Joining the Gamera love. It was my childhood fondness for the giant flying turtle that made me start to watch MST3K back in the '90s and more recently purchase the Gamera MST3K boxed set on DVD.
I also have some affection for Gamera’s flat-topped adversary Gaos.
And Ghidorah is always cool. A friend gave me a little stuffed toy Ghidorah last fall; the card attached to his third head said something about dragons in folklore, but I know kaiju when I see it.
I have a soft spot for Rodan, since I actually saw it in the movies on its original release when I was about six. I also watched it interminably whenever it came on Million Dollar Movie. The opening scenes in the mine with the giant bugs were incredibly, and the ending in which Rodan dies in an attempt to save his mate was so poignant!
I admit Gamera and Ghidrah/Ghidorah might be conceptually cool, but they came out when I was in my teens and by that time I just thought they were just silly. The don’t have the same resonance as the monsters I saw when I was small.
Godzilla all the way for me. The stuffed toy I bought while a senior in college poves it as much.
I also was always a big Anguirius fan, something about a turtle/crocodile/ankylosaurus hybrid and Godzilla’s best friend always got me. Plus I practically cried in the original Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla when Mecha-G split his jaw open, his sounds were so sad.
Godzilla is definitely the best. He is the King of Monsters. However, the best films were Mothra’s. The original 1961 Mothra, and the Rebirth of Mothra series were better than the average Godzilla movie, but largely because of the run of bad Godzilla movies, the Godzilla movies are improving in this century and the average is improving. (and the Matthew Broderick Godzilla doesn’t count for numerous reasons).
Special mention for Gamera, the cheesy quality of the early movies was something special.
I loved the Gamera movies too but even as a kid I realized they were the Mr. Pibb to Godzilla’ Dr. Pepper. However, one difference my 10 year old self appreciated was they were much more bloody (Monster Blood I mean). Every movie had day glo colored blood coming out of something.
As some one who is completely new to the field of Japanese monsters what would be the recommended films to give the best sampling of monsters and which are the better films? (I realise that could be one of those ‘can of worms’ questions).
The only one I’ve seen so far is the original Japanese version of Gojira and I’m currently reading the Kaiju Rising Anthology
Mothra. Those singing girls who called her out of her cocoon were cute!
Oh holy shit you guys.
I just saw Godzilla: Final Wars yesterday because it’s free on Crackle and I have seen very little of the “new” Godzilla movies.
This is by far the greatest movie ever made. It had everything you would ever want in a movie:
Monsters? Check
Mutant ninja humans? Check
An American/Russian hybrid guy who carries a sword and cocks his eyebrow and only speaks English despite the rest of the cast speaking Japanese? Check
King Caeser (!!!) kicking Anguirius like a soccer ball to Godzilla jumping like a goalie to stop him? Check.
Everyone has to see this movie. Ev. Er. Y. One!
The music, the action…there are no words.
I always wonder how much of that is due to American script-writing and editing. For instance, with the Gamera movies featured on MST3K, were they always that badly written and plotted or was it mostly due to Sandy Frank?
As a young boy, I thought it would be awesome to live on monster island.
Two of the early movies I saw were that bad in their original form. though I don’t know speak Japanese so maybe the dialogue was better than the dubbed and edited versions. Some (all?) of the early movies were re-edited with western actors and dubbed later, I assume those were the versions shown on MST3K.
But that’s just the name.
No Gigan or Mechagodzilla fans?
Destroy All Monsters is probably the high point. Plus is features at least a cameo from every monster that existed up to that time (Every Godzilla based monster).
Monster Island’s not all it’s cracked up to be. In fact, it’s not an island at all it’s a peninsula.
As for my fav, I would have to go with Godzilla. I haven’t really followed these movies in a long time but when I was a kid, Godzilla fricking rocked the Channel 7 afternoon movie.
I was going to post Gigantis the Fire Monster, but I just learned that he’s really Godzilla, renamed and re-dubbed for the US market, for reasons lost in the mists of history.
(As a kid I saw Gigantis a bazillion times, far more than the original. Not sure how that happened.)
What about Gorgo? He was always pretty awesome
He wasn’t Japanese though.
Oh I know, I thought we were going through American versions of kaijus.
(obviously leaving out It-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named)
Destoroyah, who was Godzilla’s opponent when he died in Godzilla vs Destoroyah in 1995. He was created from the 1954 oxygen destroyer. I just like his craggly demonic look, especially when I got all his toys.
Back in the day, I created a GeoCities-type web site on the movie. It’s how we expressed our hobbies online before Facebook. Now get off my lawn 