Next weekend, in my city, I will be attending a fun event, the “Godzilla and Friends” film festival.
It features movies, contests, and speakers on the subject. I’ve always liked these movies, and thanks to the festival have seen some good ones that were never released in the US, although I suppose you can buy the DVD’s.
This year I want to see two especially. One is Godzilla vs Biollante, a sequel to the Japanese Godzilla 1985, that rebooted the franchise.
There will also be the first Gamera film. I was always partial to Gamera, and four years ago saw the new Gamera the Brave at this festival, and just ordered it from Amazon.
No Mothra this year:( But there will be plenty of other Godzilla films, and a preview of the upcoming movie to be released on May 16th.
So, do you have favorite Japanese monsters, or their movies?
I remember seeing the first Mothra film on TV. A young actor, whose professional name was Frankie Sakai, played a reporter.
Now I imagine these films were the kind of shows people “paid their dues” in. Before they got big roles.
And I saw Mr. Sakai many years later in the TV miniseries Shogun, in which he played an important rold as Yabu-san, the noble who turned traitor on Toranaga, and has a good suicide scene. He was rotten to the core, especially as he had one of Blackthorn’s crew boiled alive.
That’s certainly true for the films as the genre gets older, but Takashi Shimura was in the 1954 Godzilla and in Godzilla Raids Again after he’d already starred in both Rashomon and The Seven Samurai.
My favorite moment in all of Japanese Monster Moviedom. Gamera gets down on the ground; withdraws head, tail and legs; shoots flames out of the resulting apertures; starts spinning, more and more rapidly until he’s effectively a burning disc; levitates and flies away like a flying saucer.
As he flies off, a scientist who’s watched all this says…
A gigantic, bipedal turtle who can fly both by spinning like a UFO or by shooting flames out of his rear extremities and shoots plasma out of his chest is truly inspired insanity, even for the Japanese.
Yeah, Rodan! He’s so cool. He doesn’t every have to TRY to wreck things. He just flies over stuff and the shock wave from his passing knocks buildings over. It’s like Rodan isn’t working to fuck shit up. He just fucks shit up as a natural side effect of doing his day-to-day Rodan business. That’s cool.
I was never a Gamera guy, but the enthusiasm here for that big turtle has inspired me. I picked up a copy of Gamera The Ultimate Collection in the bargain bin. I’ll take it with me to watch when I’m on the road next month and come back to post a review.
