Monsters
I almost skipped going to see some live music on Saturday night. I found a movie on the SyFy channel (formerly the Sci-Fi channel) that was so compelling it glued me to the couch. If the Mrs. wasn’t going with me to see the show I might’ve not been able to tear myself away.
The movie? Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus
The movie? Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus
I might as well get it out in the open now: I am a sucker for monster movies. Not horror movies or vampire movies or zombie movies. Monster movies, as in a giant something or other destroys a city before being defeated by some heroic scientists or another “good-guy” monster or some combination of both. The monster may or may not be an allegory for “man tampering with nature”. The dialogue must be the sort of dialogue nobody ever hears in real life, there should be no passages that resemble actual human conversation. The dialogue exists to move the plot, such as it is, along. In other words everyone not being killed by the monster (and even some who do wind up kaput) is “Basil Exposition” from the Austin Powers movies.
If I could explain my fondness for these films I would. I can’t. I have loved them for as long as I could remember. Godzilla was one of my heroes as a kid. Not the evil, allegorical Godzilla from the first noir-ish black and white movie but the fightin’ Godzilla of the rest of what I now know is referred to as the “Showa” series of films from the 1960’s and 1970’s. I watched those films again and again on Saturdays and Sundays and especially during Monster Week on the 4:30 movie on WABC in New York. I even saw Godzilla vs. Megalon in a theater, if memory serves it was the Lane Theater, recently reopened as a comedy club.
If I could explain my fondness for these films I would. I can’t. I have loved them for as long as I could remember. Godzilla was one of my heroes as a kid. Not the evil, allegorical Godzilla from the first noir-ish black and white movie but the fightin’ Godzilla of the rest of what I now know is referred to as the “Showa” series of films from the 1960’s and 1970’s. I watched those films again and again on Saturdays and Sundays and especially during Monster Week on the 4:30 movie on WABC in New York. I even saw Godzilla vs. Megalon in a theater, if memory serves it was the Lane Theater, recently reopened as a comedy club.
While Godzilla was my absolute favorite, there were other monsters I loved as well. Gamera for instance. I have a fondness for turtles and tortoises to this very day that may very well be due to my childhood affection for Gamera, though as an adult I tell myself it’s based on the fact that those creatures have not evolved a bit for millions of years which must make them perfect creations in the eyes of nature. Or God. Or whoever you believe is driving this bus that we’re all trapped on for varying lengths of time. In my twenties and thirties I was thrilled to see the Gamera movies revived on Mystery Science Theater 3000. The MST 3K boys even made up alternate lyrics to the “Gamera Fight Song”
“Gamera is really neat
He is made of turtle meat
We’ve been eating Gamera!”
For whatever reason I have always favored Japanese monster movies to those made in other countries. The original King Kong was a holiday staple at one point and I remember seeing the mid-70’s remake at the drive-in in Perth Amboy where a multiplex now stands among the reeds but I never dug that one as much probably because I resented the fact that my older siblings got to go into the city and check out the scene when they filmed Kong dead on the WTC plaza and I didn’t. Wikipedia says 30.000 people showed up that night. I have no idea how accurate that is, all I know is that I wasn’t one of them. Thanks family, I mean sure, wake me up in the middle of the night for the moon landing when I’m 2 years old but then leave me behind when you go see a giant fake dead ape in lower Manhattan a few years later. Nice priorities!
Oddly enough, I still haven’t seen the 2005 King Kong remake. I watched a few minutes one time but the attempt at being a “serious” film doesn’t do it for me. High budgets usually don’t work either. The American “Godzilla” film, while an entertaining diversion to me wasn’t a true monster movie. It was a decent piece of science fiction but it didn’t have the characteristics of the films I love. I do mean “love”, by the way, in a completely non-ironic sense. A good, or as mainstream criticism would probably have it, “bad” monster movie should be complete mindless fun. You don’t get on a rollercoaster and complain about the paint job, do you? A monster movie should be playtime for the mind. A simple pleasure. The older I get, the more I need simple pleasures. Everything else is just too damn complicated to figure out anymore.
He is made of turtle meat
We’ve been eating Gamera!”
For whatever reason I have always favored Japanese monster movies to those made in other countries. The original King Kong was a holiday staple at one point and I remember seeing the mid-70’s remake at the drive-in in Perth Amboy where a multiplex now stands among the reeds but I never dug that one as much probably because I resented the fact that my older siblings got to go into the city and check out the scene when they filmed Kong dead on the WTC plaza and I didn’t. Wikipedia says 30.000 people showed up that night. I have no idea how accurate that is, all I know is that I wasn’t one of them. Thanks family, I mean sure, wake me up in the middle of the night for the moon landing when I’m 2 years old but then leave me behind when you go see a giant fake dead ape in lower Manhattan a few years later. Nice priorities!
Oddly enough, I still haven’t seen the 2005 King Kong remake. I watched a few minutes one time but the attempt at being a “serious” film doesn’t do it for me. High budgets usually don’t work either. The American “Godzilla” film, while an entertaining diversion to me wasn’t a true monster movie. It was a decent piece of science fiction but it didn’t have the characteristics of the films I love. I do mean “love”, by the way, in a completely non-ironic sense. A good, or as mainstream criticism would probably have it, “bad” monster movie should be complete mindless fun. You don’t get on a rollercoaster and complain about the paint job, do you? A monster movie should be playtime for the mind. A simple pleasure. The older I get, the more I need simple pleasures. Everything else is just too damn complicated to figure out anymore.
One of my dream trips is to finally make it to Japan and swing by Toho Studios. I don't know if they do English language tours, but I'd love to get a picture right out side of their building. Right here:
It would be a dream come true.
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