One of the all-time great 50s monster movies. This time our giant monster, who hails from Venus, starts out very small before rapidly growing. Ray Harryhausen's amazing stop-motion creature, named The Ymir, is obviously the big highlight here. Like with all the great monsters you feel bad for the creature since he's kidnapped from his home planet and we're even told he's not really aggressive unless provoked, so what does everyone do? Provoke him at every opportunity of course! I do kinda also feel bad for that elephant though. Simple yet engaging classic.
I've seen this 90s reboot of the Gamera series a few times over the years but I don't think I've ever seen the UK-dubbed version before. In this version everyone has a very British accent and some pretty annoying techno jams start up every few minutes so if that sounds like something you would be into check that out. Personally I think I'll stick with the subtitled version if I ever watch this again.
Gamera, the giant fire-breathing, flying turtle had been gone for 15 years(GAMERA: SUPER MONSTER was his last outing) before they brought him back in this and it's generally considered a high point in Japanese monster films and I can't argue with that. They also bring back Daiei Studios own version of Rodan, Gyaos(there are technically 3 Gyaos but only one survives to the big final fight) to battle our protector of children. Steven Seagal's daughter, Ayako Fujitani plays one of the main characetrs who forms a psychic bond with our big turtle.
There would be 2 direct sequels to this, then in 2005 there was a film featuring an even goofier-looking offspring of Gamera. Finally an animated movie in 2023 appeared. I'm still waiting for that crossover with Godzilla though.
As far as silly giant monster movies go this one is certainly entertaining enough for a watch. Made the same year as the definitive British giant monster movie GORGO, this time instead of a GODZILLA-influenced monster we get a more KING KONG-inspired creature who starts out as a chimpanzee and as he gets bigger is magically(and unexplainedly) transformed into an ape. The story itself is nothing like KONG and owes more to your standard mad-scientist yarns of the 50s. In addition to a giant ape running loose you get some over-sized man-eating plants which can't help but remind us all of THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS which came out the previous year. Now if they only made a GORGO VS. KONGA flick it woulda been cinematic gold!
Inspired this comic book series which ran for 23 issues and is very expensive to find today!:
The heart of the Frankenstein monster ends up in Japan at the end of World War II, gets hit with radiation from an A-bomb and then grows into a Japanese giant monster. He then goes on to battle giant, floppy-eared, horned dinosaur Baragon(not to be confused with giant, horned dinosaur Barugon who battled Gamera a year after this) and if you're watching the Japanese print a giant octopus. It's goofy monstrous thrills and since our Franky monster doesn't have to wear a big bulky rubber suit he gets to be a bit more acrobatic in his fighting style than is usually seen in these films. Good for a cheap laugh if you enjoy Asian monster on the loose epics and this is helped by Nick Adams very intense dubbed American accent. AKA FRANKENSTEIN VS. BARAGON
This was followed by WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS the next year which I would probably rate slightly higher than this one but they would make for an excellent classic monster double feature.
I feel like a modern-day giant monster movie with a bunch of cgi-enhanced scenes is something I should probably hate immediately but having given this one a chance I found it entertaining enough for a breezey 80 minutes. Obviously this story has been done to death in Japanese cinema starting way back with GODZILLA in 1954 but this time they go the mostly comedic route with a monster who looks a lot like Big G except with some flipper hands, bigger back spikes and the ability to control lightning. I guess growing up and watching so many of these films from a young age this seemed different enough to amuse me. Monster turds, cute Japanese schoolgirls, actors breaking character and lots of stupidity are a few highlights. AKA RAIGA: THE MONSTER FROM THE DEEP SEA and RAIGA: GOD OF THE MONSTERS
There is a sequel that came out in 2021 called GOD RAIGA VS. KING OHGA and there's a similarly titled REIGO: KING OF THE SEA MONSTERS that predates this from 2005 but I don't think that has any relation or is a comedy.
Very unfitting J-pop music for a monster movie trailer!:
This 50s monster b-movie is the first one produced by Roger Corman. It's never really been one of my favorites due to most of it being really slow and talky but it does have a goofy one-eyed squid (that I guess in the movie is supposed to be a giant amoeba). Unfortunately we only really get to see this monster briefly up until the very end when he battles a one-man submarine to the death.Corman would go on to produce and direct a zillion more goofy movies and director Wyatt Ordung wrote the legendarily trashy ROBOT MONSTER a year before this so he's OK in my book.
The VHS cover gave our monster another eye and a nifty deep-sea diving suit!:
So this one is just a straight-up western, complete with a good-guy and bad-guy competing for a gal, up until around the last half hour when a neat stop-motion dinosaur shows up to munch on a couple of folks. I read one review where they called this a cheap movie. That seems pretty absurd since it's in color, Cinemascope and I doubt that special FX work of this sort was quick or easy to do back in the 50s. This is obviously a big inspiration for THE VALLEY OF GWANGI so compared to that it might look cheap but that film had the big advantage of Ray Harryhausen FX work and it was made 13 years later. I have to give this one props for the effort even if it is quite inferior.
There was a Spanish-language version of this shot at the same time.
Played at this California theater with some noir/drama about stolen cars from the same year:
Got to catch this monster-mash classic down at the drive-in over the weekend. One of my childhood favorite and still a goofy good time if you can deal with the Japanese rubber-suit monster flicks at all. Only the 3rd film in the original GODZILLA series and already they paired up the 2 most famous giant monsters. They also throw in a giant octopus for Kong to fight. Kong here being a very ugly squished-face version of the giant ape that is obviously not the original RKO monster since he's also way taller. Laughable dubbing abounds in the U.S. version, which is also shorter due to scenes being trimmed so they could add news reports with American faces. There's also a lot of familiar music from CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON that shows up.
Godzilla would return 2 years later to fight MOTHRA and Kong would get a sorta-sequel 5 years later with KING KONG ESCAPES where he fights a giant robot ape.
There is supposed to be a new version of this but since it will be a stupid CGI crap-a-thon I have little interest in watching it.
Hammer meets Toho!:
Apparently King Kong was a lot more popular in Italy since the movie was re-titled THE TRIUMPH OF KING KONG there with no mention of Godzilla at all!:
Some rocks from outer space land in a desert and then threaten the nearby townsfolk. How the hell do they do that? Well when they get wet they get really big and turn people into solid rock. They also multiply rapidly as an extra threat. Not the most exciting of the 50's giant monster epics mainly because it's just such a ridiculous monster and premise. It is all done fairly seriously for the era though and I guess when you run out of giant creatures giant rocks is the next step. If you dig all the 50's giant bug movies give this a watch after you've run out of those.
The dad from the PATTY DUKE SHOW( William Schallert) shows up briefly as a weatherman for all you old NICK AT NITE fans.
One of the all-time classic 50's giant monster movies. An obvious inspiration for GODZILLA which would come out a year later as well as most all the giant creature films that followed. Also obviously inspired by KING KONG since Ray Harryhausen learned his special F/X tricks from Willis O'Brien on that.
A personal favorite that helped get me hooked on giant monster movies after seeing it on t.v. as a youngster. If you don't dig this one you probably shouldn't bother with any other monster flicks.
I first caught this 50s giant-monster epic a few years back at a theatrical Thanksgiving showing. It makes a good turkey-day flick not only because the movie is a bit of a turkey but also because the monster does resemble some sorta bizzare interpretation of a skinny flying turkey puppet. More accurately I guess it's more of a buzzard-deal, but a buzzard with a tuft of hair on it's head and bulging eyes, oh and it sounds like a crow for some reason. The scientists in this inform us that this terrifying creature hails from a planet made of anti-matter, whatever that means. This would probably be kind of forgettable if not for the absurd appearance of our bird-monster and solely for that it's worth a gander for 50s monster kids.
They manage to make the monster appear more frightening by hiding his goofy face in the posters!:
Bottom of the barrell, cheapjack KING KONG rip-off. Not only do we get a giant gorilla(which is just a guy in a gorilla suit that might be one of the worst gorilla suits ever, complete with bugged out eyes that don't blink or move at all and would seem more at home on a dollar store toy!)
but also a giant tyrannosaurus-rex(which is a guy in a very crappy dinosaur suit that I think in certain shots is actually just a dollar store toy!). So we do get some giant monster fighting with some not very special-FX. There is an actual stop-motion sea-serpent monster that shows up briefly towards the end that I was a little shocked to see(apparently this footage was taken from an earlier swords n' sandals flick called GOLIATH AND THE DRAGON). In between the monster "action" there's some pretty dull jungle frolicking. You would be way better off watching THE MIGHT PEKING MAN than this for KONG-inspired goodness. AKA ATTACK OF THE DEATH MONSTERS
The T-Rex costume was recycled for ONE MILLION AC/DC which is a prehistoric/sexploitation mash-up.
Caught this recently on a theatrical double-feature release, playing before the classic giant-ant flick THEM!. While this was a Halloween lead-up event, this movie has always been more of a Thanksgiving tradition for me and probably a great many other people of a certain age-group who live in the New York City area since it was shown here at that time of the year for a long, long time until TV became an empty cesspool of non-stop commercials and unwatchable puke.
What can you say about this classic except that it is the granddaddy of giant-monster movies thanks to it's variety of prehistoric creatures that pop-up, the FX-work by Willis O'Brien was revolutionary at the time and it's a great adventure/sci-fi/thriller of a movie that moves along briskly and doesn't ever get boring or bogged down. The actors are all amazing in that old-timey way, and Fay Wray becomes the icon of all scream-queens to follow.
There's only 1 official sequel but about a gazillion knock-offs and spoofs, a cartoon-version, a Japanese version and a few remakes including one from the 70s which I thought was pretty cool when I was a kid and a couple of newer cgi-ladened shitfests that I have no interest in ever bothering with.
Re-released 5 years later with this trailer:
French poster:
There's about a trillion alternate posters for this film!:
So there's this old rich douchebag(Richard Boone), with the porn star-like name of Masten Thrust, whose drilling company finds a T-Rex in a secret land in Antarctica. Oh and he's also conveniently a big game hunter so he gets a group together consisting of a very large African tracker, a Japanese genius scientist, your standard white guy and a lady just so we can be constantly reminded of how sexist and macho he is and they go on to hunt down "the last dinosaur". The big twist here is that Masten himself, due to his outdated old-timey views on life, is really "the last dinosaur" of the title but this isn't much of a spoiler since they lay that out right from the beginning and the cringe-inducing theme song. Along the way they run into some trapped-in-time cave people and a couple of other giant prehistoric creatures including a triceratops and a pterodactyl. The monsters on display look on par with, or maybe even a bit worse than, something you might see on an old episode of THE LAND OF THE LOST which kinda makes sense since the producers here and on that show are Sid & Marty Krofft. Tsuburaya Productions, of ULTRAMAN fame, worked on the FX which I guess explains their wonky rubber-suited Godzilla-ness which is still preferable than stupid cartoony c.g.i. (to me anyway).
This was supposed to be released theatrically but, I guess due to it's general crappiness, it just got edited down and dumped to TV. Those lucky Europeans did get an extended version shown in theaters but not having seen that I can't tell you if there's an extended crusty old guy sex scene that's merely hinted at here but the idea of it will continue to haunt my nightmares.
Some aliens who seem a lot like Earthlings and speak excellent English are on a mission to raise giant lobster-monsters, to be harvested later on for food, on the Earth. One of them is a rebellious "teenager"(who seems to be in his 30s) who runs away, falls in love with an Earth-lady(Betty Morgan) and screws everything up for them. The aliens use a cool ray gun that makes flesh disappear and leaves nothing but a skeleton behind(kinda like Tim Burton's MARS ATTACKS). Clunky acting, silly dialogue and dumb stuff abounds but hey it was still the 50s so you kinda know what to expect here.
The lobster-monster went on to rape Divine in MULTIPLE MANIACS and some of the background music went on to be in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.
Pretty sure this movie was the inspiration for this lovely tune although they never actually say they are from mars in the film:
The 50s giant-bug movie meets the alien invader movie and as a bonus you get Forrest Tucker being a suave mother-fucking ladies man! The alien invader here is actually a good guy who helps out our team of nerdy scientists with his raygun. On the big bug(or "cosmic monsters" if you will) side of things you mostly get a bunch of blown-up, superimposed cockroaches, an ugly spider and a lizard who scoots by for a second. This is one of the better British-made 50s sci-fi flicks and probably the least boring of the ones starring Mr. Tucker. There is one scene that really stands out and doesn't seem like it belongs in a movie made in the 50s nat all where a soldier gets his face chewed right off down to his exposed skull by one of the over-sized insect monsters! This one is worth a watch just for that spectacle. AKA THE STRANGE WORLD OF PLANET X
Remake/reboot/resurgence? of the original GODZILLA that rolls things back to basics. It delves really deeply into the politics of Japan and answers the question of how Japan can battle a giant monster when it hasn't had any real army since World War II which is something that's never addressed in any of the early GODZILLA films that I've seen. It also shows the United States in not such a great light for the most part but I think the same can be said of how it depicts the Japanese government.
Despite the use of C.G.I. instead of a guy in a suit the fx work looked pretty decent which was a shock to me. From what I've heard there was guy-in-a-suit fx shot but the director wasn't happy with the way that looked so they stuck computer FX in instead.
While the whole movie does get dragged down in lots of dialogue and there's no Ghidrah or Mothra showing up to battle our monster god it's still worth watching especially if, like me, you were underwhelmed by the last U.S. version of GODZILLA with Bryan Cranston. This just shows again that Japan is the king of these types of films. AKA GODZILLA RESURGENCE
After having seen all the later appearances of Mothra where he/she/it fights against all the evil monsters like Ghidorah and Battra the Bad Moth-Monster and Evil Godzilla it's weird to go back and watch this one where Mothra is the menace who's destroying Japan. Of course the main problem with Mothra is that it's a monster who is not scary at all but more of a colorful fantasy creature who is only smashing crap to get it's 2 little teeny twin fairies back from unscrupulous capitalists. Although I never found this to be a favorite or great all-time giant monster flick myself, all the special FX look really good and if you're into the Godzilla movies you gotta see them all eventually.
A really ugly-faced version of King Kong takes on a goofy-ass Robot Kong who is controlled by an evil Dr. Who. The plot revolves around making these big apes dig up some precious element which is dumb. This is basically a Godzilla movie without Godzilla in it. It's also a sort-of sequel to KING KONG VS. GODZILLA though they never refer to that movie so maybe it's not. It was also produced by Rankin & Bass who did all those animated Christmas specials and stuff like MAD MONSTER PARTY and this movie was a tie-in to their KING KONG cartoon show which makes sense because this is a very cartoon-ish film. Mecha-Godzilla would show up a few years later which I assume was inspired by Mecha-Kong here. Good for a laugh if you're a big stupid monster fan.
The original KING KONG is one of the greatest classic sci-fi/horror/adventure movies of all time. This sequel is not quite up there with it's predecessor and it's clearly due to it being rushed out to capitalize on the success of the original. This was actually released in the same year as KING KONG and while the FX are just as good the main not-as-giant gorilla here is way goofier and is actually a hero in the story which takes away from any horror aspects the first film had and makes it way more of a kiddie-friendly monster-movie. Still it's at least a semi-classic and one that was shown along with the first movie and MIGHTY JOE YOUNG every year on Thanksgiving on local TV here in New York making it a sentimental holiday tradition and a good alternative to watching MARCH OF THE WOODEN SOLDIERS again. If you dig the classic monster flicks or just quickie cheapo exploitation films capitalizing/ripping-off something better this one isn't a bad choice. As a bonus you get to see a musical group of monkeys perform a delightful tune.
This poster sells the movie as a straight-up comedy:
