Sunday, November 26, 2006

Thanksgiving review: Rodan

Happy Thanksgiving Sporefans! This week's review is special, as I've picked a movie that goes well with the Thanksgiving holiday. Its a movie that really captures what Thanksgiving is all about: roasting a giant bird. That's why this week's movie is the 1956 Kaiju classic "Rodan". Lets take some time to look at this classic through a Thanksgiving tinted lens and try to find that spirit of Thanksgiving feeling, which is all about eating too much and falling asleep in front of the TV.




















The movie starts with a montage of stock footage which points to the evil of Nuclear (or Nukular) weapons and the love/hate relationship that we Americans have with them. It presents an ill omen, warning the viewer that Mother Nature may strike back at us for attacking her with these forbidden weapons.

Cut to a coal mine.

Yes, its not the American lust for nuclear power that sets this plot in motion, but the lust of the simple village people of Kitamatsu for coal which brings the monster's ire to bear. Yes, the people of Kitamatsu's contemptible lust for coal, which they use to keep their houses warm in the winter and earn money to feed their families in the cold of Winter that earns them the wrath of giant monsters. Oh, when will humanity learn that it should be content to burn bits of gathered dead wood outside a small cave while wearing the skins of small dead animals? It is our hubris which is our downfall! Hubris!!

All that aside, two coal miners get into a fist fight outside the mine. Tensions rise as they all fear a new mine shaft that goes deeper than they have ever dug before. It appears that in this specific mine shaft there exists a "creeping floor". No Sporefans, a creeping floor isn't another movie that I have lined up to review, but it refers to something better known as a downhill creep when soil and debris slowly falls down an incline.

But if any of you know where to get a movie about a floor that creeps up and eats people, I would definitely review it.

Later that day during an emergency, the two miners who fought disappear. When one of the miners turns up dead from horrible wounds, the second miner Goro (played by Rinsaku Ogata) is branded as the suspected murderer. Goro's sister Kiyo (Yumi Shirakawa) is crushed when the townspeople brand Goro a murderer. But don't worry Sporefans, I'm sure she'll feel much better after Goro's body is discovered in the mine crushed under a pile of rocks that fell during the initial catastrophe, subsequently clearing his name.

This is further substantiated by the release of the book "If I ate them" by flea/crab monster number 712.















Flea/crab monster 712 interrupts a tender moment between Kiyo and Shigeru.


Soon, Shigeru Kawamura (played by Kenji Sahara) the leading man and safety engineer gets trapped in the mine, and tries to avoid being eaten but flea/crab monsters numbers 1-711 and numbers 713-1,294. This is made much easier as a large winged creature hatches from an egg and begins to eat the flea/crab monsters. But as you may have already guessed by the fact that the title of the movie isn't "flea/crab monsters that attacked Kitamatsu" that the winged creature escapes and creates havoc around the world. What's more is that there's a pair of them, a male and a female... I think... that they might procreate and take over the world.

How exactly does one check the gender of a Rodan monster?

At this point, Rodan begins to differ from most Kaiju movies of its time. In most Kaiju movies, the monsters attack the cities of man, and casualties result from the destruction of the buildings and vehicles of man. The deaths are indirect, and though the monsters are blamed for them its not portrayed as if the monsters were out specifically to kill people, but only do so as they punish man by destroying his creations.

In Rodan, the monsters actually eat people. The human element shifts from beings who were at the top of the evolutionary ladder who are punished for their hubris, to being knocked down a rung on the food chain. Instead of our works being destroyed, we become the targets of the Rodan's attacks because we are their food supply.















Rodan decides to have Japanese for lunch.


Well, us and cows. Dolphins. Whales. Horses. Sheep. Actually, they'll pretty much eat anything they can get their beaks around.

Then the Japanese Self Defence Force hatches (pun definitely intended) a brilliant and tasty plan. Because the Rodan's nest in the crater of a dormant volcano, the JSDF intends to blow up the crater with cannons and ballistic missiles, trapping the Rodans under tons of rock. Shigeru points out that the missiles might have the opposite effect, re-activating the dormant volcano. Instead of finding a new plan, the hungry JSDF general (Hideo Mihara) orders the evacuation of Kitamatsu so that he can roast the tasty Rodans over the warm coals of Mount Aso.















Too much lighter fluid will make your giant bird into Cajun food.


The plan proceeds after the evacuation of Kitamatsu, as the JSDF bombard the crater atop Mount Aso, reactivating the once dormant volcano. As the Rodans try to make their escape, one of them falls victim to the intense heat and fumes generated by the volcano. It falls into a river of molten lava and bursts into flames. The other Rodan circles above, crying out to its fallen mate until either out of despair or because the fumes made it totally high dude, it voluntarily plummets on top of the first Rodan and burns as well.















Dinner is ruined.


Unfortunately for the JSDF, they didn't count of the Rodans bursting into flames. As such, the JSDF was unable to insert the giant probe thermometers to make sure that the Rodans reached the required internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit. Thus the Rodans burned to a crisp and were inedible, and the premiere of Japanese Thanksgiving was ruined. But Americans as well as Japanese can still celebrate the day the Rodans burned, by burning turkeys every year, making them into inedible smoking piles or char. And why not give thanks, for if there's one thing we should all be thankful for, its not being eaten by giant birds from the sky.

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Godzilla's Revenge

Another exiting review of Kaiju action awaits you here Sporefans. Today's fantastic movie is one that I remember back from when I was a wee spore traveling on motes of dust before the right combination of moisture and humidity allowed me to bloom into the slimy mass that you have all come to know and love. Yes, strap on your way back machines and dial all the way back to 1969 because today's film is none other than "Godzilla's Revenge"!



















Godzilla is back for revenge for... uh...


For those of you who have never seen Godzilla's Revenge, its one of the Showa series of Godzilla movies and was released with the specific purpose of appealing to small children. The movie revolves around Ichiro Miki, an elementary school student who spends most of his time daydreaming about monster island... that is, when he's not getting the snot kicked out of him at school.











"Remember Ichiro, you can never tell your friends about me, or I'll have to kill them. Uh-yup!"


Ichiro gets away with his idolatry because his parents both work to support him and can't spend much time with him. Looks like being poor hasn't changed much in the last 40 years. Because they both spend so much time working, they enlist a toymaker by the name of Shinpei Inami who lives nearby to keep an eye on Ichiro.

He, uh, works out of the home.

You might recognize Shinpei, because he's played by Eisei Amamoto, better known to you Sporefans as "Dr. Who" in "King Kong Escapes". Luckily, Eisei doesn't get as many close ups in this movie, so you don't get to see how bad Toho's dental plan is. This guy's lower jaw makes Chris Benoit's teeth look good by comparison.















Shinpei: Remember to floss Ichiro, or you'll wind up looking like this.
Ichiro: HOLY MOTHER OF GOD, HOW DO YOU CHEW?!?!


As the movie continues, Ichiro uses a contraption made of vacuum tubes and bits of wire and circuitry as his "radio" to monster island, where he speaks to Minya (or Minilla), better known to Americans as "baby Godzilla". The two commiserate on such things as how they both get the snot beat out of them by bullies, and by a sheer act of coincidence, the bullies seem to have the same name: Gabara.

Of course there are some key differences between the two Gabaras. One is a mean elementary school student who bullies Ichiro. The other Gabara is a 170 meter tall green dog looking monster standing on its hind legs with a bright red mohawk and sounds like a giraffe giving its mating call while being put through a blender.

Other than that, they're identical.















Gabara prepares to take Ichiro's lunch money, or crush Minilla, I forget which.


Things seem to be progressing well for Ichiro as he shambles through his life drifting in and out of his dream world while playing in piles of rubble and collecting bits of wire and broken electronics to upgrade his "radio". That is until one day when Ichiro is shifting through a pile of other people's discarded crap, he finds a small card. With his attachment to reality already tenous at best, Ichiro believes that he has found a credit card and can use it to purchase wonderful, wonderful toys. Unfortunately, the card is actually the driver's liscense of a local bank robber, who believes that this small piece of circumstancial evidence will lead the cops right to their hideout.

Man, he should really watch more "Law and Order".

So begins the quest of the bank robbers to recover the stolen driver's liscense, kidnap Ichiro and continue to be the best darn bad guys they can be. Which is pretty sad, actually.















Ichiro: Look at me! I'm just like Godzilla!
Bank Robber: Hey kid, you remember that gun I have...


All things considered, this is a wonderful Kaiju movie full of giant monster fighting. Fans who are waiting for the giant monsters to ravage Tokyo will be disappointed, however, as most of the monster fighting takes place on monster island. Well, actually, in Ichiro's head, but you get the idea. There are a lot of monsters making cameo appearances in this movie, like Gorosaurus, Manda, Kamakiras and Kumonga.

Keep in mind that this movie is aimed at children. If you're expecting a great plot with well developed characters, you're out of luck. But then again, why would you be watching movies like this one for the plot? Sadly, there's no one as interesting as Madame X or Dr. Who in this movie, just a couple of Japanese bank robbers and a small bully.

If you're a Godzilla fan from way back when, then you'll love this movie purely for its nostalgia value. If you're not a Godzilla fan, then you probably won't get this movie.

Unless you're between the ages of 5 and 8, in which case you'll totally love this movie, and you shouldn't be reading my reviews.

Shame on you, I'm telling your parents. I bet they'll be mad.

Blogger Beta Recent Comments in sidebar

For anyone who wants to know how to put a "recent comments" section in your sidebar, check out the instructions I found here.

Basically you create a page element of the "feed" type with a feed to the comments of your own blog. It sounds incredibly hard, but its super easy. Thanks to the guys over at Hackosphere for this tip.

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

King Kong Escapes

KAIJU! Big monsters! Yes, due to a recent influx of giant monster movies into my collection, the next few reviews will deal with giant monster battles! This week's review is "King Kong Escapes", a 1967 film by the legendary Ishiro Honda. Many will recognize Honda as the man behind the original movie "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" and most of the movies in the Showa series of Godzilla (second place for director of most Showa series movies goes to Jun Fukuda, I believe).






Kwality movies.
















Fans of Kaiju will note that Kong has been scaled back from his last movie where he battled Godzilla. This version of Kong is closer to his original size at 60 ft. in height. Kong had to get pumped up, probably with a bunch of monkey roids, to deal with Godzilla's immense 150ft. stature. Also at 60 ft. tall is the new MechaKong, the monkey version of Mechagodzilla, but with no lasers or missiles which makes him kind of lame by comparison.

For a Kaiju movie, this isn't so bad. If you're not a fan of Kaiju though, get ready for a bumpy ride over this rough plot. I won't ruin the whole thing for you, but here's a brief outline of what you can expect.

The evil Dr. Who, (no not the tardis Dr. Who, the other one) creates the MechaKong, so that he can mine Element X at the North pole. Apparently a horde of elves with jolly little shoes aren't manly enough to dig this incredibly radioactive material out of the ice, so the good doctor, played by the rotten toothed Eisei Amamoto, decided what he needed was a 60 ft. tall robotic monkey. Yeah, that's always how I do my mining on the North Pole. With a giant metal monkey... on ice.
















Dr. Who and Madame X contemplate their glorious and prosperous future after this movie.


The doctor is not alone in his pursuit of Element X, as his "research" is funded by the mysterious Madame Piranha, or Madame X depending on what version you're watching. Madame X, played by Mie Hama, has two amazing powers that she uses throughout the movie. The first is the ability to turn Dr. Who into a snivelling pile of pseudo-scientific snot by threatening to cut his funding. The second is the ability to change her clothing after every freakin' scene in the movie. Madame X is rarely in the same costume twice when she's on screen. Apparently the mysterious country that Madame X represents gave her a budget that afforded her great clothing but she would have to buy surplus and defective parts for her giant monkey robot.

When the Mecha monkey fails because someone forgot to shield the circuits from electromagnetic waves, Madame X and Dr. Who hatch a plot to use the real Kong to dig up Element X. Unfortunately for Kong, he's recently encountered his only weakness: blondes. Kong has a run in with Lieutenant Susan Watson, a crew member on a U.N. submarine, along with her two flunkies Commander Carl Nelson and Lt. Commander Jiro Nomura. Once smitten, Kong pretty much does whatever Watson tells him to, making Watson the number one commodity in this movie.
















Hey baby, you look like Kong bait to me!


If you're looking for a movie with a few great Kaiju battles, this one does have a couple. The Kong suit is noticably flawed, as the eyes and mouth have very little mobility when compared to some of the other monsters. Even MechaKong looks better by comparison, despite not having eyelids... or even eyes. Its really bad when the Gorosaurus suit, which looks like an old man version of Godzilla comes out looking better than your lead monster.

















"I used to be an extra for Godzilla, but look at me now! I got my own role in a movie!" -Gorosaurus, 1967.


The models are all on par with the usual detail that Toho puts into its Kaiju movies. Every little tank and boat looks great, with all the painstaking detail that an anal-retentive Japanese model maker can muster. Most of the detail work usually gets destroyed in about 2 seconds, but Kong Escapes has an unusually low amount of property destruction, most of which occurs to the Tokyo Tower.

















Kong's face isn't just frozen because this is a picture. This is pretty much his entire range of physical expression. Can't even open his mouth to complain.


If you've got some time to kill and love giant monsters, King Kong will satisfy all but the most rabid of Kaiju fans. Even if you don't like Kaiju monsters, the great plot and original characters...

Umm... Hmm...

Well anyway, King Kong escapes is a fun movie. Watching it is entertaining, even if its for all the wrong reasons.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

House IV: The Repossession

OK, so enough with the zombies. I'm all zombied out right now. Time to move on to something different. So this week, we're changing gears and going with the haunted house motif. What should I review? Lets see… There's "The Amityville Horror"…. Nah, budget's too big. There's "The House on Haunted Hill"… no, too classy. We need something a little more terrible. Something more along the lines of what you Sporefans would expect.

Lets review "House 4" also known as "House 4: The Repossession" in England! That's a great movie!







Stop Crying.










In 1992, Lewis Abernathy decided to subject viewers to another installment in the "House" movie series, and I don't mean the one with Hugh Laurie as a doctor. No, I'm talking about a series of movies that started in 1986 which was about a house where every door opened into another dimension. Its of the quality that you would expect having Lewis Abernathy, the author and main screenwriter of "Deep Star Six" at the helm of this picture.

House 4 takes place in a house in the middle of nowhere. Seriously, it appears that someone constructed a run down house somewhere in the middle of the Mojave. This is incredibly strange as William Katt (whom some of you may recognize as "The Greatest American Hero") reprises his role from the first movie; where he moves into his aunt's haunted house where his son had disappeared a few years before. In this movie Roger Cobb (Katt) takes his family to visit his father's old house, which is also apparently haunted. The movie starts with Roger and his new family leaving the haunted house and telling his step-brother Burke that the house is not up for sale.

Now, you've got to ask yourself "Why are they leaving the creepy old house in the beginning of the movie?" Well, the great part of playing Roger Cobb is that you only have to be in the first 15 minutes of this stinker. Then you die in a horrible car accident that results in your charred corpse being taken off life support. Unfortunately even though this movie dies pretty quickly, no one took it off life support.

So where do we go from here? The movie continues on in the hands of Terri Treas as Roger's wife Kelly, and Melissa Clayton as Roger's now crippled daughter Laurel. Laurel in particular seems strangely positive and chipper after losing her father, her old home and her ability to walk. Add in Denny Dillion, who's probably the most recognizable star in this sad flick as the house keeper/undercover FBI agent and prepare to tape your eyes open while you watch a movie that nose dives from the plateau of mildly entertaining to the hard, rocky plains of disappointment.

Yes, if you're looking for horror, this is not your movie. Sure there's a scene with Kelly Cobb (Terri Treas) taking a shower with the water turning into blood. Unfortunately about the best this movie has to offer is a pizza attacking Kelly before dinner. Yes, a killer pizza is the most frightening moment in this movie and only because of the involvement of a kitchen garbage disposal.

The ridiculous sub plot in this movie involves Burke (played by Scott Burkeholder) trying to buy the house for the local chemical factory so that they can tear it down and bury chemical waste where it once stood. Add in one Native American (Ned Romero), cut one small onion and get him to shed one small tear and you've got yourself a genuine 1980's pro environmental theme. Yay for clearly defined roles of good and evil! You even have Mark Gash portraying the stereotypically toxic antagonist "Mr. Grosso" pressuring Burke to close the deal with his "oozes". Looks like Seth Green isn't the only fan of "Captain Planet".

Stay far away from this movie, Sporefans. Even if you enjoyed the other movies in the House series, this is definitely one to steer clear of.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Post Party Post 06

Much to my amazement, the movies at this year's Halloween party were... good. I mean, mainstream good movies. As we only watched 2 movies that night, lets put them up against each other in a head to head and see which one you Spored to Death fans think is the scarier movie.

First up is Silent Hill. Directed by Christophe Gans, this film is quite possibly the best adaptation of a video game into a movie I've ever seen. Considering some of the competition it doesn't seem that hard to be the best, but this movie pretty much blows away most of the other video game movies I've ever seen. Sorry Uwe, looks like Christophe done knocked you out.















What's causing this reaction? Is it some horrible monster? Or a naked man eating a ham sandwich and writing movie review.



In the other corner we have 28 Days Later. While Silent Hill is all about atmosphere and horrifying monsters that come to get you (albeit very, very slowly), 28 Days Later is up front and in your face with its Zomb... I mean, infected people. The infected run straight after the
characters, and usually quickly. The atmosphere of 28 Days Later isn't quite as creepy as the town of Silent Hill, but what it lacks in setting, it makes up for with scenes of shocking violence.






















"I don't get it. All I did was ask him for a light."


So what will it be Spore fans? Which of these movies is scarier? Will it be the creepy and occasionally violent Silent Hill? Or do you prefer a bit of the old Ultraviolence in 28 Days Later?