With A Purposeful Grimace And A Terrible Sound....

And now for the main event: all this month I will be providing a retrospective on the original series of Godzilla films (1954-1975), reviewing them and even doing a little reminiscing about their place in my childhood and doubtless the childhoods of many. For this first post we’ll be looking at the origin of the King of the Monsters and appraising his first two movies, which were both made in the same decade and filmed in black and white. So put on your hazmat suit, cower in fear and prepare for the end of humanity because here comes

Godzilla MAYhem 

Part I: The Fifties 

The story of the creation of Godzilla is pretty well known, so I won’t go into too much detail here. As well as being an obviously potent symbol of the nuclear holocausts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Godzilla was more directly inspired by the Lucky Dragon Incident, where in 1954 a Japanese fishing boat was exposed to radiation from an American nuclear test in the Pacific. Later that year Toho producer Tomoyuki Tanaka and director Ishiro Honda gave the nuclear threat to the human race physical form as a 50 meter tall, charcoal grey, reptilian nightmare named Gojira (or Godzilla).

1. Godzilla (1954)

The first Godzilla movie is very earnest and very grim. The titular monster is an unstoppable, rage filled, radiation spewing terror that represents the sins of humanity made flesh. Unlike later films which almost revel in the destruction of miniature sets and delight in fantastical monster battles, here everything is taken seriously – you are not meant to cheer Godzilla as he destroys Tokyo, you are meant to emphasize with the suffering of the victims. And yet, when he meets his end at the conclusion of the film one almost feels pity for the monster, who is not truly *evil*. Human beings are just doing what they need to in order to survive, just as Godzilla did what he naturally did – destroy.

Godzilla is a triumph for director Ishiro Honda. He lets the mystery and tension build through the first part of the film until the reveal of the monster, then lets the tension build again until the attack on Tokyo. Then he puts you right into the middle of it, letting you experience the horror firsthand. Composer Akira Ifukube gives cinema one of its finest scores – emotional, savage and memorable. This is one of the few instances where the orchestra being non polished is a good thing… the rough strings slicing through the opening theme, for instance, really lets you know what is going to come ahead. Takashi Shimura (who also starred in Seven Samurai that same year) gives a noble performance as a paleontologist who wants to study Godzilla but realizes in the end that he must be destroyed. The main protagonist of the film though is ultimately Dr. Serizawa, as played by Akihiko Hirata. It is he who must make the most painful decision of the movie – help to destroy Godzilla with his new Oxygen Destroyer device and risk unleashing a worse weapon on the world or declining to let his work be used as a weapon and watch Godzilla burn Japan. David Gerrold in his book The World of Star Trek pointed out that the key theme to any real drama is not “hero in danger” but “hero has a decision to make.” The decision that Dr. Serizawa makes at the end of the movie is saddening but logical. This would be the first and last Godzilla film to have any such real dramatic conflict (kind of – more on that in the next post).

Are there any flaws with Godzilla? Of course (no movie is perfect). There are occasional lapses in the special effects, great as they are (by the visionary Eiji Tsuburaya). Also, the love triangle between Serizawa, his fiancée Emiko and her lover is rather melodramatic… and boy does Emiko cry. A lot. As in, the drop of a hat. Oh well. It’s a great film anyway, a classic that you should see at some point in your life.

1.5 Godzilla, King of the Monsters (1956)

In 1956 Godzilla was released in the United States as Godzilla, King of the Monsters. Adding footage of American actor Raymond Burr and snipping any mention of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US version is still watchable but not quite as potent. It’s actually kind of cheesy watching Burr as reporter Steve Martin (hah!) narrate Godzilla’s rampage through Tokyo, fretfully wiping his brow – I even remember thinking so as a kid when I saw it for the first time. Not bad, but in this age of DVD and Blu-Ray you can now see the original, so just stick with the original.

2. Godzilla Raids Again (1955)

The sequel is nowhere near as good. Directed by Motoyoshi Oda and scored by Masaru Sato (Kurosawa’s composer of choice from 1955 to 1965), Godzilla Raids Again ends up being almost a rehash of the first, which isn’t surprising considering it was released only a year after the first – presumably to cash in while the original was still in the minds of the public. Once again, there is a love triangle. Once again Godzilla rampages and destroys (duh). Once again a character will have to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to stop him. The only things different this time around are a) Godzilla trashes Osaka and not Tokyo (which would see it’s fair share of monster mayhem in the years to come, so don’t breathe easy yet, Tokyo), and b) he’s not alone.


Yes, this is the first Godzilla movie, and by extension the first Japanese monster movie to have a giant monster battle. Godzilla’s first of many opponents is Anguirus, a spiny ankylosaur-looking thing who will ironically enough become an ally later on in the 60s and 70s. Their fight is an interesting one: instead of the camera being over-cranked in order to make the action slower and “weightier”, footage for the monster scenes was accidentally under-cranked, meaning that Godzilla and Anguirus’ fights have a quick, almost feral look to them. Overall, Godzilla Raids Again is worth picking up if you’re a Godzilla or kaiju fan but don’t expect anything really special…

…unless of course you want to laugh your ass off, in which case watch the American version, released as Gigantis the Fire Monster. I’m not going to go into detail about how this turkey got made (zip on over to the Wikipedia real quick) but suffice to say this is one of the worst localizations ever… with dubbing to match. Because the producers wanted the English dub to match the lip movements of the original actors, some of the dialogue in this movie is bizzare, to say the least. In addition the main character (voiced by Keye Luke) will not shut the Hell up, and narrates everything, and I mean everything (“When I got back from my scouting trip I had to take a big dump. So I went to the toilet and crapped out a big one. It was kind of fat and very long, with some interesting speckles in it. Then I….”). Add to that a whole bunch of extraneous footage was pasted in from other sources, and the effect is about what you’d expect. It’s too bad the guys at Mystery Science Theater 3000 never got their hands on this. Oh well, if you have the DVD you can make fun of it with your friends – a great way to spend your Saturday night.


Well, that’s Godzilla in the fifties: a frightening nuclear menace terrorizing a country still recovering from World War II. Next time we’ll look at the Big G as he evolves during the early sixties into a reluctant anti-hero.

The Motion Never Stops

Before I get to my special theme for this month which I'll post in a couple of days, I just wanted to take a quick opportunity to note the passing of Ray Harryhausen, special effects pioneer extraordinaire.

It's a shame we don't have visualists like him around anymore - I have never really liked CGI, I think that 99% of the time that computer graphics will never look as good as a real physical object... even if the computer image is excellent and the physical object is kinda cheesy.  I just don't think that we can make CG that looks real yet.  And I realize when I say this that computer programming and graphics are hard work, but I just don't think that the FX of today can stand up just because it's too *easy*... a director and an effects supervisor can just sit down at a computer and bash out what they want with none of the painstaking labor and craftsmanship that used to be put into movie visuals... by people like Mr. Harryhausen.

His movies occupy a special place in my collection.  I have always enjoyed fantasy and science fiction films (no!) and I remember watching some of Harryhausen's movies like Jason and the Argonauts whenever they would come on TV.  His fantasy movie collection also happens to be one of the oldest DVD boxsets that I own, having got it as a gift close to ten years ago now.  I have had ample to time to enjoy the fruits of his labors, again and again and again and again.

And in this age of home video thankfully everyone can.  So here's to you Mr. Ray Harryhausen.  I would say I hope you go to heaven if there is one, but I don't think they have any cool monsters there.

Wait For It....

Megalon says to BE PATIENT

– a very special event is being planned for next month.

Ghost Writer In The Sky....

Roger Ebert died today.  It's kind of weird when you think about it.  Sometimes we get so used to certain people being around it's so damn... strange when they no longer inhabit our plane of existence.  I had the same feeling after James Brown died... I suddenly lived in a world without James Brown, and that seemed both bizarre and unacceptable at the same time.  But, you say, James Brown was a creator, an inventor - he basically invented funk music, he was the Godfather of Soul, he influenced whole musical genres in addition to artists with his music.  Roger Ebert was a film critic, his whole job was just to analyze what other people created and tell an audience whether he thought they should see it or not.  How can he be considered special?

Well, Roger Ebert actually worked on a couple of movies himself.  No he wasn't a director or actor but he was a (surprise) writer, writing a couple of movies for Russ Meyer in the 70s, one of which being the infamous Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls.  Both of these movies were very, very bad (but in a laughable, fun kinda way).  But the point is, Ebert *did it*.  He actually participated in filmmaking, understood the process.  When Roger Ebert criticized some movie for being bad, he would know because he wrote some bad movies himself.  This is more than most movie critics could and can do.  Nowadays your average film critic is just some hack who took writing and film courses in college and thinks that they know more than you will ever know about film just because they studied it in school.  The sad truth is that anyone who can pick up a book and read or sit still enough to watch a movie for a couple of hours can write a half-intelligent movie review.  But few can write movies reviews well and with  true knowledge of the craft, and Ebert was one of them.

Even when he was wrong.  I remember reading a negative review of his on the original 1954 Godzilla.  I was nearly foaming at the mouth and proclaiming that Ebert wouldn't know a good movie if it came up and bit him in the ass.  But you know what?  I had that reaction because his opinion *mattered*... because he wrote well.  Most other reviewers (few can actually be called true critics) don't get that kind of response out of me.  I read their shit and say, "Hmm", and forget about it a minute later, even if I find their viewpoint contentious.  Ebert made you care with his opinion, and that is rare in modern film criticism, where most writers are just trying to impress you with their writing "talent."

I actually have no pretenses to Mr. Ebert's job.  I am not a film critic.  I am simply some dude on the internet ejaculating forth his opinions because it gives him an excuse to write, to hone his composition skills.  If someone comes along and engages me on something I wrote, that's great but it's not my purpose.  The point to all this is, Roger Ebert was a true film critic and I am not, but I'm writing this tribute anyway because... I want to.  It's not some gushing from one professional to another but some honest thoughts from someone who enjoyed reading his stuff.  Even if no one else sees this I want to write how much his film reviews and writing in general meant to me.  Even if he was dead wrong sometimes.

And that was the fun part.

Clarification

This is just a short notice that as of today The Pharonic Fantasy Theatre will now have a ratings system.  Why now instead of from the beginning?  Well, in the beginning I figured that I wanted people to actually read my reviews in order to ascertain my attitude towards a particular movie or TV show instead of taking the easy shortcut and just looking at a number at the bottom of the screen, but after hundreds of emails and comments from my die-hard fanbase I have realized that I want to make everyone's life easier and quicker and get readers onto and off of my little corner of the internet just a little faster.  Besides, all of the malcontents are right - It *is* too hard to read through paragraph after paragraph of review just to find out if you want to see a movie or not.  That's too much work.  Work is hard.  Quality must be quantified.

So, without further ado, I give you the New Pharonic Fantasy Theatre Patented Movie And TV Show Ratings System™.

I will rate all pieces of media on a scale of 1 to 77, except Japanese pornographic anime, which is rated 1 to 69, and anything produced by Michael Bay, which will be rated from -500 to 2.  After the number rating I will have a content marker, to warn parents and other sensitive souls about any icky content, and then another number saying how many times this ickyness occurs in the said media, followed by a division or multiplication sign designating what time of day you should watch this particular item.   Disturbing Content markers are as follows:

V for Violence
N for Nudity
S for Sex
D for Drugs
T for graphic Torture
AS for Adult Situations
A for any Annoying sidekick character that makes you throw something at the television
P for any Prison scenes
R for Rape or sexual assault
I for any graphic displays of Illness or disease
L for Language
F for any Foreign Content
OO for gratuitous bOObs
LS for Low Sodium content
FX for any bad effects
W for William Shatner

Well, there you go.  From now on, all of my reviews will use this simple, easy-to-understand system to help you the reader figure out whether you want to see something instead of slogging through all the crap I write.


Next Week:  pictures from my oiled-up orgy with the German ladies' all-nude horseshoe team.

How To And How Not To Celebrate The Birthday Of A Famous Filmmaker

Today is the birthday of Akira Kurosawa, who would have been 103 this year.  To mark the occasion, Hulu is putting up a good chunk of his movies free to view for the duration of the entire weekend.

However, I must warn any potential viewer *NOT* to take them up on this, as without Hulu Plus (which you have to pay for) you get multiple ads during the movies.  I started watching one, and about fifteen minutes in was suddenly rudely shocked by having an advertisement for Spring Breakers shoved into my face.  This is akin to having a five-star gourmet Italian meal and having venom-covered wood spikes rammed into your eyeballs and goat diarrhea poured down your throat every fifteen minutes.  Not worth it.

I understand if you want to put ads on during your TV shows, Hulu.  Hell, even doing that with most movies is fine, I understand you have to make money.  But not Kurosawa.  Having you do this is like me going to a Jewish synagogue wearing a Passion Of The Christ t-shirt or running naked into a Catholic cathedral during mass and screaming "FUCK THE DEVIL!  FUCK THE DEVIL!" while masturbating and shitting everywhere.

So anyway, if you want to commemorate Kurosawa's birthday and watch one of his movies, I suggest that you just go out and buy one of them - Seven Samurai is a good choice if you haven't already seen it, and if you haven't you need to buy it now... every movie collection is incomplete without Seven Samurai.  After that you can pick from any of his work... you can't go wrong with a Kurosawa movie.

Ars On The Ides Of Mars

This month on Netflix I happened to watch two biopics about two artists, both based on novels, produced ten years apart, depicting men who lived roughly 300 years apart and who made two different types of art.  I hadn't actually intended to do this but once I watched both I started to draw some parallels and make some comparisons - as well as think about how one could be so good and one could basically suck.  Today I give you a short, badly written essay on a comparison and contrast of Magic Fire and The Agony And The Ecstasy, or "How To and How Not To Do a Biographical Movie About An Artist".

Magic Fire is about the life of Richard Wagner (whose bicentennial is this year, incidentally) made in 1955 by Republic Pictures, which by that time was on its last legs as a viable film studio.  The Agony and The Ecstasy is a film about Michelangelo Buonarroti and his painting of the Sistine Chapel ceiling produced in 1965 and starring Charlton Heston as the tortured artist and Rex Harrison as the warrior pope who commissions him to create the great work.

The difference between the two is like night and day.  Magic Fire is a cheesy biopic which tries to compress the entire life of the most important and influential composer of music next to Bach and Beethoven down into two hours and achieves in telling us nothing about the man or how monumental his work is and how it affected all of the art of the nineteenth century and beyond.  To director William Dieterle, the whole thing is just an exercise in showing how Wagner could be something of a vain egotist while making some pretty music and pining after a series of women, instead of showing how truly radical his ideas were, while maybe even showing some of the man's truly dark tendencies and his genuinely complex relationships with the other human beings in his life.  This movie could have been an opportunity to show the paradox of the artist and the dichotomy between what a man is and the art that he can produce.  But alas, Dieterle just gives us a shallow, melodramatic two hours of nothing.  There is no dramatic point to this massive cheese-beast.  The film zooms along from one point in Wagner's life to another - it all feels so scatter-shot.  The actors don't look like the historical personages that they are supposed to portray.  There are historical inaccuracies (a given in any historical picture).  Even the music, which should of course be a highlight is arranged by Erich Wolfgang Korngold in a choppy "best of" manner which never even lets us hear a whole selection before it's off into another cornily played bit from another opera. Oh well, at least it was filmed on location in Europe so some of the backgrounds are accurate (and pretty).

The Agony And The Ecstasy attempts to do the opposite - give us just one incident in the life of Michelangelo and build a dramatic conflict and exploration of an artist around it.  Directed by Carol Reed, this movie accomplishes what the last film does not.  We are presented with real questions - what drives an artist to create?  How far will he go to do it?  How does one find one's purpose in life?  How does the relationship of one person to another affect their work or vice versa?  What is the true impact of our lives on this world?  What the answers to some of these questions are of course will be up to the viewer which is the beauty of this movie - everything is not laid out on a platter and the viewer must find their own meaning.  The direction and the acting are better, too.  Charlton Heston gives a great account as Michelangelo, making him both sympathetic and infuriating, sometimes all at he same time.  Rex Harrison is of course basically Rex Harrison for the duration of the movie but manages to portray both Pope Julius' violent arrogance and surprising humility in the face of true art and beauty.  The interplay between the two is classic - this film works as a character study in itself in addition to the qualities I have mentioned.  They even manage the illusion of the Sistine Chapel being in the process of being painted, which must have been truly challenging.  The only things I didn't like were the tacked-on semi-romantic subplot (standard in movies of the 1950s and 60s but thankfully not overdone here) and the twelve minute art history lesson in the beginning.  It's rather clunky and unnecessary - I know who Michelangelo was and what his major works were, thanks.

In the end the recommendation is obvious - The Agony And The Ecstasy is a classic film worthy of any Netflix queue, whilst Magic Fire should be viewed by die-hard Wagner fans only, and only if they feel slightly masochistic... while getting a few chuckles from it over how corny it is.  And to all the directors out there not reading this I say:  when making a bio film of a great artist, try to focus on one work or point in their life and how it affected them and the world and try to give us some real drama out of it, instead of trying to cram the totality of their life and work into a short time-span, making everything empty and pointless.  

Ah, who am I kiddin'.