Ford_Dent

@sombre: SIGIL II's depiction of the deepest reaches of hell

@manburger: @symbyosys: I am glad y'all enjoyed the title, it made me laugh when I wrote it which is usually a good sign.

This is perfect

Godzilla vs Gigan:

I actually watched this like two weeks ago but my brain has just not been co-operating when it comes to this stuff so some of these details will be 100% wrong.

Anyway surprise, aliens want to take over the Earth (in this case the aliens are giant cockroaches who fucked up their own planet with too much pollution). They've infiltrated society and are working on a plan to destroy Monster Island and thus pave the way for their own brand of "peace" which is apparently "everything but us is dead." They're doing this by building an amusement park themed around Godzilla, including a big tower shaped like Godzilla which also happens to house their DEATH RAY or whatever.

Our protagonist is a down-on-his-luck cartoonist who gets the chance to design some fake monsters for the amusement park. He runs into a woman looking for her missing brother, who has been press-ganged into helping build the death ray or whatever. They end up uncovering the alien plot, but the aliens summon Gigan to accelerate their plan. This also features Godzilla and Angurius talking to one another, and Godzilla sends Angurius to investigate at one point. It's all a blur. The message (pollution is bad we don't want to end up like the cockroach aliens) is pretty straightforward, and Gigan's design is... weird? He's like a beetle, but not really, and he has hooks for hands. Godzilla gets pretty fucked up in this movie, kind of like when he fought Hedorah, except instead of being covered in acid burns he just gets fuckin' cut. There's actual blood in this one, which kind of went away for a while, but now we're back to it and it feels deeply odd because these things have only gotten more cartoonish as they've gone along.

The fighting is pretty good, the tower blows up real good, and you get this incredibly dumb scene of two cockroaches buried under rubble talking to one another about how they can't believe their glorious plan went so wrong. It's... incredible.

3 out of 5 cockroaches.

Godzilla vs Megalon: Jet Jaguar's in this. Jet Jaguar is like Ultraman, except he's a robot and his ability to grow big is chalked up to him being just, really determined to protect people. That's not a joke, that's literally what they say and the movie just moves on like that's not a completely buck-fucking wild thing to say.

The protagonists are a professional racecar driver (I think?) and his inventor buddy (who built Jet Jaguar) and his... *deep sigh* precocious little brother. Yeah that's right we're back to this shit again.

The villains are the denizens of Sealand, an underwater kingdom that ends up being damaged by those goddamn americans (never mentioned that it is definitely the USA performing the tests, but it's definitely them) and their fucking underground nuclear tests. So the villains are at least justified in their desire to destroy all surface dwellers, because the surface dwellers started it.

Their plan is simple enough - summon Megalon and hijack Jet Jaguar's control systems to make him show Megalon the best places to destroy stuff. Why they know about Jet Jaguar is a bit of a mystery but honestly I don't want to put more effort into considering this mystery (also the mystery of why they need Jet Jaguar to show Megalon around, which.. huh?).

The inventor, of course, has a backup system they use to send Jet Jaguar to get Godzilla so he can whip Megalon's ass - but then the Sealandians or whatever they're called contact the aliens from the last movie and ask for help, so Gigan shows back up. Two on one isn't fair to Godzilla, so somehow Jet Jaguar gains sentience (I'll be honest I looked away for a minute and when I looked back they were like "oh he's making his own choices now") and then grows big because of his determination and there's a fight.

Jet Jaguar is a ridiculous looking robot, and he has a very dumb theme song. Therefore I am pleased to announce he has been adopted as my son.

The movie kind of sucks though.

3 Jets Jaguar out of 3

Godzilla vs Hedorah: If you told me that a Godzilla movie existed that featured a kaiju taking massive rips off a factory smokestack like the world's biggest bong (and man I get the feeling they knew precisely what they were doing with that imagery), I would never have believed you. But then again, if you told me that a movie would start with a song about how pollution is bad, man, I also might not believe you.

This movie does both of these things, and throws in some weird, Yellow Submarine-esque animated bits in there while it's at it. I kept thinking that any minute Hedorah was going to summon Glove to help him take down Godzilla. This movie is a journey, a psychadelic odyssey into the new ways pollution will fuck you up or, you know, cause the flesh to melt off your bones in horrifyingly-rendered detail. They really want you to know pollution is bad as hell.

Hedorah is an alien who eats pollution. Which would be great, if he didn't also fly around spraying sulfuric acid everywhere (the source of people getting turned into skeletons, you see). More than maybe any other Godzilla film (apart from maybe the original), this movie has a body count. I'm pretty sure they kill off one of the main characters at one point! I'm not 100% certain because it's not super-clear.

There are two performances of the title song, and one of them involves a character getting so "drunk" by which I mean he's clearly meant to be on something a little stronger than alcohol, that he sees everyone in the crowd has fish heads. It's a masterpiece. Honestly so much wild shit happens in this movie that to sit here and recap it in the way that I've been doing the other movies would not do it justice.

Anyway, this is considered by some to be one of the worst Godzilla films - and the studio thought so too, because the director never got to do another Godzilla. I think this is complete bullshit, because this was a film that wasn't afraid to get real weird - and I'm not just talking about the part at the end where Godzilla shoots his atomic breath down at the ground and can fly now.

I mean look it's dumb. It's dumb as hell, but who fucking cares? There's so much weird shit going on, and Godzilla like loses an eye at one point because Hedorah just spunks gross acid pollution at people all the time. By the end Godzilla looks gross as hell, and might be the first time that Godzilla has actually looked fucked up post-fight in these movies? The main character is a little child and of course he's annoying in the way all child protagonists are, but at the same time there was so much other stuff going on I didn't mind him as much.

5 alien bong rips out of 5

All Monsters Attack: I put this one off as long as I possibly could, but I've been talking to people on the GB FGC discord about the Heisei era Godzilla films recently, which means I need to finish these Showa era films off. There's not many of 'em left, and my stubbornness means I can't just skip a film, even if it is this one, considered by many to be the actual worst Godzilla film of the Showa era, if not the worst Godzilla film ever made.

It is, without question, my least favorite Godzilla film, but for the sake of not just dunking on the movie for the rest of this post, I'll make an effort here to find some redeeming qualities (or at least empathize with what this is trying to do).

This film is basically a clip show disguised as a movie. It's a way to kind of look back at some of Godzilla's fights and celebrate the extremely weird Godzilla Cinematic Universe that exists, by viewing the various monsters through the eyes of a child. Unfortunately in this case it is maybe the least likable child in the universe, and also the plot is kind of like Neverending Story except without the part where Falcor shows up at the end to terrify bullies - that would require there to be like... any satisfaction to be had at the end instead of... well, we'll get to it. Don't worry.

The point is I can understand why Ishiro Honda, who directed a lot of the Godzilla movies (including, you know, Godzilla) has a soft spot for this movie. It's a celebration of Godzilla and all the big monster fights everyone by this point had come to love, and that's cool! Except it's bad. So, so, very bad.

The movie opens with a song about the monsters and how they are bummed out by pollution, which is the real monster - apart from the lyrics to this song, and an aside at one point from the main character's dad saying he'd like to move to a less-polluted city, this is the only time an environmental message comes up. We meet our main character, who is a child that sucks.

No really, he's a big fan of the giant monsters who (I think?) exist in this setting, and the first thing out of his mouth is talking about how a car noise sounds like one of the giant mantises (I think that's what he says) and then he proceeds to imitate the noise until his friend(?) is like "sure okay" and walks off. He's a real fucking charmer.

Unsurprisingly, the kid who won't shut the fuck up about monsters gets bullied a fair amount, which (speaking as a kid who got bullied a fair amount) is pretty low-stakes bullying. The bullies just kind of dare him to do stuff, and when he doesn't they make fun of him, and also they make him hand over a vacuum tube he found? That's it. That's the worst thing they do.

Anyway the kid's a latchkey kid - his dad works for the railroad, and his mother works at either a hotel or a restaurant, I couldn't tell. There's a toymaker who looks after the kid, by which I mean he has a key to the kid's apartment and feeds him when his parents work late, which they do all the time, apparently. Oh, and a couple people robbed a bank and they're on the run but nobody knows where they are.

The monsters are all on Monster Island, and we never actually go there. The kid just falls asleep and dreams about them. His dream involves being friends with Minilla, the ugly-ass Son of Godzilla, who can talk and also shrink down to human size to talk to this kid. Minilla, by the way, also is being bullied, and Godzilla keeps telling him to stand up for himself.

You can see where this is going. The two watch Godzilla fight monsters, Minilla stands up to his bully kaiju who actually has an okay design and also lightning hands which is kind of weird, and the kid - our hero - stands up to his bullies by beating the shit out of one of them and then... taking one of their dares and doing it? So the moral of the story is beat your bully up and then do what they want and they'll respect you.

Oh, the two bank robbers kidnap the kid at one point but he gets away and then the robbers get arrested. Who cares.

There's a world where this movie was good, but it's got so much re-used footage, and the new fight against the bullying kaiju, while perfectly servicable, isn't good enough to make this worth the trouble. Plus, and I cannot stress this enough, both the kid and Minilla suck. The kid could be played as a sympathetic character, except he's so fucking annoying I couldn't sympathize with him at all, and Minilla has a shitty design and having to look at him so much is like my worst nightmare. If you, like me, want to run the series and watch these movies, go ahead and skip this one. I won't tell a soul.

1 bullying kaiju out of 5

Next up we're gonna watch Godzilla vs Hedorah, which is a movie about how pollution is SUPER BAD, and I cannot wait because apparently it gets real fucking trippy.

Doom Annihilation: Damn, remember this movie coming out? It came out last year, aka several centuries ago in real time. I was excited about it when I first saw it, but then the general consensus was the movie sucked and what with one thing and another, it slipped my mind. I haven't been able to bring myself to watch All Monsters Attack yet (even five weeks of quarantine haven't made me that suicidal) but Doom Eternal came out and fucking owned, and I have fallen completely down a well of playing through literally all the Doom games simultaneously, so I figured, "hey, I've read the dumb fucking Doom novelizations, I've played the games, I just rewatched Doom last year, why not pick up the spare and see how bad it is?"

Reader, I am here to tell you this movie is as subtle as a brick to the face, but unlike a brick to the face I enjoyed the experience! There are some horrible, horrible shoehorned references to Doom in there (the phrase "ultra nightmare" is uttered more than once, as is "I'm too young to die!" and the protagonist's name is Joan Dark aka Jeanne D'Arc, you know, the martyred holy woman?) but also, here's a few things the movie gets absolutely right:

1. It's on Phobos! You know, like in Doom! Holy shit!

2. Our heroine (and her squad of luckless Marine cannon fodder) is sent to Phobos as punishment for insubordination - you know, like in Doom (the novelization I think, and the completely ridiculous Doom Story Bible that the game basically ignores, but some of the parts survived and one, the part where you could choose from your squad of Marines, went on to be in Apogee's Rise of the Triad, which was actually concepted as a proper sequel to Wolfenstein 3d!). Again, holy shit!

3. Not only does this movie have imps as its primary antagonists, they shoot fireballs! Not just that, but they are 100% from a hell dimension! That's right! The imps are demons! This movie has actual demons! Also the zombies are proper possessed people and not just zombies! Like in Doom (2016)!

4. Colored keycards. This movie's got 'em - and not just that, finding them is an actual plot point.

5. The lead researcher who is clearly up to no good is Dr. Betruger. You know, like in Doom 3.

6. The BFG is here! It shoots demons! It... seems to not be as strong a weapon as an actual BFG at first, but then there's a bit at the end where it becomes a proper BFG!

7. Just like in Doom 3, Bertruger makes a deal with the demons, and also, he sends the Doom Marine (Joan, in this case) to hell and she has to escape at the end

8. The big bad demon is kind of an archvile if you squint/are sufficiently drunk

9. Oh yeah there's a super shotgun. It doesn't see much use, but it's still there!

10. There is a chainsaw and it sees lots of use.

A lot of the negative reception to this movie centered around people pissed that the dreaded SJWs had put a woman in an action role and that's not how Doom goes please subscribe to my patreon for more hot takes about feminism ruining everything, if the viewer reviews I read are any indication. Now look. Look. I'm not going to tell you this is a good movie. My expectations for this film were so low as to actually be near earth's molten core. This is a movie where the devil possesses a ship computer (named Daisy, after the rabbit, but also serving as a 2001 reference when she says "I can't do that") , and also there is some kind of a romance angle between Joan and a scientist that... really didn't need to be there at all, if I'm being honest, because it added nothing, but hey! Imp throw fireball, as I eloquently and excitedly texted my brother whilst watching this. That counts for a lot in my book. The demons are demons, and they will suck the soul out of you and turn you into a goddamn zombie, because that's how Doom works, god damn it!

The ending though - oh, the ending of this movie is maybe the ballsiest thing I've ever seen from someone clearly making a film for about six dollars plus whatever change they managed to find in their couch cushions. Let me just... explain this real quick behind some spoilers:

So the trouble starts because they're teleporting using tech they don't understand - which in this case is tech an ancient civilization left behind that ran afoul of the demons. Turns out the teleporter kind of sends you through hell, Event Horizon style, and when Bertruger tries to teleport himself, he ends up in hell, makes a deal with the demons to hand over the keys to earth by opening a portal there, and then comes back to murder everyone. Joan, as our heroine, figures this out, confronts the good doctor, and shoots him. Except he's *extremely Venom Snake Voice* already a demon, so he shrugs it off and sends her to hell. Joan escapes and blows up some demons real good on her way out, but she shows up on earth, because they opened the portal there at Bertruger's request. Joan tries to get them to shut the portal but they don't believe her, obviously, and the last thing that happens is demons start pouring out of the portal on earth|| which you might recall is exactly how Doom ends. (No word on whether or not they kill Joan's pet rabbit, or whether Joan has a rabbit at all)

Which means they were assuming they would get to make a sequel. I don't know if that's just being super confident or legitimately insane, but if we're being honest?

I'd watch a sequel to this movie. Imp throw fireball!

Three imps out of five.

Destroy All Monsters: Also known as "hey they're mind controlling the kaiju again," because that's what this is. There's a few differences though which are worth going into, because unlike Astro Monster this one is uh...

Well, let's go with "difficult to pay attention to." At least it was for me, though maybe that's the dread from the pandemic distracting me. I don't think so though.

Remember how when Godzilla 2014 came out and everyone was pissed about how you don't see a lot of Godzilla kicking ass, and instead it's following around people trying to grapple with this new reality that involves giant fuckin' bugs and a big lizard stomping around wrecking shit?

Okay now replace that second part with "low-budget space travel and actually I lost track of where people were at one point because the moon base looks exactly like the earth base, also the aliens are ladies who shrink down into... space rocks or some shit when they get cold?"

There's a ton of kaiju here - (including some who are brand new to movies with Godzilla in the title, though they might have shown up in other films going on at the time? I don't know for sure and I'm too lazy to find out) - but apart from a sequence at the beginning where you watch them destroy major landmarks (the destruction of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris is particularly good), they basically disappear for most of the movie. The plot instead focuses on the effort to find and destroy the device controlling the monsters - which is I think on the moon but I'm not 100% sure because, again, I had trouble paying attention - and also to figure out what the deal with these alien ladies what turn into rocks is. There's a world where this plot is interesting, but it's not the world we live in (the world we live in just has coronavirus).

When the final showdown happens, the alien mind control device is replaced by a human mind control device, and the monsters all attack Mt Fuji, where the aliens have established their base of operations. In a last gambit, the aliens summon my favorite lad, King Ghidorah, but he gets chumped pretty quickly. The film ends with the second mind control device destroyed, but the aliens get waxed by the kaiju of earth, who
instinctively know who their enemies are. Apparently.

The fights look good, and honestly some of the other effects hold up pretty well to boot, but oh man I could not bring myself to follow this plot at all. It's not that it's complex, it's just very bog-standard alien invasion stuff and the whole thing nearly put me to sleep. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of a movie that's billed as something that would show the destruction of all monsters, huh?

2 space rock ladies out of 5

Next up is.... ah, fuck, it's All Monsters Attack. God damn it.

Son of Godzilla: Aw yeah here we go. Here's where they stopped even pretending Godzilla had to be anything more than a cartoon character (you could argue that had been the case since Ghidorah, but I dunno, he has to be talked into saving the day there). This is just...

Well, there's a scientist on a island testing his weather control device to make it colder, for I think some early global warming reasons but whatever. There's also giant praying mantises for no reason that is ever explained (they get bigger when the weather machine accidentally heats the area up, causing them to grow faster(?)). Also there's a woman there who's been living on the island her whole life and has made friends with the titular son of Godzilla, who isn't actually a Godzilla and is in fact just some other creature.

A giant spider also shows up. Because I don't know, he lives there too. Sure does look gross as hell! Sure do hate me a giant spider! The giant monsters look real good in this, which is the best thing I can say about it, because everything else is kind of just... there. Also, it's kind of dumb.

But! Godzilla makes a pretty good grumpy parent in this one, and whle I would never call the baby kaiju cute, because it actually looks like the mistake of a particularly drunk god, some of the interactions the two share are, in fact, kind of cute. The end also looks like it's going to get surprisingly dark - it sure does look like Godzilla and his son are going to freeze to death! But much like "Duke's okay!" in the GI Joe movie, we're told that no, they aren't freezing to death, they're just hibernating. So no harm done everyone!

I am sure that if I put this movie on in front of one of my younger nieces or nephews, they would think baby kaiju jumping on Godzilla's tail was fucking hilarious. I am a grumpy old person though, so I just kind of rolled my eyes and got on with my day.

2 giant mantises out of 5

Next up is... Destroy All Monsters. Get ready for yet another plot involving aliens mind controlling kaiju, y'all, because THAT'S WHAT WE'RE DOING GOD DAMN IT.

Godzilla vs Ebriah, Horror of the Deep: Skipping over Ghidorah, the Three Headed Monster and Invasion of Astro Monster here, because I already reviewed those. This is the point where - conventional wisdom holds - the Godzilla movies start to go downhill fast. This is fair enough - Ebriah is just a giant lobster and really only shows up a couple times - and it feels like the movie is trying to check as many boxes as possible before it runs out of time: Godzilla's here! Hey, Mothra is also here! There's a giant fucking bird that attacks once and is never addressed again. Here's another Mothra song, because people love those things! Here's a very obviously tacked on moral about how nukes are bad? - but honestly the movie's so audacious in its scope that I was charmed by it regardless.

For starters, this movie is very 1960s. Like, Ebriah's theme is basically just surf guitars, which is hilarious. It hinges on a kid looking for his lost brother, but involves a dance marathon, stealing a yacht for... some reason ("it's a gift from god" is more or less the excuse), there's a burglar because someone has to be able to pick locks, and it's never super clear who the bad guys actually are beyond military folks researching nukes or something, I don't know. I was too busy watching our heroes sneak around by disguising themselves as a bush to really focus on the motivations of people. At one point someone flies to Infant Island by getting tangled up in a "spy balloon." This movie has a lot going on in it, is what I'm saying, and that's without the part where the film's introduction to Godzilla is him sleeping off a hangover in a cave, basically. He doesn't even get up and do anything until our heroes wire up a lightning rod and shock him awake. Now that I think about it, there's a lot of sleeping kaiju in this film. Ebriah is, I assume, just napping in between appearances, nad most of the Infant Island action is people singing to Mothra to get her to wake up and save the islanders who got kidnapped by the bad guys to make... some kind of paste that keeps Ebriah from attacking boats or something?

But it doesn't matter, because eventually Godzilla fights, for no particular reason beyond he's gotta fight, the aforementioned giant bird and then Ebriah, in that order. Spoilers, he wins because he's motherfucking Godzilla. Eventually Mothra wakes up and shows up long enough to save everyone from the island, because it's about to explode (don't worry about it), by picking up a hastily-constructed cage thing and flying away with it. Godzilla briefly threatens this plan but then kind of gives up because he's tired or something, I guess, and jumps off the island as it explodes which is very cool. Then yeah someone says something about how nukes are bad and the movie ends. It's very dumb, but it's a great sort of dumb. It actually might be one of my favorites now.

Honestly? 5 hung over Godzillas out of 5

I think the next film up is Son of Godzilla, which boy I have some hazy memories of that which have me excited to see this one.

Godzilla vs Mothra: Or wait, shit, is it Mothra vs Godzilla? Doesn't matter, here we go:

According to the Criteron Collection writeup of this movie (those writeups rule, by the way), this is the last of the Godzilla movies where the big man is wholly portrayed as an antagonist - not consciously antagonistic, of course, but antagonistic in the way a natural disaster is antagonistic. Somehow after getting his ass handed to him by King Kong, the world's greatest giant lizard ended up buried, and a typhoon recovery effort ends up unearthing him by accident. This is after, of course, Mothra's egg washes up and becomes the center of a plot involving (what else) greedy fuckin' capitalists.

The movie can't quite seem to bring itself to say whether or not the events of Mothra happened - nobody seems to know who the twin fairies are, but also they don't seem shocked by Mothera showing up asking for her egg back. Either way, the important thing is that aforementioned greedy capitalists decide they want to keep the egg so they can build an amusement park around it (?) and that gives the film a great excuse to lay into greedy folks and also add an environmental message (they need the egg back because Mothra's dying and her offspring will help stave off the awful decay of Infant Island caused by nuclear testing). Anyway, Godzilla wakes up grumpy and our heroes go to beg Mothra to help Japan out, and Mothra (in kind of an emotional scene, honestly) agrees to go fight Godzilla, even though doing so ensures she will die in Japan rather than at home where she'd prefer to be. Basically Mothra is Old Snake from MGS4, is what I'm saying, if Old Snake actually followed through with offing himself at the end. Er, and if he was a giant moth. It should be said the portrayal of Infant Island's desolation is pretty grim, which given Godzilla's whole running anti-nuke theme isn't surprising, but still. Pretty effective!

By the end of the film, our greedy fuckin' capitalists have gotten some karmic justice, as one betrays the other only to end up killed when Godzilla sort of wanders by and knocks the building over. It's darkly funny, in its way. I also want to specifically call out the fact that Godzilla's portrayed as kind of a goof in this - a lot of the destruction he causes is because he like, trips and falls into a building, then gets pissed at the building for being in his way and just kinda kicks it over in retaliation. There's no malice, just the sort of grumpiness that comes from being freshly awake after a long nap under a lake.

Anyway, Mothra fights Godzilla, and dies, and then the egg hatches and its twins, and that's all she wrote for Godzilla, who gets cocooned and falls into the ocean (as you do). While all that's going on the heroes of the film are in a sideplot involving rescuing a bunch of schoolchildren and a teacher from the island Godzilla and Mothra('s kids) are fighting on. Then, with Godzilla gone, Mothra('s kids) peace the fuck out, leaving our hero to say that the best way to repay Mothra for her help is to make sure the world isn't so fucking polluted anymore.

I liked this one, and not just because it sets the table for what is my favorite of these films, which is Ghidorah, the Three Headed Monster (which I already reviewed earlier). Once you get past that one though, it is fair to say the quality of these films is gonna go downhill with a suddeness.

Oh, and special shoutout to the Mothra song which still gives me chills because of how well-deployed it was in Godzilla King of the Monsters last year.

4 giant moth larvae out of 5

Since I've already done write-ups for Ghidorah and Astro Monster, the next up is Ebriah, Horror of the Deep. Sounds promising, doesn't it?