Godzilla Vs Week

In honor of yesterday's highly enjoyable feature of the 2014's Godzilla (of which I thoroughly enjoyed)  I thought it only fitting and fair that we recapture some of the King of Monsters past glories.  The epic struggles, the fight for supremacy and the struggle that propelled our hero to the top of the heap.  In short, there is a lot of scale models destroyed, explosions and men in rubber suits drowning in their own sweat to the likes you have never seen nor wanted to.

Who says I look fat??!!!

As the Godzilla franchise ushered on, Toho Studios which has hailed Kurosawa samurai films, touchy feel good sports movies and yes rubber monster movies has kept the time honored creatures of the Godzilla Kaiju (strange creature for you Yankee imperialists) creatures and universe going since its beginning in 1954.


The popularity of these stories has made the Atomic Monsters a following rivaling Star Trek and Gunsmoke that these films are on going and it is only a matter of time before newer ones reach the mass media market.  Prior to the internet and DVD creation, most of these films remained overseas in Japan and were not distributed to the States or the UK.  Whether it was for reasons of needed English vocal dubbed or subtitles we do not know but we have almost a 20 year gap of Godzilla and company monster movies that have escaped our attention.

That in mind I will not be reviewing these latter movies until later down the road and this time around I will be focused on some of the heavy hitters to the title of King of the Monsters.  That being said, it's Showdown in Tokyo!

Made me look bad, Broderick, so I'm coming for ya!

Atomic Monsters Week: The Beginning of the End

Howdy folks and welcome back to the last day of Atomic Monsters Week.  Sorry for yesterday’s absence, it was a health issue and that all need be said about that.  This time around atomic radiation has struck the insect kingdom again but alas there will be nowhere near as cool effects of “Them!”, and we are stuck with postcards representing buildings and lots of super imposed creatures so grab you Thompson submachine gun, bring extra mags and remember to fire in short, controlled bursts.  This is The Beginning of the End.

 

Psst buddy, know where I can get some weed?

Gen. John T. Short: Dr. Wainright, you’re a spoiler, you know what grasshoppers can do.  I’m a soldier; I know what guns can do.

Okay folks before we get in too deep with the film I must submit the following warning: This is a Burt I. Gordon movie.  This means lots and lots of padding throughout the film.  There is more padding than a bullet bra.  So following Roger Corman’s law of no frame will be allowed to hit the cutting floor means it will drag on…and on…and some more.    That being said it is very unintentionally funny.

Photojournalist Audrey Aimes (Peggy Castle of Invasion U.S.A., Miracle in the Rain, Lawman and Back from the Dead) discovers a military roadblock to the town of Ludlum Illinois and to what purpose she doesn’t know.  Sensing a scoop in the works she speaks to the National Guard Commander, Colonel Tom Sturgeon (Thomas Browne Henry of Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, 20 Million Miles to Earth and The Brain from Planet Arous) who feeds he a line of abaloney (fish joke) and then cops to saying off the record they are investigating the town and its lack of a population overnight.

Alright men! I found Mr. Graves' contact lens.

Searching for any clue to why this town of 150 people disappeared and that the grass and farmland have been stripped bare she heads to a nearby US Department of Agriculture farm to get any insight to what creature or creatures would make such a mess and in such a short span of time.  She meets up with Dr. Ed. Wainwright (Peter Graves of Mission: Impossible, It Conquered the World, Fury, Night of the Hunter and Airplane!) a sauve, tall drink of water that has been using radiation to grow enormous fruits and vegetables as a template to ending world hunger.  Aimes persuades Wainwright and his assistant Frank (a deaf mute who didn’t ask his agent to give him a decent speaking role) to stop their fiddling with atomic veggie salad and help her figure out this mystery.  No sooner are they hot on the trail, Frank is scissored in half by a giant grasshopper mistaking Frank for a blade of grass.  Well we are lead to believe that because it is an off-screen death but still Aimes and Wainwright go for immediate help from the National Guard and a platoon head out to search for Wainwright’s bug.

Skeptical they make their way into the woods to be ambushed by dozens of grasshoppers using Rommel’s surprise outflanking maneuver…okay they leapt out in mass numbers to eat people.  You’re taking all the fun out of my writing.  The super imposing is laughable, the reactions are way over the top and Graves looks good in a shirt, tie and a Tommy gun spraying.  It is a gem of foolishness and enjoyable for its blatant lack of science.

GET OUT OF MY FRUIT CELLAR!!!

Atomic Monsters Week: Them!

Hiya boys and girls! Welcome back to Day 2 of Atomic Monsters Week.  Say, what is better than a giant pissed off irradiated monster trashing the land?   Well what would you say to several irradiated monsters roaming all over New Mexico and scissoring people entwine?  Other than ouch of course being the key factor.   So grab your noble scientist, a disgruntled career military man and of course the hapless and helpless female.  This is Them!

Bah! I laugh at RAID!

Dr. Harold Medford: Get the spoiler! Get the antennae!

From the vast depths of screenplay writer Ted Sherdman (The Eddie Cantor Story, Hell to Eternity, The Big Show, Misty, Wagon Train, Hazel and Latitude Zero) come an atomic age terror lurking in the New Mexico Alamogordo area as two state police trooper Ben Peterson (James Whitmore of The Last Frontier, Crime in the Streets, The Deep Six, Face of Fire, The Law and Mr. Jones and The Shawshank Redemption) and Ed Blackburn find a little girl in the desert walking slowly and eyes so warped they can only guess what hell she could have seen.  Following her little footprints back to a mobile home that looks like a giant can opener or the Jaws of Life had gone all Willy nilly to it.   They find it registers to an FBI agent named Ellinson who was vacationing with his wife and two children.  No one is to be found and the child reacts to a strange sound that seems to almost echo on the winds.

Ted, you fart in the car one more time I am burying you in the desert!

More deaths and disappearances happen and our steadfast troopers investigate the remains of a general store with a dead store owner, his money still in the register and barrels of sugar smashed to pieces.  Peterson goes to check in on the girl in the squad car and head out to file a report while Blackburn does a sweep of the area. 

Peterson makes a cast of an odd footprint at the scene and heads back to office with the little girl and evidence in tow while Blackburn investigated noises and well…we all know how well that will go.  Peterson’s captain points out what happen to the general store owner that his gun before the bending must have emptied multiple rounds at his assailant before he got his neck and back broken, a fractured skull, crushed ribcage and enough formic acid in his blood stream to kill 25 men.  

The FBI unable to identify the footprint sends field agent Robert Graham (James Arness of The Thing from Another World, Hondo, Hellgate and Gunsmoke) along with expert entomologists Dr. Harold Medford and Dr. Pat Medford.  Harold is terrified at his theory but vouches for a brisk search around the premises of the mobile home when the lawmen and doctors come in contact with a eight foot long ant. 

Our law dogs empty their .38s at them like the last reel of Gunfight at O.K. Corral to no effect when Dr. Medford tells them to shoot their antennae thus blinding the creature and Peterson dumps a sub-machine gun in the creatures face.  

Medford is horrified to confirm his theory that this ant originated at Alamogordo’s first atomic bomb test site.  Can they do anything to stop these twisted lives that man has created whilst playing God or are they doomed to be lowered on the food chain?

Oh go watch the film it was thoroughly enjoyable.

Sure could use this for speeders!!!