Godzilla, Godzilla, Dean Martin

Godzilla vs. Mecha-Godzilla (1974): The penultimate Godzillaverse movie in the original Toho Studios run demonstrates that old adage about history beginning as tragedy, returning as comedy, and ending in farce. 

Aliens send a giant robot Godzilla to conquer the Earth. Godzilla teams up with kaiju King Caesar, some scientists, and Interpol to save the world. King Caesar is easily the worst kaiju Toho ever created, a sort of cross between a lizard, a Muppet, and a team mascot. Godzilla demonstrates another new power, generating a massive magnetic field. Well, why not? Lightly recommended.

Terror of Mecha-Godzilla (1975): Original Godzilla director Ishiro Honda returns for this final entry in the original Toho series. That makes for a decent finalé, with Godzilla even strolling off into the sunset at the end, sort of. There's a bit too much Interpol vs. the Space Aliens action in this one which may have contributed to its series-ending low box office. 

Along with a resurrected Mecha-Godzilla, the undersea-dwelling Titanosaurus also battles Godzilla under the control of the aliens and a misanthropic human scientist and his alien-resurrected cyborg daughter. This last leads to a scientist-hero telling the woman, "I don't care if you're a cyborg, I still love you." Shakespeare, eat your heart out! Lightly recommended.

The Wrecking Crew (Matt Helm 4) (1968): Sharon Tate is pretty much the only reason to watch this unfunny, boring yet fascinating mess -- fascinating mainly because Mike Myers drew a lot of inspiration for the Austin Powers movies from the Matt Helm series, including Dean Martin's cover job as a fashion photographer. When someone says movies today are bad and overly parts of serials, make them watch this. And it's purportedly better than Matt Helms 2, 3, 5, and the TV series!!! Not recommended.

Scary Monsters and Super Freaks

Birds of Prey (2020): [Cast and Crew]: Fun outing dominated by Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn, the best thing about 2016's misguided Suicide Squad. Having left the Joker and slightly reformed, Quinn ends up battling foul-mouthed Gotham mob boss Black Mask (an ebullient Ewan MacGregor, all f-bombs) for the life of an unfortunate pickpocket. 

Along the way, she teams up with Rosie Perez's jaded Gotham cop Renee Montoya (like Harley, originally created for Batman: The Animated Series), yet another Black Canary, and another Huntress. The Gotham City Police are especially hapless in this film. Batman and Commissioner Gordon appear to be on vacation for the duration. Recommended.

Brightburn (2019): [Cast and Crew]: Enjoyable, violent, terse story of an evil Superboy-type and the perils of parenting a super-powered sociopath. The end credits suggest a shared-universe sequel that would include Rainn Wilson's loopy vigilante from Super, also produced by James 'Guardians of the Galaxy' Gunn (though scripted by James in that case as well, whereas Brightburn was written by two of his brothers). Bring it on! Recommended.

Swamp Thing (1982): [Cast and Crew]: Totally solid B-movie from veteran horror director Tobe Hooper does a pretty faithful job of adapting the early issues of Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson's DC comic book Swamp Thing. 

Way, way better than the jumbled, misguided 10-episode Swamp Thing TV series of 2019. Louis Jordan makes a good villain as a much more urbane Anton Arcane than that in the comic book. Dick Durock is solid in the rubber suit as Swamp Thing. Adrienne Barbeau is fun as a gender-flipped Agent Cable. Would probably have been better if it had been R-rated to allow for more graphic violence, especially in the concluding battle between Swamp Thing and a mutated Arcane. Recommended.

Godzilla vs. Hedorah (aka Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster) (1971): [Cast and Crew]: Trippy late-stage Toho Studios Godzilla, now clearly a kid's series with an environmental message. Godzilla demonstrates a completely ridiculous ability to fly, a necessity when battling the high-flying Smog Monster. Hedorah's land-walking form looks a lot like Cthulhu after a week-long bender. Often intentionally funny, sometimes horrific, and sometimes with musical and animated sequences! Lightly recommended.

Mothra (1961)

Mothra (1961): adapted by Shin'ichi Sekizawa from the novel by Shin'ichiro Nakamura, Takehiko Fukunaga, and Yoshie Hotta; directed by Ishiro Honda; starringFuranki Sakai (Bulldog), Hiroshi Koizumi (Dr. Chujo), Kyoko Kagawa (Photographer), Yumi and Emi Ito (Twin Fairies), and Jerry Ito (Nelson): 

The giant Japanese monster movie for people who also enjoy musicals. Mothra only awakens when an evil, um, night-club owner absconds from Mothra Island with the two literally little, singing women who, um, are the centre of the island's normal-sized-human religious life? I don't know.

So anyway, Mothra hatches when the women are spirited away. A plucky Japanese reporter nicknamed Bulldog, his plucky camera-woman, and his plucky government pal work tirelessly to free the little women and get them back to Mothra Island. Too late. Young Mothra swims to Japan, cocoons herself, and emerges as the Mothra we all know and love.

Mothra gets to lay waste to Japan and seemingly American ''Rolisica' and its 'New Kirk City,' where the evil night-club owner takes the women. I feel like Japan is acting out some closeted aggression towards the United States here. In larval form, Mothra's special power is shooting goo at things. In adult form, her main power is generating windstorms by flapping her wings. Won't someone get those little women back to their island? Perhaps the first post-colonial Toho Studios giant-monster movie. Recommended.

Godzilla, King of the Monsters (1956)

Godzilla, King of the Monsters (1956): written by Shigeru Kayama, Takeo Murata, Ishiro Honda, and Al Ward; directed by Ishiro Honda and Terry Morse; starring Raymond Burr (Steve Martin), Takashi Shimura (Dr. Yamaane), Momoko Kochi (Emiko), Akira Takarada (Ogata), Akihiko Hirata (Dr. Serizawa), and Fuyuki Murakami (Dr. Tabata): Not the Japanese cut of Godzilla (well, Gojira) but the American version, a big hit in the States that helped fuel the giant monster boom of the 1950's and 1960's.

This version basically tells the same story as the original Japanese film, but with Raymond Burr interpolated into the movie as narrator and lone Caucasian (well, his editor gets a brief appearance too). Burr plays Steve Martin (!!!!), an American journalist on vacation in Japan when Gojira...errr....Godzilla emerges from the sea to wreak havoc.

Steve Martin is the only American journalist in Japan at this time, or at least it sure seems so. And what a great job he does! In the daring tradition of frontline reporters, he's pretty much everywhere Godzilla strikes, albeit never in the same shot.

He's also friends with all the major characters of the original cut. We know because they spend a lot of time talking to him, but only in the same shot when they're photographed from behind.

Anyway, I can't say as the frame story improves the movie. The characterization of the Japanese characters gets whittled down to almost nothing because STEVE MARTIN must tell us what's going on. If only they could have tricked Godzilla into putting on.... THE CRUEL SHOES.

The sequences showing the destruction of cities, people, and trains still hold a curious and elemental power. The original movie-makers weren't squeamish about showing people engulfed in flame, or doomed mothers and children about to be crushed, burned, or boiled to death. 

The 'Godzilla Attacks' theme is one helluva piece of music, too. I wish the whole movie were scored to that unnerving, propulsive, jittery string-based symphony of destruction and dread! Thank you, composer Akira Ifukube!

It is interesting to evaluate the two major English-language cuts of Godzilla/Gojira together. The non-Burr version is better, scarier, and sadder. Still, reporter Steve Martin has a lot of gumption! And this American version is remarkably free of racism -- what we are presented with are simply Japanese citizens faced with an immeasurable horror. Recommended.

Gojira (1954)

Gojira (1954): written by Takeo Murata, Ishiro Honda, and Shigeru Kayama; directed by Ishiro Honda; starring Akira Takarada (Ogata), Momoko Kochi (Emiko), and Akihiko Hirata (Serizawa): Gojira/Godzilla is a colossal prick in this American release of the Japanese original. There's no Raymond Burr here to explain things, as he was added to the mass release/re-edit of Gojira known as Godzilla, King of the Monsters (1956). Instead, we get what is often a traditional horror movie, occasionally an intermittently shocking disaster movie. 

There's also a love story, some commentary on atomic bombs and atomic testing, a doomsday weapon called The Oxygen Destroyer (what a band name that would be!), and a lengthy prayer/song sequence. Gojira is all monster here. It's sometimes forgotten that Gojira is naturally 150 feet tall, though the atomic tests that awoke him probably gave him that deadly radioactive fire breath. 

Some effects don't work at all, most notably a sequence in which jet fighters engage Gojira with some hilariously inaccurate firecrackers meant to be missiles. Other effects still work, though, especially those involving the devastation of Tokyo and the pitiful fates of those caught on the ground by this new God of the Atomic Age. Where are the heroic Mothra larvae when you need them? Recommended.

Godzilla (2014)

Godzilla: written by Max Borenstein and Dave Callaham, based on the Toho Studios character; directed by Gareth Edwards; starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Ford Brody), Ken Watanabe (Dr. Serizawa), Bryan Cranston (Joe Brody) and Elizabeth Olsen (Elle Brody) (2014): Even on a large small screen, the newest Godzilla is almost incomprehensibly dark at times. I"m glad I saw it on a big screen. 

The hoo-ha about Godzilla being the protector of natural balance on Earth still seems pretty silly -- the big lizard and his vaguely machine-like enemies seem more like alien doomsday machines than natural beings, and such a change would make the movie make a lot more sense. Certainly the two 'bad' monsters didn't need to evolve electro-magnetic pulses to fight anything in nature. Or fight Godzilla. Turn up the lights! Recommended.

Gorgo Loves His Mama

Ditko Monsters: Gorgo: edited by Craig Yoe; written by Joe Gill and others; illustrated by Steve Ditko and others (1961-64; reprinted 2013): This grand, tabloid-sized volume reprints all of comic-book legend Steve (Spider-man, Dr. Strange) Ditko's work on the Charlton Comics adaptation and continuation of the giant-monster movie Gorgo.

Gorgo was a British attempt in the early 1960's to match the success of Toho Studios' Japanese giant-monster movies, especially Godzilla (nee Gojira). Thus was born Gorgo, a giant monster with an even more giant mother. Like King Kong, Gorgo gets captured and exhibited by some remarkably stupid showmen. Unlike King Kong, Gorgo has a mother who seems to be several hundred feet tall. England takes a beating.

After adapting the movie, Charlton continued the adventures of Gorgo and Mama Gorgo. Ditko and his long-time collaborator at Charlton, writer Joe Gill, combined on several issues of the title over a three-year period, with Ditko also providing several covers to issues he didn't otherwise illustrate.

This volume really highlights Ditko's two almost paradoxically opposite skills as a comic-book artist. He's great at drawing really weird things, and he's great at drawing people and settings that look far more normal and believeable than that of any other mainstream American comic-book artist in history. Giant monsters and ordinary people: it's the Robert Redford/Godzilla movie you always wanted!

In between depopulating the ocean for their out-sized caloric requirements (Gorgo's mother can gulp down sperm whales whole), Gorgo and his mother sleep on the ocean floor and occasionally get into adventures. They're not the villains of the series -- far from it. Instead, they end the Cuban Missile Crisis (I'm not joking), save Earth from an alien invasion, rescue an American nuclear submarine from the ocean floor, and inspire men and women to get married wherever they go (again, not kidding). For giant, destructive monsters, they sure are swell.

Throughout, Ditko juxtaposes the mundane and the fantastic with the same sort of skill he exhibited on his far more famous work on Spider-man and Dr. Strange, two characters he was drawing for Marvel pretty much simultaneously with several of the stories in this volume. Ditko enjoyed working for Charlton, pretty much the cheapest of the comic-book publishers to survive through the 1960's and 1970's, because he had pretty much carte blanche. Charlton was too cheap to exert editorial control, which meant Ditko didn't have to tailor his style to the publisher or have his stories micro-managed by an editor.

It's all a lot of over-sized fun on over-sized pages. This is Ditko near the height of his mainstream artistic powers. The scripts by Joe Gill are loopy in that Silver-Age science-fictiony way. The historical material contextualizes both the movie and the comics. Really, a fine piece of work. Gorgo loves his mama! Highly recommended.

Cities in Fright

R.I.P.D.: adapted from the Peter M. Lenkov comic book by Phil Hay, Matt Manfredi, and David Dobkin; directed by Robert Schwentke; starring Jeff Bridges (Roy), Ryan Reynolds (Nick), Kevin Bacon (Hayes), Mary Louise Parker (Proctor), and Stephanie Szostak (Julia) (2013): One of 2013's biggest box-office busts, R.I.P.D. isn't awful -- indeed, I've seen a lot of hits that were worst. That doesn't mean it's good, however.

The Rest in Peace Department (R.I.P.D., get it? ha ha!) enlists dead police officers to apprehend escaped dead criminals, or 'Deados' as they're colloquially known. Newly dead Ryan Reynolds partners with 19th-century Western lawman Jeff Bridges to protect the streets of Boston. Nefarious doings are afoot, related to Reynolds' death during a drug bust.

The movie's premise echoes previous entries in the dead-cop subgenre that include the TV shows Reaper, Brimstone, and G. Vs. E. (all of which are a lot better than this movie, by the way). But it's most closely modelled on Men in Black, with a third act right out of Ghostbusters.

There are some clever flourishes throughout -- weird little bits and strange production design. Jeff Bridges is the most interesting thing in the movie, as he so often is. The peculiar speech pattern of his lawman seems so specific and odd that it seems like a private joke. I have the feeling he had to keep himself interested amidst all the green-screen work and rote police shenanigans. Lightly recommended.

Godzilla: written by Max Borenstein and Dave Callaham, based on the Toho Studios character; directed by Gareth Edwards; starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Ford Brody), Ken Watanabe (Dr. Serizawa), Bryan Cranston (Joe Brody) and Elizabeth Olsen (Elle Brody) (2014): The newest version of Godzilla begins in murky menace and ends in metropolitan mayhem. I enjoyed it a lot, despite the Spielbergian family stuff that every blockbuster now seems required to carry around. Does every hero have a family he wants to get home to? Must he? Must she? Must they?

The first 40 minutes play like a horror movie. Indeed, they play a lot like director Gareth Edwards' only previous directorial effort, Monsters, which was that rarest of rare birds, an Indy giant-monster movie, and a pretty good one. Edwards did all the visual effects for that one at home on his computer over the course of a couple of years. Here, he's got a much bigger budget to work with, and much bigger commercial expectations to satisfy. Hence the Hollywood 101 family quest.

The acting is mostly fine, with nice turns from Kickass Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the narrative focalizer (ha ha!) and Ken Watanabe as a New-Agey Japanese scientist who apparently has a Ph.D. in Monster Studies. The monster work gives us the currently de rigeur gray behemoth look. I prefer my Godzilla bright-green, thank you.

But anyway, much monster mayhem ensues. The movie balances scenes of civic destruction with a few set-pieces filled with dread and the Sublime. The best of these set-pieces, a high-altitude paratrooper drop into the middle of a monster-devastated San Francisco, manages a feeling of cyclopean, Lovecraftian Sublime horror that one sees very rarely in movies of any era. It's a show-stopper. Recommended.

Pacific Rocket Punch

Pacific Rim: written by Travis Beacham and Guillermo del Toro; directed by Guillermo del Toro; starring Charlie Hunnam (Raleigh Becket), Idris Elba (Pentecost), Rinko Kikuchi (Mako Mori), Burn Gorman (Gottlieb), Charlie Day (Geiszler), and Ron Perlman (Hannibal Chau) (2013): Pacific Rim is a hoot, an expensive homage to every Japanese movie and cartoon that gave us gigantic, city-destroying monsters and/or giant, man-shaped, world-saving robots and cyborgs. There's even a rocket punch, and monsters that could clearly beat the crap out of Leonard Maltin AND Sydney Poitier. But not Robert Smith!!!

The movie even mostly hangs together as a thought experiment, though it overcomplicates the plot in a couple of ways. The most problematic overcomplication is the movie's premise that humanity has stopped making Jaegers -- the giant human-run robots that are the only effective defense against the monstrous Kaiju that periodically come striding out of a dimensional rift in the Pacific Ocean floor -- and instead turned to building a giant, and soon-to-be-proven useless, wall around the Pacific (!!!!!!!!). It would have been a lot simpler to note that the defense program is temporaily short on Jaegers due to the increase in period and frequency of Kaiju attacks, and move on.

Other than that, though, the movie is a lot of fun, with an emphasis on teamwork over individuality, and a multi-national cast that may have hindered its box-office performance in the United States. Either that, or they should have just titled it Transformers: Pacific Rim, even though the robots don't actually transform.

The main cast of Charlie Hunnam, Rinko Kikuchi, and Idris Elba is tremendously likeable; the twitchy scientists played by Burn Gorman and Charlie Day are intermittently amusing and ultimately heroic; the Kaiju organlegger played by Ron Perlman is a welcome jolt of energy. The robots look great, as do the Kaiju, though I wish the filmmakers had spent a bit more on visual effects and given us one extended Jaeger vs. Kaiju battle staged entirely in the day-time. The murkiness of the night battles and the undersea battles sometimes gets a bit annoying.

The best Kaiju sequence, as if from a postmodern fairytale, involves one of the gargantuan monsters -- this one vaguely crab-like -- chasing a little girl through the streets of Tokyo. It's scary and funny, and better than pretty much any visual effects sequence from any other blockbuster this summer. Highly recommended.