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Godzilla Interruption: All Monsters Attack… Because Nobody Talks about It Much

Godzilla Interruption: All Monsters Attack… Because Nobody Talks about It Much

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All Monsters Attack Poster with captionI now interrupt my continuing “History of Godzilla on Film” to bring you an Up Close and Personal look at one particular movie: 1969’s All Monsters Attack, also known as Godzilla’s Revenge.

It seems like an out-of-left field pick, since this movie has a poor reputation among the kaiju fans. As film historian Richard Pusateri says on the audio commentary for the current DVD: “Fans cannot decide if this is the worst movie of the series, or the second worst.”

However, I picked this movie for spotlight attention because it rarely receives any attention. Most Godzilla fans have seen it all the way through only once — probably in the English-dubbed version — and then left it on the shelf. With its chunks of stock footage lifted from earlier Godzilla films, fantasy elements that relegate the monsters to existence only in the imagination, and a target audience of third- and fourth-grade children, ­All Monsters Attack is easy for adult viewers to dismiss.

However, the movie contains elements unique among the classic Godzilla series that make it worthy of discussion. And for good or bad, it does have SF legend Ishiro Honda in the director’s chair in his penultimate Godzilla movie.

So let us go pay a visit to late-1960s industrialized Japan and meet a bullied latchkey kid with dreams of monsters.

The Background of All Monsters Attack

Toho Studios planned to conclude the Godzilla series with 1968’s epic Destroy All Monsters. But their resolution did not hold for long. Although the studio system would not collapse for another year, Toho’s movies were doing less business because of television’s popularity. When the studio heads decided to make another Godzilla movie, it was because they devised a way to make it as inexpensively as possible.

Rival studio Daiei’s 1968 movie Gamera vs. Viras inspired Toho’s choice. The Gamera film (released in the U.S. as Destroy All Planets) used battle footage from two previous Gamera movies to expand the running time and reduce the budget, and it used child heroes for direct appeal to the kiddie crowd. Toho gave instructions to producer Tomoyuki Tanaka to create a Godzilla film for children that made extensive use of existing special effects footage.

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Adventure On Film: Paperhouse

Adventure On Film: Paperhouse

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By and large, if I had to drop one decade from the annals of cinema, it would be the eighties,SK-Paperhouse-1-334x500 but that period did come up with its share of winners.

One of the eighties’ forgotten gems is the fantasy-horror hybrid, Paperhouse (1988), a British release that did its best to compete with flicks like Heathers for Cineplex space, and failed. U.S. gross, according to the internet movie database, was just over $241 thousand. Sad. Paperhouse deserved better, much better.

Spoiler-free, the plot follows Brit tween Anna, curious about lipstick but not yet ready for boys, as she succumbs to a severe case of glandular fever.  The disease leaves her prone to vivid dreams, all of which stem from Anna’s crayon drawing of a bleak, lonely house. Whatever Anna adds to the house manifests itself in her dreams, and what starts out as a bit of a lark (think Harold and the Purple Crayon) quickly turns sour. Hardly twenty minutes in and it becomes clear that Anna may well have planted (or drawn) the seeds of her own destruction.

Having just read Violette Malan’s piece on John Gardner (On Moral Fiction) right here at Black Gate not a week before sitting down to re-watch Paperhouse, I couldn’t help but be struck by the film’s parallels to Gardner’s own arguments in favor of “moral” art and criticism. But what Gardner posits in his book he pursues by Socratic argument, in essay form; Paperhouse cleverly crafts those same questions into a cohesive dramatic whole.

Yes, the movie can be enjoyed on a purely surface level, without ever ceding the floor to philosophy, but make no mistake, this little chiller has a great deal more on its mind than things that go bump in the night, which is why it holds up so well, twenty-five years on.

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Revisiting A.B. Mitford’s The 47 Ronin: Japanese Tales of Vampires, Ghosts, and Renegade Samurai

Revisiting A.B. Mitford’s The 47 Ronin: Japanese Tales of Vampires, Ghosts, and Renegade Samurai

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The 47 Ronin-smallTwo weeks ago I reviewed the film 47 Ronin, which Universal Pictures labeled a flop only a day after its U.S. release.

At that point the picture had earned about $85 million worldwide. That take has now increased to $116 million (according to BoxOfficeMojo), still well shy of its $175 million budget. Whether or not Universal’s premature announcement doomed the film, it’s now clear they weren’t wrong about its ultimate fate.

While browsing the remainder tables at Barnes & Noble yesterday, I stumbled on a curious title: The 47 Ronin: Japanese Tales of Vampires, Ghosts, and Renegade Samurai, by A.B. Mitford. I assumed it was a guerrilla tie-in; a cheap reprint timed to capitalize on the release of the movie. Except it was published nearly two years ago, in 2012, and there’s nothing cheap at all about the beautiful design, with striking endpapers and gorgeous color art on nearly every page.

I was right about at least one thing though: it is a reprint. It was originally published as Tales of Old Japan in 1871, one of the very first tomes to bring tales of Japanese monsters to Western shores.

Algernon Bertram Mitford was a British diplomat who later became Baron Redesdale. He developed a keen interest in Japanese folk tales while serving as attaché to the British delegation in Japan from 1866 – 1870 where, among other things, he witnessed the dissolution of the last feudal Japanese military government — the Tokugawa shogunate, ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa clans at Edo Castle — and the founding of a modern nation-state under Emperor Meiji.

Mitford was writing at a time when Japan was beginning to open to the West for the first time, less than 20 years after American Commodore Matthew Perry infamously sailed into Tokyo Bay with modern steam ships and explosive shell guns, gave the Japanese two white flags, and told them to hoist the flags when they wanted him to cease shelling the city and surrender. Perry forced the opening of Japan with the Convention of Kanagawa, and Mitford, writing a decade later, is a textbook case of white-guy-stupid, especially in how he’s perpetually surprised that the Japanese don’t greet Westerners with open arms and a bottle of warm saki.

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Goodbye, Professor

Goodbye, Professor

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Gilligan's Island ProfessorRussell Johnson, who played the Professor on Gilligan’s Island, died yesterday at the age of 89.

The news reporter for WXRT here in Chicago, Mary Dixon, wryly noted during her morning show that the Professor was the only eligible male on Gilligan’s Island. Watching the show as a young girl, “it was all about the professor,” she said.

For me, a young nerd in Junior High, the professor embodied a little more than that (not that being a brainy sex symbol wasn’t a major accomplishment in itself). Everyone looks for role models at that age, and Russell Johnson’s good-humored, everyman brainiac was perhaps the finest role model on the airwaves in the mid 70s for young science enthusiasts — and I can’t help but wonder who will be cast in the role in the upcoming remake.

There was no shortage of smart characters on television at the time, from Spock to Bruce Bixby’s David Banner (The Incredible Hulk) to Peter Falk’s genius detective Columbo. But none of them was as likable — or as endlessly inventive — as Russell Johnson’s easy-going Professor, who could build a lie detector and a sewing machine out of coconuts. Johnson’s Professor wasn’t just smart… he was funny and charming, and week after week he showed that over-the-top enthusiasm for science didn’t have to be a social liability if you didn’t want it to be. You could be both smart and well-liked; it didn’t have to be a choice.

It was obvious that, in the microcosm of civilization that was Gilligan’s Island, the Professor was the one individual who kept everything running. His was a thankless role. He was constantly taken for granted, many of his ideas failed, and not a single one of his inventions ever got them off the island. But Johnson filled that role with a character who was noble, kind, and constantly upbeat. Here was a man of science who fit in; who was admired and, yes, loved.

Goodbye, professor.

Observations: The Two Towers Movie

Observations: The Two Towers Movie

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The-Lord-of-the-Rings-The-Two-Towers-poster-smallLast week I wrote about The Fellowship of the Ring movie, and this week I follow up with the sequel, The Two Towers.

One of the first things I noticed about this film was the short, choppy sequencing of scenes. This mainly occurred in the first hour, and it made for a slightly disjointed viewing experience.

The movie picks up right where Fellowship left off, starting with a gorgeous panorama shot of snow-capped mountains. Then we relive Gandalf’s fall from the bridge of Khazad Dum, but this time we get to see more of his battle with the Balrog, which is sheer awesomeness.

The perspective switches (get ready for a lot of this) to Frodo and Sam, tired and lost, as they make their way through the razor cliffs of Emyn Muil. We see that the Ring is getting heavier for Frodo, who feels its pull more than ever before, and certainly more than old Bilbo ever seemed to exhibit (except for brief spells.) This wandering phase is rather dull until the arrival of Gollum, who has been following the hobbits with plans to steal back the Ring. They catch him in the act and truss him up with elven rope. Frodo decides to free Gollum in exchange for leading them to Mordor; Sam doesn’t trust him (with good reason).

I want to pause a moment here to say that the portrayal of Gollum by actor Andy Serkis is – without a doubt — the highlight of this movie. The Two Towers has always been my least favorite book of the trilogy, sometimes tedious in its depression, but Gollum elevates this movie to being almost as good as the first one. A vicious little beast who can turn so sweet and cute, he is a masterstroke of acting and CGI genius.

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A History of Godzilla on Film, Part 3: Down and Out in Osaka (1969–1983)

A History of Godzilla on Film, Part 3: Down and Out in Osaka (1969–1983)

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Godzilla01Other Installments

Part 1: Origins (1954–1962)
Part 2: The Golden Age (1963–1968)
Part 4: The Heisei Era (1984–1997)
Part 5: The Travesty and the Millennium Era (1996–2004)
Addendum: The 2014 Godzilla

Sayanora, Tsubaraya — and Sayanora, Golden Age of Japanese Cinema

The end of the Golden Age of Japanese Giant Monster movies coincided with the end of the most productive era for the Japanese film industry. Starting in the early 1950s, the country’s film industry experienced a meteoric rise. The major studios released a combined average of 450 movies to theaters each year. But the growth of television in the 1960s started to erode film attendance. In the late-‘60s, audience levels dropped precipitously, numerous theaters closed, and the studios faced cutbacks. Contract directors and stars were released, departments were scaled down or eliminated, and the studio responsible for the “Gamera” and “Daimajin” films, Daiei, was forced out of business entirely.

Science-fiction and monster movies had it particularly rough because of the growth of television. Popular superhero TV shows offered a cheaper alternative for young audiences to get their giant monster fix. The children who increasingly made up the viewership for Godzilla movies could now see kaiju action daily from their living rooms.

Ironically, the person most responsible for the growth of SF television was Eiji Tsubaraya, Toho Studio’s master of visual effects and one of the four “Godzilla Fathers.” Tsubaraya formed his own independent company, Tsubaraya Productions, in 1963 to create special-effects television programs. The 1966 hit show Ultra Q led to the monumental success of Ultraman the next year. Each week, Ultraman pitted its giant-sized title hero against a new monster. Clone shows sprouted everywhere, and the monsters of cinema screens started to bring in less money.

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New Year’s Resolutions of Oz

New Year’s Resolutions of Oz

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one million yearsAfter about ten months of uninterrupted weekly posts, I’m taking a bit of a breather this week. Today, instead of new content, I’ll take inventory and look ahead to what I hope to deliver Black Gate readers in 2014. Perhaps I can couch it in a “New Year’s Resolutions” list — most of us allow for a bit of leeway on those overly optimistic proclamations, anyway…

1. Lose about twenty pounds, preferably at a blackjack table in Derbyshire.

2. Cut back on tobacco consumption, especially my wife’s.

3. Drink more alcohol. (It fell way off in 2013. Obviously I need to get to more conventions.)

And blah blah blah. Okay, let’s get to the stuff that someone else reading this might actually be curious about…

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Was Star Trek‘s Theme Music Stolen From Beethoven?

Was Star Trek‘s Theme Music Stolen From Beethoven?

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The CBC’s Tom Allen and the Gryphon Trio do some amazing musical detective work, following the clues from Mahler to Brahms to Beethoven to the 23rd Century, in this delightful single-take through the twisted subterranean corridors of Paul Hahn’s piano studio in Toronto. Also starring teleporting pianist Jamie Parker, and a little cosplay.

Goth Chick News: Samuel L. Jackson Takes On Japanese OVA – Hold On To Your Butts…

Goth Chick News: Samuel L. Jackson Takes On Japanese OVA – Hold On To Your Butts…

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image002Frankly, it occurred to me to just post this video clip with “Hell yes!” underneath it and call this week’s GCN done.

When you watch it, you’ll understand you would not have blamed me.

But then I would have missed out on the chance to share some very juicy background tidbits about this little gem.

Here in the US ,the live action film starring Samuel L. Jackson will be called Kite. But in Japan, where the source material originated, it is known as A Kite; Yasuomi Umetsu’s 1998 animated film. Though I have attempted to find out the meaning of the title, my Japanese is a tad rusty and so far no joy.

Kite started out as an OVA (“original video animation”) and the Japanese version ran for two 30-minute episodes. Though anime generally gets away with a heck of a lot more than traditional media could, Kite is still unique in its controversial depiction of extreme gory violence and strong sexuality. It was subsequently banned in many countries including Norway due to some scenes in the film being labeled child pornography, which didn’t stop it from gaining underground-cult-classic status from OVA fans.

Banned or not, it won’t take you much digging to find A Kite online and uncut for free, which I did and be warned — it is pretty hard to watch (and do not try watching it at work). In a rare change of heart I actually feel rather glad the US film version took liberties with the source material, or this post could have been the very first red-band GCN.

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Observations: The Fellowship of the Ring Movie

Observations: The Fellowship of the Ring Movie

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The Fellowship of the Ring poster-smallThe release of the second installment of The Hobbit got me thinking about The Lord of the Rings movies. And since I hadn’t watched them in a couple years, I decided to pop in my extended version DVDs and re-live what I consider to be one of the best film experiences in my lifetime. I watched with an eye toward what worked for me and what didn’t.

What I won’t be doing in this article is comparing the movies to the books. I love the LOTR books. I’ve read them several times and consider them among the most important novels ever written. However, I want to consider the films on their own, because movies and books are such different media.

So, let’s plunge into the fray. Shall we?

The movie begins with an extended introduction that explains who Sauron is and how he lost the One Ring, how it came into the possession of a furry little fellow named Bilbo. It’s well-done and probably very helpful to those who aren’t familiar with the events in The Hobbit. The highlight to me was when the Dark Lord of Mordor comes out and starts dishing out the pain with a huge mace.

Then we move to the real opening of the story, with Frodo in the Shire. The world of the hobbits is simple and charming, exemplifying a “good life.” I actually forgot how much good stuff happens in these first couple scenes while old Bilbo throws his 111th birthday party. There’s a nice bit of foreshadowing as Bilbo writes his book. He says that there’s always been a Baggins living at Bag End, and there always will be. That little nugget, to me, unlocks one of the powerful themes of the entire franchise: the idea of home as a place in your heart that can see you through the bad times, no matter where you are.

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