Freelancin': Godzilla vs. BlueHighwind

Depressed over the mediocrity of the recent Gareth Edwards Godzilla film, BlueHighwind looks back at the seven greatest Godzilla films of all time.

For those too morally impure to actually listen to all forty minutes of kinda podcast, the list is:

7. Godzilla Final Wars
6. Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla
5. Godzilla (1998)
4. Godzilla 2000
3. Godzilla 1985
2. Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah:  Giant Monsters All-Out Attack
1. Gojira (1954)

Godzilla (2014)

Godzilla is the coolest creature to every walk the face of cinema.  For thirty movies now, the King of the Monsters has fought proudly for audiences around the world, battling weird aliens, giant bugs, and Matthew Broderick.  The big green radioactive beast has smashed cities for fun, saved the world from cockroaches from beyond the stars, and warred with King Kong for supremacy of the giant monster realm.  He has been a dark consequence of the nuclear age, a dancing champion for the children of the 1970s, and a living incarnation of nature itself, smashing mankind's hubris.  This creature is our punishment for our arrogance, nature's revenge for the sin of atomic bombs.  Or maybe he's just a big silly monster out for a fun brawl against any of his iconic pantheon of monsters, both friend or foe.  This was a monster with his own character, his own awesome presence.  Truly a classic icon.

Gareth Edwards'* "Godzilla" is a movie that completely misses the point of a Godzilla film.  Godzilla has been many things for many ages, but one thing he has never been - at least not until 2014 - is boring.  Edwards creates a depressing miserable experience, one which repeats the greatest cardinal sin of Michael Bay's "Transformers" movies:  it forgot to be a movie about the magnificent giants of the source material, and instead focuses on boring humans.  Lacking either the pulpy SciFi silliness of the classic Japanese film series, or the wacky tone of the messy 1998 Roland Emmerich adaptation, Gareth Edwards makes a movie that is painfully dreary, with no sense of fun, and barely any Godzilla.  He wants to conjure up the cataclysmic terror of the 1954 original, "Gojira", but fails even at this, as the mediocre characterization of the humans and terrible pacing makes this movie a battle of patience.  How does a movie manage to pre-occupy itself with the human perspective, when it cannot even care for a minute to make that human perspective interesting?

Rather than playing to the strengths of the Kaiju genre, this Legendary Pictures reboot Americanizes the creature in a disaster movie, just as the 1998 TriStar attempted.  And still following the 1998 version, this Godzilla is a computer-generated monster, thus losing the charm and personality of the Japanese style of human actors playing the characters within suits on miniature model city battlefields.  As a typical disaster movie, most of the plot involves a White Dude working his way through the wreckage to save his family, which unfortunately massively overshadows the titular monster.  Edwards becomes so wrapped up in his dull human characters that "Godzilla" often makes the horrific decision to cut away from battle scenes to show more homo sapiens.  The human actors constantly interfere with the battle, never letting the creatures just have their time in the spotlight.  "Godzilla" is a movie too wrapped up in its own dreariness to ever let go and be fun.

Pacific Rim

"Pacific Rim" is a movie trying really really hard to please me in particular.  I think a webcrawling program started reading this blog over the last three years and decided to design a movie for me.  I haven't had this feeling since I watched "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension", a movie so peculiar and amazing that I am certain I will go back in time to the 1980s and create it personally.  Beyond merely making a movie where GIANT ROBOTS FIGHT GIANT MONSTERS, they went the extra mile and gave it a director I deeply respect, Charlie Day from "Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia", GLaDos from "Portal" in her first film role, and somehow they even made Faith from "Mirror's Edge" into a flesh and blood person as the main female love interest.  So this is a movie trying desperately to make nerds the world over really happy, mixing together "Evangelion", "Robot Jox", and "Godzilla: Tokyo SOS".  The fact that I'm even referencing "Godzilla: Tokyo SOS" shows how I am precisely in this film's demographic.

Which is why it is absolutely tragic that I do not particularly like "Pacific Rim".  I am very grateful that a major studio would make a movie for me, as if I'm some kind of master auteur despite having only been to Hollywood on a bus tour.  But I also have to be fair.  Nobody better ever call me biased ever again, I am a completely level critic, because I'm going ahead and saying that a movie I was desperately waiting for all year is not very good.  I could go the easy way out and say that the robots and the kaijus and the GLaDos make it all fine, but "Pacific Rim" is merely watchable.  Its... okay.  And its that kind of "okay" that makes you put a thoughtful pause right before you call it "okay".

Here's the thing boys and girls, "Robot Jox" sucked.  I only saw it a few months ago once people started comparing "Pacific Rim" to that 1980s Full Moon productions straight-to-VHS, and I generally hated it.  And I don't like "Pacific Rim" for pretty much the same reasons.  "Pacific Rim" is a lot more flashy, it has millions of dollars of work on the line here, but it also has a lame protagonist, a pretty bare-bones story, and only a few really great monster fights.  There's not really much ambition here beyond the raw spectacle.  In an age where I have "Evangelion 3.0" on my harddrive and can watch at any point, I just want more out of a giant monster movie.  If you like giant robots and giant monsters for no reason other than them being there, "Pacific Rim" is fine for you.  But I've seen better movies than this, and "Pacific Rim" does not have enough personality to really drive the two-hour running time it has.

Rest In Peace - Ray Harryhausen

Well, this is a sad moment.  I know that most of the Ray Harryhausen films I was planning to do on All-Out Giant Monster Attack! have already been reviewed, leaving only "Valley of Gwangi" on the list, but its still depressing to know that I only barely began to know this great filmmaking and his truly inspired take on special effects before he died today, at age 92.  Ray Harryhausen has been in what is essentially retirement for decades, ever since his last great movie, "Clash of the Titans".

Along with Willis O'Brien, Ray Harryhausen essentially created the genre of giant monster films, and was a beloved icon of special effects.  Every one of the thousands of names that was included in the "Iron Man 3" list of effects artists can thank their career to the pioneering work of Harryhausen, who was doing what they were doing with animatronics and camera tricks before even the first visual computer was invented.  Without him, we wouldn't have had a "Godzilla", we would not have had a "Star Wars", no "Terminator", no "Jurassic Park", no "Toy Story", no "Coraline", not even a "Transformers".  I'm sure if Harryhausen had made the Transformers series in the 1960s, it would have been far superior, because he was a man who brought great personality and meaning behind his monsters, which modern filmmakers seem to struggle with.  You can get a million emotions behind the simple gestures of Harryhausen's Cyclops in "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad", and all the computing power in the world can't replicate simple pure genius.

So RIP, Ray Harryhausen.  You are missed by me and all filmgoers around the world.

All-Out Giant Monster Attack! Episode 24 - King Kong vs. Godzilla

Note:  I decided to skip over "Gorgo" after it turned out not to be the world's only Danish giant monster movie, but actually another English giant monster film.  The movie I was thinking of was "Reptilicus".  Both of which, I'm sorry, I couldn't finish watching, they were both way too similar to "The Giant Behemoth".  We're moving on to something important instead.  Honestly, I need to trim this series down, so I'm going to try to focus only on the really landmark movies and the really really amazingly awful ones.  "King Kong vs. Godzilla" is one of the landmarks.

1962's "King Kong vs.Godzilla" is essentially the glorious long-term dream of any giant monster fanboy who had been watching these kinds of films since the 1930s.  "King Kong" was in many ways the direct inspiration for Toho's already-legendary 1954 "Godzilla".  However, both of these characters had been in retirement for several years now.  Godzilla had not been on the big screen since "Return of Godzilla", and King Kong himself had been missing in action since 1933, notwithstanding several Kong-inspired films.  This film was the ultimate match-up of the greatest American giant monster against the greatest Japanese giant monster - and an octopus, but we'll ignore that guy for now.  How can anything about be anything less than pure awesome?

Well, there is immediately a wrinkle.  If you think about it, King Kong does not stand a chance against Godzilla.  Kong is fifty feet tall at best, while the Showa era Godzilla was fifty meters tall*, utterly dominating his opponent.  Plus, Godzilla can breathe fire, and was able to incinerate an entire city in a single night.  King Kong was slaughtered by biplanes, Godzilla was briefly annoyed by jet fighters.  King Kong stayed dead for thirty years, Godzilla was back alive without much explanation in just a single year.  Curiously, the way Toho made this idea work was to resurrect a Willis O'Brien script concept for a film called "King Kong vs. Frankenstein", where King Kong would fight a gigantic kaiju version of Frankenstein's Monster.  Eventually that evolved when Toho bought the rights**, and gave King Kong the giant Frankenstein's powers.  This explains why King Kong this time is now 167 feet tall (45 meters), and eats lightning.  The end result makes "King Kong vs. Godzilla" a properly ridiculous adventure, pure fanservice from beginning to end, and adorable in its simplicity.

All-Out Giant Monster Attack! Episode 23 - Konga

"Not since KING KONG has the screen exploded with such mighty force and spectacle."  They weren't being subtle when they decided to exploit King Kong to create "Konga", where they?  Producer Herman Cohen was always a big fan of  "King Kong", and his dream vision for "Konga" was to create a color giant ape movie.  He was so set on proving his film's connection with "King Kong" that he paid RKO Pictures twenty-five thousand dollars to use "King Kong" in the advertisements... also probably to avoid a lawsuit since the movie is called "KONGa".

Now, I am sorry to say that "Konga" nowhere near matches the artistry or the timeless brilliance that was "King Kong".  Though I doubt many would be surprised by this fact, since Herman Cohen's previous films were Z-grade filth such as "I Was a Teenage Frankenstein", "I Was a Teenage Werewolf", and - please do sit down before you read this title - "Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla".  In fact, one of the working titles of "Konga" was "I Was a Teenage Gorilla", which considering the plotline, honestly makes no sense.  The poster shows a giant ape holding a lovely blond in his hand, when nothing of the kind actually happens.  As a matter of fact, creature Konga only grows to gigantic size in the last ten minutes, when previously he was just a hypnotized chimpanzee assassin.

Similar to "The Giant Behemoth", "Konga" was a joint American-British production, though this one was made by the British studio, Anglo-Amalgamated using real British actors instead of a mostly American cast painfully unable to imitate English accents.  "Konga" was directed by John Lemont, a man who only made less than half a dozen films, and considering how artless the effects, cinematography, and sets are in this film, we can be glad that Lemont spent the next forty years of his life doing something other than directing movies.  I think "Konga" was trying to imitate Japanese giant monster films by creating the giant ape effects by putting a man in the suit, but where they went wrong was when they bought a cheap Halloween store ape suit and tried to make a movie around it.  Its laughably awful.  Luckily however, the film was able to get a great leading man in Michael Gough (best known for playing Alfred in the 90s Batman films*), whose energy and intensity saves the film from being just a giant cheeseball of bad special effects and worse sets.  The plot is original, focusing on a sleazy mad scientist rather than any would-be heroes, making "Konga" watchable, and often entertaining.  Just expect to laugh - a lot - at things that were never supposed to be funny.

All-Out Giant Monster Attack! Episode 22 - Mothra

Mothra is perhaps the third greatest icon of kaiju film, behind only the great green monsters, Godzilla and Gamera.  He's best known in context within his Godzilla appearances, sometimes as an enemy, other times as an ally.  But what is less well-known is that Mothra has her* own independent franchise of films, beginning with the 1961 "Mothra" and continuing with a trilogy of high-budget kaiju films in the 1990s.  Mothra is the most morally pure of all the giant monsters, never once appearing as villainous, beyond a single instance of alien mind control.  She is typically shown as a defender of the Earth, a mystical guardian of great power, which often extends beyond death itself.  New Mothras are born in almost every film in which Mothra appears - often twins - and even though Mothra has been killed, her lifeforce will always been used to power-up the remaining good monster and save the day.  She's also the most beautiful of the kaiju, and is typically supported by two tiny twins who sing her theme song.

1961's "Mothra" marks for us, something of a shift.  We've now moved beyond the era of cheesy American giant monster productions to a new age where the Japanese kaiju genre becomes the hegemony for decades.  We'll still cover a few Western films here and there, the next two reviews are going to be for "Konga" and "Gorgo", both monsters targeting London, but after that the 1960s are completely owned by the East.  And I'm hardly complaining, since the whole point of this series was actually to cover these classic Japanese kaiju films, especially the Toho ones.  "Mothra" is enough of a cinematic success to make me very excited for the dozens of movies we have yet to cover.  This is the start of the Golden Age of Showa Kaiju.

"Mothra" is the first kaiju film in which the giant monster is not a horrifying natural plague brought upon mankind. rather, its more of an adventure film with the occasional scenes of cities getting pummeled by a giant butterfly.  The movie is actually rather light-hearted and silly, with the addition of fantastic elements such as the tiny singing twins.  Its here that we start to see kaiju change from being serious (and often not-so-serious) horror to more of a family movie, until by the 1970s, Godzilla and his pals will be punching monsters in campy movies for children worldwide.  And also, "Mothra" is a very well-made movie in just about every respect, this is clearly a step-up from the movies, both American and Japanese, that have come before.

All-Out Giant Monster Attack! Episode 21 - The Giant Behemoth

Originally the plan was that Episode 21 would be a review of "Varan the Unbelievable".  However, little did I know that "Varan the Unbelievable" is perhaps the most painfully unremarkable movie ever made, more or less completely indistinguishable to spending an hour and a half watching an empty white wall.   "Varan" was so truly depressing that I wondered if this countdown should end right here and there*.  I refuse to write anything more about that movie.  Luckily there was "The Giant Behemoth" to pull me back up and remind me just how much fun giant monster movies can be.

"The Giant Behemoth" is a 1959 film that curiously was a cooperative British and American venture, produced by the American Allied Artists and the British studio, Eros Pictures.  In the UK there was a slightly different cut and the movie was known as "Behemoth, the Sea Monster".  The plot is well described by the poster:  a giant radioactive dinosaur marches into London and causing a very significant ruckus.  This was a film directed by Eugene Lourie, who previously in 1953 started the giant monster craze with "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms", inspiring pretty much every movie on this countdown that came afterwards.  "The Giant Behemoth" is basically a retread of that original concept, only moving the monster to London and featuring a very different human plot.  While "20,000 Fathoms"' effects were done by Ray Harryhausen, "The Giant Behemoth" is the last major film to show-off the work of Willis O'Brien, the effects master on "King Kong" and Harryhausen's master.  The 1950s had not been a very fertile time for O'Brien, who mainly shuffled between various unfinished projects and created a terrible low-budget film called "The Black Scorpion", so really "The Giant Behemoth" is his last hurrah.  However, this is not the last time we'll hear from that man, as his cinematic influence would go on to inspire the films "Godzilla vs. King Kong" and "The Valley of Gwangi".

As Western 1950s giant monster films go, "The Giant Behemoth" is cut out of pure stock template.  The Behemoth is a yet another ancient creature awakened by the folly of human nuclear testing, who inevitably finds his way to a major metropolitan area for a spectacular final climax.  Most of the film focuses on scientists in a lab trying to uncover what is causing strange attacks on the English coastline, and the story is so serviceable that they did not even bother including a major female character for a weak romantic sideplot.  Yet, I had to say "The Giant Behemoth" was still a great deal of fun, even with stock motion clearly inferior to contemporary Harryhausen creations and the aforementioned plot issues.  The pacing is excellent, the monster's radioactive powers are both excellently cheesy and actually make for an interesting threat, and the movie knows exactly what kind of audience its going to please.  Its original and exciting enough to keep you watching and there is much to enjoy.

All-Out Giant Monster Attack! Episode 20 - The 7th Voyage of Sinbad

We've covered a lot of movies so far on All-Out Giant Monster Attack, but for the most part they've all comprised a single genre of science fiction horror.  They all share the same general concept of "what would happen to ud if a giant creature more powerful than any human power were to break into our reality?"  But "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" is a very different kind of film, this is a classic fantasy adventure, taking place in the a magical and exotic chapter of history:  the Islamic Golden Age as envisioned by the "One Thousand and One Nights".  With its setting in the land of pure imagination, "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" marks a moment of artistic maturity for our dear Ray Harryhausen, now moving beyond mere horror to create a film rich with his distinctive animated style.  With this movie, Harryhausen found the genre he was made to create, and would spend the rest of his career creating fantastic adventures that has inspired every aspect of modern special effects.

"The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" is first film to be advertised featuring a new stop-motion technique called "Dynamation".  Dynamation wasn't actually a new style, Ray Harryhausen had been using it since "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms", but it certainly made for a catchy phrase for trailers.  Essentially, it wasn't anything particularly new, it was still the same classic stop-motion effects from Willis O'Brien, but the method of combining that animation with the live action footage was slightly easier and cheaper.  Actually explaining the details of Dynamation is pointless since its extremely technical, basically it was a marketing tool that sounded cool in trailers.  However, the marketing was correct in that "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" was a major new plateau for stop-motion animation, being the first Harryhausen film to be made in color.  And the first film since "King Kong" to feature an entire world full of giant monsters which our human-sized protagonists must explore.

Interestingly, "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" is actually a very-well respected classic fantasy film amongst film critics and would be absolutely beloved amongst the next generation special effects artists who would create films like "Star Wars", "Jurassic Park", and "Indiana Jones".  The movie starred Kerwin Matthews and Kathryn Grant as Sinbad and the Princess, respectively, but the most popular character by far was actually Ray Harryhausen's cyclops.  Despite being directed by Nathan H. Juran, a mainstay of cheap Z-movies like "Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman", the film actually had a very large budget of six-hundred thousand dollars.  And for that reason, the effects, budget, and quality are all considerably higher than the usual American giant monster productions.  You may not have heard of this movie, but trust me, its a beloved classic of the fantasy film genre.

All-Out Giant Monster Attack! Episode 19 - Half Human

I now own this movie.  I own this horrible movie.

"Half Human" is actually the English title of a movie called "Ju Jin Yuki Otoko" (translated as "Abominable Snowman") made in 1955 by Ishiro Honda, featuring what I thought was Toho's second attempt at a major kaiju monster.  It actually isn't really a kaiju movie in the traditional sense, but I'll get to that in a minute.  The reason I'm reviewing this one so far out of historical sequence is because "Half Human" is the single most difficult Japanese monster movie to find these days*, being available only on the Black Market from very sketchy websites.  Which is how I got my copy.  The problem is that "Half Human" features some very racist depictions of the Ainu people of northern Japan**, showing them as inbred savages that hulk around like zombies who may or may not be mating with the Abominable Snowman that they worship as a God.  For that reason, out of political correctness, Toho has basically buried this movie, preferring to pretend it doesn't exist and never gave it an official release on home video.

Which is why my copy appears to have been captured off a television showing from decades ago, with subtitles added later.  The quality was terrible, the picture had a strange blur at the top, and I think parts of the frame have been cut off.  Really the main reason why I decided to see this movie was to join an elite group of super nerds, probably only about two dozen total who have seen "Half Human".  I'm not joking, there cannot be more than thirty humans outside of Japan who have seen the original "Half Human" in its non-edited form.  Lots of westerners have seen this movie though in a 1959 American release, which was chopped to bits in an editing process very similar to the American "Godzilla: King of the Monsters", where B-movie mainstay, John Carradine was added between the Japanese footage.  As it turns out, that version of the movie is just as impossible to find as the Japanese.  And since I had to choose between which bootleg I would order, I went with the original.

Well, I can't say anything about the John Carradine version, but I cannot imagine its worse than the movie I saw.  For all the work I did combing the Internet far and wide to find any copy of this movie for this blog, its all wasted because unfortunately, "Half Human" is a terrible movie.  This is very shocking to me, since the reviews I read actually ranked it as one of the better Ishiro Honda films, with the only complaint being that it was too long.  You're damn right its too fucking long!  "Half Human" has all the pacing of a Bert I. Gordon movie, its like watching "Beginning of the End" but without the Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew cracking jokes to get you through it.  Actually no, this is like a Colman Francis movie - yeah, I went there.  This is one of the most boring movies I've ever seen.  I waited four weeks for delivery for this?  Worse, now I have to write a negative review, and come off as an asshole.  I'm sorry, but "Half Human" barely even counts as a giant monster movie, it takes forever to get going, and is so painfully slow that you fade out and lose track of the plot.  This is the worst kind of movie - boring.

All-Out Giant Monster Attack! Episode 18 - Attack of the 50 Foot Woman

Arguably, this the greatest poster for any movie ever.  Personally I prefer the poster for "The Forbidden Planet", but that's me.  Its got everything, a luscious damsel, people screaming, cars getting smashed, well-tanned thighs, what couldn't you love?  Well, I guess you could have a slight complaint in that this scene never actually happens in the movie.

"Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" is probably best-remembered for its fantastic poster art (I actually want this picture hanging up on my wall someday), but its also one of the best-remembered American giant monster movies of its time.  Rather than having a giant creature steal off with a busty heroine, let's make the busty heroine a giant monster!  Its brilliant.  This movie is probably best-remembered for its pretty blatant exploitation undertones, with a woman turning into a giant, ripping right out of her clothing, and then going on a rampage of revenge, appealing directly to people with a giantism fetish.  For that reason, despite being made on a puny eighty-eight thousand dollar budget by some of the most Z-grade of Hollywood producers, "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" has inspired dozens of pop culture references, a remake, and no less than two softcore porn homages.  So clearly, I couldn't avoid reviewing this one.

In 1957, a movie called "The Amazing Colossal Man" was made by Mr. Bert. I. Gordon, of "The Beginning of the End" infamy - whose "unique" directing style was enough to persuade me not to watch that film.  "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" was directly inspired by B.I.G. and even came out in time to rival "Colossal Man"'s sequel, "The War of the Colossal Beast".  They even hired "Colossal Man"'s screenwriter, Mark Hannah, to pen this one.  "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" was produced by the Woolner Brothers, a pair of drive-in movie owners who had eventually grown into film producers, and were even partners of Roger Corman.  The Woolner Bros. were responsible for the kind of films you'd expect, "Hercules Conquers Atlantis", "Castle of Blood", and "Hillbillies in a Haunted House", the sort of bottom of the barrel sludge that nobody today remembers, and "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" was by far their highest release.  Directing is Nathan H. Juran whose work we previously met in "20 Million Miles to Earth".  This resulted in a very usual giant monster movie which is primarily focused on characters and drama, which ultimately leads to the monster's rampage.  I'd rank "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" well above most of the movies we've covered here, its actually a pretty solid movie.

All-Out Giant Monster Attack! Episode 17 - The Giant Claw

"The Giant Claw" is a 1957 giant monster movie, best known for having one of the silliest-looking monsters of all time.  That I believe is rather unfair.  Honestly, "The Giant Claw" is a pretty good giant monster movie, admittedly featuring a giant buzzard.  The movie is ridiculous, obviously, its about a giant bird, and indeed a giant vulture.  In fact, its not merely a giant vulture, its a giant alien vulture that shoots out an antimatter shield, making it impervious to both radar and physical attacks.  Yeah, the effects are cheesy and awful, but that's really part of the charm, since the script is corny to all Hell too.

I should note, "The Giant Claw", is not an American rip-off of "Rodan", which came out in Japan in 1956, as "Rodan" would still not arrive in US until a bit later, and I rather doubt that Columbia Pictures was that interested in kaiju films just yet.  This movie was directed by Fred F. Sears, who previously worked with one, Ray Harryhausen on "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers".  "The Giant Claw" was originally intended to feature Ray Harryhausen's work but unfortunately there was no budget.  So instead of classic stop-motion, Columbia decided instead on hiring a Mexican puppeteer company, and really, the effects speak for themselves.  "The Giant Claw" has, without a doubt, the worst miniatures ever used in a movie, with everything from exploding planes to the little army men in parachutes to crumbling skyscrapers looking hysterically awful.  The monster itself doesn't look that bad, to me, its a silly concept but its executed rather well, but everything else is a true crapfest.  Our stars are Jeff Morrow, a Columbia actor-slave and the wonderfully hot Mara Corday, who we last saw running from a giant arachnid in "Tarantula".

The plot of "The Giant Claw" is pure step-by-step Fifties SciFi formula, again mainly featuring scientists and generals in a gray laboratory discussing how to defeat the creature.  Mara Corday is the token female, supposedly a scientist herself but never once comes up with any particularly brilliant ideas, that's all Jeff Morrow's work.  The vulture shows up a few times, attacks a few dudes, and then flies away, until finally the scientists figure out how to beat him:  with particle physics.  But before that conclusion, "The Giant Claw" offers a speedy plot with plenty of ridiculous lines, lots of fun terrible special effects, and one of the more original giant monsters of the period.

All-Out Giant Monster Attack! Episode 16 - The Blob (1958)

1958's "The Blob" is a bit different than most of the American giant monster movies I've been dealing with lately.  It was still a low budget independently-made film that only paid its leading actors a few thousand dollars for their participation, but it has something those others don't:  a widescreen aspect ratio and color!

"The Blob" features easily the most famous American monster of the 1950s, an alien hump of red matter that creeps and leaps and glides and slides across the floor, right through the door, all around the wall.  Nobody has heard of "Attack of the Crab Creatures", and even less have any idea what "Beginning of the End" is, but "The Blob" is an icon.  Its also out of the most original monsters that have come out of a cheap independent B-movie, a formless mass that simply devours people.  Its difficult to say what the Blob is, what's its after, or even if its actually alive, all it does is crawl around on the ground, absorbing flesh into more red goo.  This is probably the most primordially frightening monster concept we've had here.  Giant spiders are just animals, Godzilla has personality, but the Blob has no personality, its a faceless visceral fear that just keeps growing larger using the bodies of your family and friends.  And it makes no sound.  None.  There is nothing to it except the mindless instinct to devour living beings.  No wonder why this is one of the best American horror films of the Fifties.

Curiously, though, "The Blob" did not have a considerably-larger budget than "Beginning of the End".  It was directed by Irvin Yeaworth, whose main body of work consisted of mainly educational shorts and motivational films, the kind of mindless nonsense that tortured millions of bored American high schoolers and endlessly tickled "Mystery Science Theater 3000".  However, somehow, he managed to make a movie in color and widescreen, with decent special effects, a pretty well-known leading man in Steve McQueen, and still ten thousand dollars under-budget.  Yeaworth even managed to film convincing night scenes - which is good since this entire movie takes place during the course of a single night, rather than just using a dim blue filter over what is clearly midday light like most films of this period.  So generally, I'm pretty impressed with the production values here, and what's a fairly solidly written and directed movie.  "The Blob" is a really good, nicely cheesy, but still somewhat frightening horror movie, which should not be missed.

All-Out Giant Monster Attack! Episode 15 - Beginning of the End

Wow, that poster is colorful, exciting, frightening, and eye-catching.  The movie "Beginning of the End" is not any of those things.  I have to review this one quickly, or else its going to rapidly disappear from my brain.

Bert I. Gordon is one of the most prolific giant monster movie directors of the 1950s and 1960s, which is fitting considering that his initials add up to "B.I.G".  Unfortunately, the Notorious B.I.G. is not a good director, in fact, in the Fifties, he probably ranked amongst the worst directors of his time, not an easy feat considering how many terrible B-movie SciFi and horror films were flooding the market.  "Beginning of the End", to be fair, is easily B.I.G.'s worst movie, though his other credits aren't exactly glorious.  He's made "Earth vs. The Spider", "The Amazing Colossal Man", "Village of the Giants", all which are effectively unwatchable without the boys at Mystery Science Theater 3000 riffing them.  Most of his movies are plodding and practically pace-less, they're almost surreal in how crushingly boring they can be.

Gordon's special effects never grew beyond a minimal level of sophistication, B.I.G. simply filmed real-life animals or insects and rear-projected them with normal-sized human actors to appear massive.  This method of splicing often failed for even Ray Harryhausen, with deep dark lines and layers bleeding through each other.  B.I.G. managed to get it to fail nearly every time.  "Beginning of the End" is notorious within the already pretty cheesy quality of Fifties B-movies for having laughably awful special effects.  This is a film about giant locusts attacking Chicago.  B.I.G. didn't have the budget to build props or miniatures like a Toho production, he didn't have the talent of Harryhausen to animate this creatures, and he didn't have the creativity of Roger Corman to make the most of his mediocre effects with mood, atmosphere, and wild storylines.  What do you get when you have no resources, no ideas, and no talent?  Locusts being dropped onto a flat picture of Chicago and "climbing up" buildings and often enough, the sky.

If you're going to watch "Beginning of the End", make sure its the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version.  And even then, B.I.G.'s complete inability to build tension or even move his movie along at any pace will make the seventy-six minutes of this film feel like seventy-six hours.  When even Mike, Tom, and Crow can't make your movie entertaining, you've done something that only true masters of ultimate incompetence like Colman Francis have accomplished.  This is what we call a craptastic turd, worth watching only to see what may be the worst giant monster effects ever.

All-Out Giant Monster Attack! Episode 14 - 20 Million Miles to Earth

"20 Million Miles to Earth" is a 1957 American alien invasion movie, though technically it isn't really so much an alien invasion so much as an alien kidnapping.  This is another one of Ray Harryhausen's giant monster films, though this one stars not a mindless aquatic aggressor like "It Came From Beneath the Sea", but instead a tragic scaly alien.  Harryhausen wanted this to become his first color feature, but lack of funds meant that it was filmed in blac and white.  DVDs today, thanks to modern restoration methods, allow you to actually watch "20 Million Miles" in the color Harryhausen dreamed of.  The idea here clearly was to emulate something similar to "King Kong" or "Mighty Joe Young" and create a more sympathetic villain, but they kept all the general tropes of American Fifites SciFi.  The humans in no way try to understand the monster they're dealing with, and come off hideously cavalier about all the carnage that occurs on screen. This is the story of a wide-eyed young man born into a strange new world with a mind full of dreams... and then is brutally murdered by the Earth creatures for no reason.

"20 Million Miles to Earth" was directed by Nathan H. Juran, a former Academy Award winner for Best Art Direction for "How Green Was My Valley", but by 1957 had descended into the B-movie territory where his career would end.  Juran would go on to direct several other Ray Harryhausen films, and 1958's "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" - which we'll definitely have to cover on this series.  Despite his Academy credentials, I really don't see much talent out of Nathan H. Juran here, since there is very little skill on display, not surprisingly since Juran also made the crapfest known as "The Deadly Mantis".  Producing is Harryhausen's long-time collaborator, Charles H. Schneer.  William Hopper is the male lead, who is probably best known as being James Dean's father in "Rebel Without a Cause", and really not much else.  The leading female is Joan Taylor, an equally unremarkable actress.

I was honestly looking forward to "20 Million Miles to Earth" since I'm always glad to see a monster movie that gives its monster personality and sympathy.  But ultimately this movie comes terrible cruel, and not just to the monster, to all animals.  Unintentionally they made the humans very ugly characters, and monster lacks the dialog in gesture and voice that King Kong or Mighty Joe Young had, so this is basically a movie without a protagonist.  Ray Harryhausen's work is great, but the rest of the movie is awful.

All-Out Giant Monster Attack! Episode 13 - The Mysterians

Space aliens in a giant purple egg invade Japan and we fight back with satellite dishes and flying cigars.

"The Mysterians", AKA "Chikyū Bōeigun" (Earth Defense Force), is a 1957 Toho alien invasion movie directed by our old friend Ishiro Honda.  Unlike the other movies on our list, "The Mysterians" technically is not a giant monster movie, its just a movie that happens to have a giant robot creature in it - and a terrible one at that.  Ishiro Honda and his crew just wanted to make an alien war blockbuster with lots of lasers and flying weapons and aliens in colorful helmets, but they were told by producer, Tomoyuki Tanaka to include a man-in-a-suit effect in order to rub off the profits of previous Toho successes like "Godzilla" and "Rodan".  Personally I was pretty conflicted as to whether "The Mysterians" was worth including on this countdown... but then I remembered that in a few episodes I'll be covering "The Beginning of the End", so really everything is fair game.

As you would expect from all the other Toho movies we've covered, the special effects are wide in scope, showing everything from earthquakes and mudslides to airships firing laser beams while still finding room for tank battles, rockets, and a forest fire.  The music by Akira Ifukube is top-notch, the guy seems to do nothing but excellent scores.  Ifukube seems to be one of the most talented film composers of the 1950s.  However, despite those successes, "The Mysterians" also suffers from the main problems of Toho movies of this period, in that the human characters are vague and under-developed, to the point of being literally nothing but names attached to a body.  In fact this movie has some of the worst characterization I've ever seen, with two leading females who have nothing to do but stand around, do their feminine duty, and without complaint get kidnapped by the aliens.

That being said, "The Mysterians" is a pretty mixed film.  It features easily the lamest kaiju monster I've ever seen, the characters suck, the story has no pacing, and its really nothing but an action blockbuster from 1950s Japan.  However, there is still a charm to this thing.  The effects - again done by Eiji Tsuburaya - are pretty cheesy now, but are still exciting in their own cartoony way and give the impression of a high-fantasy interstellar war.  "The Mysterians" was also filmed in "TohoScope", a Japanese recreation of the Western "CinemaScope", meaning that its actually using wide modern cinematic aspect ratio.  Its no "Godzilla", its no "Rodan", but "The Mysterians" is still something special.

All-Out Giant Monster Attack! Episode 12 - Attack of the Crab Monsters

This movie is awesome!

I knew I had to include a Roger Corman movie for All-Out Giant Monster Attack!, the man is a living legend of Hollywood.  Despite working exclusively in the realm of independent B-movie production, Roger Corman is the grandfather of a massive film tradition.  He's produced over 400 movies according to IMDB, and directed over fifty.  The list of people who have worked with Corman on his cheap horror, exploitation, and comedy films is mind-boggling with directors such as:  James Cameron, Francis Ford Coppola, Joe Dante, Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese, Johnathan Demme, and Robert Town all going through the Corman school.  And that's not even including actors, where we have:  Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Sandra Bullock, David Carradine, Sylvester Stallone, and Talia Shire. Chances are, if you've worked on a crappy B-movie at point during the last sixty years, you've worked on a Roger Corman movie.  Corman might just be the most prolific filmmaker in all of history, and he's still at it, still making terrible monster movies for the SciFi channel.

In the Fifties, a typical Corman production took around two weeks to film, and would cost something between ten and seventy thousand dollars, which even at the time was an incredibly low amount of money with which to make an entire feature film.  But Corman was the type to get the work done, using a crew of professionals working around the clock with multiple jobs, pumping out movies like factory products.  In a single year Corman could produce as many as nine movies.  One of his best-known movies, the 1960 original "Little Shop of Horrors" was filmed entirely in two days.  In "Attack of the Crab Monsters", the chief actors were paid six-hundred dollars per week of shooting, which for many desperate starving actors in Los Angeles at the time, was perfectly fine.  Even the star, Russell Johnson, who previously starred in the SciFi classic, "This Island Earth" and would go on to be The Professor from Gilligan's Island, was glad to have the paycheck.

"Attack of the Crab Monsters"* was born in typical Corman fashion, with him suddenly deciding one day to make a movie about giant crabs attacking.  He also demanded from his screenplay writer, Charles B. Griffith, that every scene contain suspense or action, so they wouldn't have to film any unnecessary and pricey scenes of characterization or even exposition.  And I would say, for the most part, this strategy worked, because "Attack of the Crab Monsters" is an excellent movie.  I mean, yeah, its obviously a very cheap B-movie and the characters are lousy, but the movie has a great atmosphere of unrelenting suspense.  And it has one of the most original giant monsters ever, which add to the creepy tone of the entire movie.  There is not one scene that doesn't work to continue to build the suspense the eeriness of the isolated madness that the characters have been trapped within.  "Attack of the Crab Monsters" is a perfect lesson on how to make a cheap monster movie.  This is how its done.

All-Out Giant Monster Attack! Episode 11 - Tarantula

My grandma loves this movie.

"Tarantula" is the giant spider movie.  The film was made in 1955 right at the crest of the giant monster craze in the United States, probably as a specific reaction to the success of Warner Bros' "Them!" from the previous year.  Amongst the heavy barrage of giant bug movies that came out in the mid-to-late Fifites, "Tarantula" actually features decent enough monster effects, at least good enough that you do not automatically burst out laughing like the ants from "Them!" or the Meganulons from "Rodan".  Amongst modern rankings of Fifties SciFi horror, "Tarantula" is remembered as being one of the best giant bug movies, second only to "Them!" in appreciation.  However, that still means it belongs to a genre in filmmaking well-known for terrible effects, cheesy stories, and notoriously awful direction.

Unfortunately I don't think there's terribly much to say about "Tarantula".  It was directed by Jack Arnold, a SciFi B-movie specialist who also made such classics as "The Thing From Outer Space" and "The Creature From the Black Lagoon", both very iconic SciFi films from this decade.  "Tarantula" is one of his more well-known creations, and would go on to inspire the rip-off Bert I. Gordon film, "Earth vs. The Spider", which I don't think needs coverage here, and the truly incompetent 1975 film, "The Giant Spider Invasion".  As compared with that atrocious disaster, "Tarantula"'s Tarantula actually doesn't look too awful.  Basically what they did was splice in a real life tarantula, and spliced it film making it appear one hundred feet tall.  For the most part, the effect actually works.  Fighting this monster is Dr. Matt Hastings, played by legendary B-movie actor, John Agar, and his love interest, Stephenie Clayton, played by Playboy centerfold, Mara Corday.

 Now as 1950s SciFi films go, "Tarantula" unfortunately sits right on the centerline of mediocrity.  The Tarantula is a very flat monster, appearing only to eat people, never getting the depth and sympathy of other creatures from the time period.  He's also not in the movie nearly enough.  For the most part, the film is about John Agar driving back and forth across generic Californian desert landscapes, and only at the end do we get a real giant monster fight.  There are some laughably bad make-up effects though, and Mara Corday is seriously sexy even in restrictive 1950s cloths, so there's some entertainment to be found.  But still, this might be the worst movie on this countdown so far.

All-Out Giant Monster Attack! Episode 10 - Rodan

Rodan* is another member of the classic Godzilla pantheon of giant monsters, appearing as a reluctant ally to Godzilla in several movies, typically in battles against the arch-demon of the kaiju franchise, King Ghidorah.  He's best described as a gigantic pterosaur, ultimately looking the most bird-like of all the old Toho kaiju creatures.  However, though Rodan is best known as being one of Godzilla's friends, his origins actually stem back to his own 1956 movie, titled simply, "Rodan".  "Rodan" was the third kaiju film directed by Ishiro Honda, director of "Godzilla" and "Half-Human".  Its production saw the reunion of the key members of the Godzilla team:  Akira Ifukube wrote the soundtrack, Tomoyuki Tanaka produced, Haruo Nakajima is the guy in the monster suit, Eiji Tsuburaya is again the effects master, and they even got Akihito Hirata, who previously played the Godzilla-slaying Professor Serizawa, to be the lead scientist again.  But "Rodan" featured something that no movie on All-Out Giant Monster Attack! has had yet...  COLOR!!

Yes, glorious beautiful color would now be the standard for all Japanese giant monster movies.  Colorization methods for film exist all the way back to the beginning of the medium, with George Milies personally painting every frame of his classic movies.  The first major modern color movie (using Technicolor) was "Gone With the Wind" in 1939, and that's the film most people call "the first color movie".  However, Technicolor was an expensive and complicated process, and for independent filmmaking, it was generally outside of the range of possibilities.  And really, it wasn't until the late 1960s that color became so easy to produce and so standardized that generally every movie would be filmed that way.  Even major American releases of the mid-Sixties such as "Dr. Strangelove" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?" were still in black and white, while color was restricted to genre films like Westerns and fantasy but growing more popular all the time.  In the US, dirt poor filmmakers like Bert. I Gordon and Roger Corman simply did without color until the Seventies.  But in Japan, Toho was a major studio and their SciFi films were growing in popularity and complexity, color was an inevitable innovation.

Back on topic, "Rodan" is actually an impressive kaiju film.  Its effects range from impressive to hilariously awful, the human characters are pretty tertiary, existing really only to watch the events unfold.  Rodan doesn't show up until rather late in the movie, until then the main villain is a group of terrible-looking giant bugs, possibly inspired by the American movie, "Them!"  But when "Rodan" finally gets going, it gets going well, featuring some awesome dogfights and scenes of destruction.  And it ends with what is easily the most shocking and sad ending of any kaiju film I've ever seen.

All-Out Giant Monster Attack! Episode 9 - Godzilla Raids Again

One year after Godzilla destroyed Tokyo in "Godzilla", he's back, raiding again, in "Godzilla Raids Again".  Only one year after the smash success of "Gojira", Toho quickly moved forward with their sequel.  They were in such a hurry to get "Godzilla 2" made that they overlooked the fact that Ishiro Honda, director of the original Godzilla, was busy directing a different Kaiju film, "Ju Jin Yuki Otoko" (Monster Snowman), though that film is better known in the West under the title, "Half Human"*.  Instead the directing job when to Motoyoshi Oda, a fellow of Honda's, but obviously a far less talented filmmaker who would never make a kaiju film again.  Producer Tomoyuki Tanaka was back, and so was special effects master, Eiji Tsuburaya.  But composer Akira Ifukube was replaced by Masaru Sato, who created a far inferior score that lacked even the classic Godzilla theme.

Ultimately, it was seemingly predestined that "Godzilla Raids Again" (or "Godzilla's Counterattack" as its Japanese title reads), was destined to fall under the sequel curse.  Except for a single cameo from Takashi Shimura as Dr. Yamane, the original human cast was gone.  The principle creative talent behind "Godzilla" was missing, but Toho needed some kind of follow-up to capitalize on the blockbuster that was the kaiju genre.  Heck, even Godzilla's choice of target city, Osaka, feels inferior, its like if the aliens from "Independence Day", after blowing up New York, decided to attack Philadelphia next.  The grim disastrous tone of the original was not kept, instead Godzilla was merely a giant monster wrecking the city, not a living natural curse brought to the world because of the sin of the atomic age.  The human characters are mostly kitschy and entirely irrelevant, existing only to eat time, even by the second movie its obvious the real star has become the monsters.  Its a very confused movie, sitting on the crossroads between the serious horror of "Gojira" and the unembarrassed children's fair that the rest of Godzilla's Showa series was going to become.

There are some inspired ideas between "Godzilla Raids Again" though.  This is the first film where Godzilla fights with another monster, this one being the giant Ankylosaurus, Anguirus, one of the most popular giant monsters in the Toho line-up.  Anguirus as the series would go on would become Godzilla's best friend, teaming up him against a number of weird alien invasions, though Anguirus was usually the guy to get beaten up.  This time he's Godzilla's first enemy, and thus "Godzilla Raids Again" is notable as being the first Kaiju film marketed around the idea of a giant monster brawl.  Eventually those kinds of movies would be the main attraction of the entire Japanese giant monster industry.  Even with "Godzilla Raids Again"'s faults, which were obvious even in 1955 that Toho wouldn't make another Godzilla movie until the Sixties, its got that monster melee, which makes the whole thing feel worthwhile.