentioned earlier) makes his way to Infant Island and crash-lands there. After defeating Godzilla, he kidnaps Junior and makes a crystal fortress on the mainland. After all this, the telepath's group leave, save for the telepath, and the reneage guy does too. So on Infant Island is the telepath and the two commando guys who have a Yamaha dirt bike. Fun.

Scientists find that a white hole pushed out Godzilla cells from when Mothra flew into space at the end of "Godzilla VS Mothra: The Battle For Earth" and collided with stars to make Space Godzilla. There are also Americans from NASA in this scene. They speak English but for some odd reason are also dubbed.

The military asks the renegade guy if he wants to pilot MOGERA and he's like "Chyea!", while our heroes on Infant Island have a discussion about Godzilla's feelings. Eventually they all go back to the mainland and Godzilla comes too, in all his tip-of-the-tail-breaking-off glory. The two other military guys get positions in MOGERA's cockpit too, and they learn that there's some tower being a source of Space Godzilla's power. The renegade guy, who's supposed to be helping Godzilla, gets pissed at him though and starts attacking. Nothing that the two other peeps and a rope can't help. So Godzilla and MOGERA go to Space Godzilla and MOGERA knocks off Space Godzilla's shoulder-crystals (which are another source of power) while Godzilla takes out the tower. After a little more fighting, the day is saved, but not without bad news. MOGERA is destroyed beyond repair. But the three guys are okay so not everything was lost. Godzilla and Junior run off and are happy until the next year when they are confronted by their most demonic enemy yet.

All-in-all, it's a good monster flick. Yes there's some silly things but that's just to be expected.

Score: 4.0/5.0

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Kaiju Reviews #10 - Son of Godzilla

Oh boy, we're going into some uncharted territory here... if you thought the LAST one sounded stupid, you ain't seen nothin' yet.
To start off, some shitheads go to an island, where they develop a weather-controlling machine (ya, a weather-controlling machine), however their progress is tampered with, given the sudden appearance of human-sized praying mantises. However, when they eventually do get the machine to where it can function, a radioactive balloon ends up detonating (I don't exactly remember what the balloon had to do with anything, I might edit this later when I get around to watching it again). This causes a radioactive storm, which ends up mutating the already large praying mantises into gigantic proportions; a "Gimantis", if you will... or a Kamacuras, I guess (whatever that is). The Kamacuras end up digging out a giant egg and smash it to bits. Instead of releasing yolk, however, a giant baby reptile thing ends up plopping out, falling on its head. Oh gawd...
The Kamacuras then mistake the baby for a nutritious snack, so Godzilla arrives in order to kick some ass. After killing most of the Kamacuras, Godzilla ends up adopting the baby, which the humans dub "Minilla" (Mini Godzilla). After various hi-jinks and lessons on the life-skills of giant radioactive reptiles, Godzilla and Minilla end up encountering a giant spider, Kumongoa. After blasting the hell out him with their radioactive breaths, the weather machine fills the island with snow and ice. Rather then just go back into the ocean and swim to somewhere that's warmer, they decide to huddle together and wait until the next movie comes out.

Score:
3.0/5.0

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Kaiju Reviews #9 - Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster

Yes, I'm finally doing this again, somewhat to prepare for the new comic that I probably mentioned a million times. But anyway, yeah, you all better prepare yourselves, because this is when they start to get pretty damn stupid... or weird. I can't exactly tell the difference.

So, yeah, in this movie, Godzilla fights a giant SHRIMP... what the f*ck? You'd think a giant shrimp would be less strange than a Three-Headed Dragon from outer-space that shoots lightning bolts... but, here we are. So, if you're still in awe that this movie features "Fire-Breathing Reptile-on-Giant Shrimp-AKTCHUN", well... it originally, it didn't. Starting out, this movie was going to feature Toho's version of King Kong instead, yeah, the same one from King Kong vs. Godzilla. This time however, RKO did not want Toho to use him. Despite this, Toho still wanted to use the screenplay anyway, so they simply replaced Kong with Godzilla, making little-to-no changes to the actual movie. Makes perfect sense, amirite. But anyway, let's get onto a heavily-condensed version of this plot, so I won't torture myself (yes, this movie has somewhat of a complicated plot, as hard as it is to believe).

We start out with Annoying Hyper Japanese Guy, who is looking for his brother (despite being seemingly killed in a shipwreck). As such, he hijacks a boat and sails around aimlessly, with his friend and a criminal (sounds like the makings of a sitcom!). These fun and games can't last for too long however, as a giant fecking claw ends up sinking their ship. Bummer. Sometime later, they end up washing onto an island, where they meet a female native. She explains that the island's inhabitants are forced into slavery by the terrorist organization known as the Red Bamboo. In order to keep anyone from leaving the island, they use some sort of liquid in order to control the titular Sea Monster, Ebirah, thus why all of these shipwrecks keep on happening. Eventually, they end up finding Godzilla, who's sleeping in a cave. As such, they decided to shock Godzilla (via a lightning rod) in order to to wake the big guy up... probably not the best idea. Nonetheless, Godzilla ends up wandering into the ocean, where he has his first encounter with Ebirah, fighting in a battle of epic proportions... which also happens to include a small game of rock-volleyball:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYWxuNVhDVs
After their brief encounter, Ebirah retreats and Godzilla goes off to do god-knows-what. After a bunch of shit happens that I don't particularly care about, Godzilla returns, battling a Giant Condor that appears completely out of nowhere... however, the battle only consists of the Condor pecking him a bunch of times and Godzilla promptly frying the damned thing in a rage of pissy-fury. Shows him. Shortly afterwards, the Red Bamboo send out jets, because jets obviously work on Godzilla. Predictably, Godzilla makes short work of them and sometime later, destroys the Red Bamboo's base of operations (the liquid controlling Ebirah gets destroyed as well). Then the natives summon Mothra or something, so she decides to fly over and save the islanders while Godzilla is fighting Ebirah. However, Godzilla defeats Ebirah sooner than expected when he ends up ripping both of Ebirah's claws off, forcing him to retreat. Godzilla then ends up challenging Mothra... for some reason... But, seeing as she doesn't have time to deal with this shit, she just blows Godzilla down with her wings and flies off... oh yeah, did I mention that the island was going to explode? Fortunately, Godzilla manages to cannonball off the island just in time. Aw, yeah.

SCORE:
3.0/5.0