Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2: Rewind.
Speaker 1: This is Rob Lamb and Hey, we just had a
Speaker 1: new Godzilla episode of Weird House Cinema, So why don't
Speaker 1: we revisit one of our previous episodes of Weird House
Speaker 1: Cinema about a Godzilla movie. This one concerns nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: nine's All Monsters Attack It Originally published two seventeen, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three. Let's dive right in.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 4: And this is Joe McCormick. And today we are going
Speaker 4: to be covering a film based on a listener recommendation.
Speaker 4: So to all of you out there who would like
Speaker 4: to write in with suggestions for us, this may give
Speaker 4: you some hope. I wonder Rob, should we kick the
Speaker 4: episode off by reading the message that suggested this movie?
Speaker 2: Sure? Yeah, go for it.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, I'll take it. This is from Jordan. Jordan
Speaker 4: wrote in to say hello, Stuff to Blow Your Mind team.
Speaker 4: I don't always watch every Weird House Cinema movie before
Speaker 4: listening to the episodes, but my partner and I certainly
Speaker 4: had a blast watching Robot Monster. Our streaming service then
Speaker 4: recommended us an equally short and hilarious movie with its
Speaker 4: own unrelated dinosaur fights, the nineteen sixty nine film All
Speaker 4: Monsters Attack. If you haven't had the chance to see it,
Speaker 4: I'll give you a short pitch. This Japanese bank heist
Speaker 4: meets Home alone sci fi action mystery movie is filled
Speaker 4: with giant monster fights that show kids how to overcome
Speaker 4: their school bullies. Certainly qualifies as a weird house film,
Speaker 4: to say the least. Don't think it's been covered yet,
Speaker 4: and if not, I know my partner and I would
Speaker 4: love to hear your take on it. Love the show, Jordan, Well, Jordan,
Speaker 4: I hope you were excited for today's episode. We are
Speaker 4: indeed covering All Monsters Attack.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and listeners keep the recommendations coming, because sometimes listeners
Speaker 1: let us know about a film that's not on our radar,
Speaker 1: such as this one. Other times, like last week's episode,
Speaker 1: I let Sleeping Corpses lie. That was a case where
Speaker 1: a listener requested it and that kind of bumped it
Speaker 1: back up on our list. It was on the list,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't at the top. But yeah, so let
Speaker 1: us know anytimes something catches your eye, if there's anything
Speaker 1: near and dear to your heart that you think fits
Speaker 1: the weird house cinema template.
Speaker 4: So I think All Monsters Attack is a very interesting film,
Speaker 4: especially for its place in the history of the Godzilla
Speaker 4: franchise and for its varied reception history. And I think
Speaker 4: it's also a little bit it's interesting in the very
Speaker 4: different notes it hits. This is a movie that is
Speaker 4: both quite funny for schlock reasons, as alluded to in
Speaker 4: the email, but also I think strangely sweet and even
Speaker 4: a little bit moving.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it has a good heart. It is a monster
Speaker 1: film about children. This is not It's pretty common to
Speaker 1: see these various Kaiju films where there is a child involved,
Speaker 1: and we all know that Gamera is a friend to
Speaker 1: all children and so forth. But this movie especially, is
Speaker 1: a film where the child is not just a character
Speaker 1: like the childhood view of the world. It is kind
Speaker 1: of the centerpiece of the whole picture. Like the film
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense unless you realize that it is from.
Speaker 4: The viewpoint of a child and not just from the
Speaker 4: viewpoint of a child. Is in it has a child protagonist,
Speaker 4: but literally the monster drama in it is a dream
Speaker 4: in the mind of a child.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a film in which none of the
Speaker 1: monsters are real, Like, none of the monsters that we see,
Speaker 1: none of these fights are actually taking place. They're all
Speaker 1: in the child's head. They're all in his dreams. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, it's not like those battles, it's
Speaker 1: not that they don't matter. Like it's ultimately well presented.
Speaker 1: We talked in our Robot Monster episode about films that
Speaker 1: have the it was all a dream trope in them,
Speaker 1: and this is certainly a film where a lot of
Speaker 1: the action is taking place within the dream, but also
Speaker 1: there is this it's not presented in kind of a
Speaker 1: gut punchy, twisty way. We know from the get go
Speaker 1: that this is a dream scape we're entering into, and
Speaker 1: yet at the same time there's also there's also the
Speaker 1: real world plot that is that is taking place as well,
Speaker 1: and there are steaks in it as well, So it's
Speaker 1: not like all the stakes are in the dream world
Speaker 1: and nothing's going on in the real world.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: It is a movie about a child who has dreams
Speaker 4: about monsters, and those dreams about monsters teach him how
Speaker 4: to solve problems in real life.
Speaker 1: Now, whether these are good lessons or not, yes, so
Speaker 1: that's there may be some generational divide on that, and
Speaker 1: this is all open for discussion.
Speaker 4: Yes, So I thought it might be useful here to
Speaker 4: do a brief digression on the history of the Godzilla
Speaker 4: franchise and the place all monsters attack has within it.
Speaker 4: So the first Godzilla movie was released in nineteen fifty.
Speaker 4: It was directed by Ishiro Honda, the same director as
Speaker 4: today's movie, and it was about a giant, prehistoric reptilian
Speaker 4: monster with radiation breath who appears from under the ocean
Speaker 4: as a consequence of nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific.
Speaker 4: Godzilla attacks Japan and is eventually defeated by the ingenuity
Speaker 4: of human scientists. Now, I think it's really important to
Speaker 4: note that if you have only seen later Godzilla movies,
Speaker 4: you may be shocked if you go back and watch
Speaker 4: the original, shocked to discover its much darker tone, the
Speaker 4: heavy themes treated in a very solemn manner, and the
Speaker 4: fact that there is no Kaiju meet Slam. The monsters
Speaker 4: do not supplex each other. In fact, there's only one monster.
Speaker 4: Godzilla is a pure antagonist. In the first movie. He
Speaker 4: doesn't wrestle other monsters, and it is not light camp entertainment.
Speaker 4: The original Godzilla is a bleak, doomy movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of grimy. It's use of black and white,
Speaker 1: it's very stark.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 1: A serious film about dread and horror in the modern world.
Speaker 4: However, in the film that would follow, which was called
Speaker 4: Godzilla Raids Again in nineteen fifty five, Godzilla once again
Speaker 4: emerges to threaten humankind, but this time there's another element.
Speaker 4: Godzilla is fighting another monster, so fighting this ancient fire
Speaker 4: breathing dinosaur enemy. He's sort of based on the design
Speaker 4: of an ankylosaurus, and this would set off a kind
Speaker 4: of pattern of monster on monster violence that would continue
Speaker 4: into the following films, including movies like King Kong versus
Speaker 4: Godzilla that's in nineteen sixty two, mathra versus Godzilla in
Speaker 4: sixty four, Various battles with monsters from outer space and
Speaker 4: with three heads, other things coming up from the deep,
Speaker 4: and rob I wonder if you would disagree with anything
Speaker 4: here or have anything to add to this, but I
Speaker 4: would argue a few general trends in the Godzilla movies
Speaker 4: as they go on. One is the trend of the
Speaker 4: moral valance of Godzilla, who I think goes initially from
Speaker 4: hard heel to kind of anti hero to full face.
Speaker 4: Would you agree with that?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, he's definitely a babyface. And then in
Speaker 1: most of the films people are really familiar.
Speaker 4: With, Yeah, it's often like Godzilla has to show up
Speaker 4: to fight a bad monster in order to protect humanity
Speaker 4: from that monster, and he's kind of like a dangerous ally,
Speaker 4: but ultimately it's he who is defending human civilization from
Speaker 4: this really wicked creature.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that that trajectory tends to hold true
Speaker 1: occasionally with you'll see some some new Godzilla pictures that
Speaker 1: come about in which they kind of go back to
Speaker 1: basics and go for like the solo monster threat sort
Speaker 1: of plot. And I guess one of the main examples
Speaker 1: of that is is shin Godzilla from twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: A lot of times when they do a reboot, it's
Speaker 4: like that shin Godzilla is like that Godzilla, that horrible
Speaker 4: American Godzilla from the nineties is like that, yeah, or
Speaker 4: wait is it now? I'm trying to remember. I think
Speaker 4: it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I believe so.
Speaker 1: Though I think the more recent American Godzilla remake that
Speaker 1: had some extra monsters in it, as I recall, so
Speaker 1: it had.
Speaker 4: Bad ones that Godzilla had to fight. Yeah, let them fight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, some sort of radiation eating diosaur creatures.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Okay, so there's that trajectory. Another thing is the tone.
Speaker 4: The tone changes. It goes from the bleak, just doom
Speaker 4: layden horror of the first movie to a much lighter, campier,
Speaker 4: sillier kind of entertainment, even when it sometimes still has commentary.
Speaker 4: A lot of times, these sillier, campier Godzilla movies will
Speaker 4: be satirical about say pollution or politics or the entertainment industry,
Speaker 4: even like I think there's one where there's, like, you know,
Speaker 4: somebody's trying to boost TV ratings by capturing King Kong
Speaker 4: and then he gets out and has to fight Godzilla
Speaker 4: and so forth. So they often satirize real elements in
Speaker 4: the world, but they're not as dark as the first one.
Speaker 4: I would also say, as it goes on, you know,
Speaker 4: I think some people would be tempted to say that
Speaker 4: the quality of production in the films goes down, but
Speaker 4: I don't think that's exactly right. I would say the
Speaker 4: quality of production becomes more variable. It's not like there's
Speaker 4: a steady decline in the quality of Godzilla movies, but
Speaker 4: instead we see a sort of all over the place
Speaker 4: quality pattern. Would you agree with that?
Speaker 1: I think so, and I do wonder how much And
Speaker 1: this would maybe something that Godzilla scholars may have thoughts on.
Speaker 1: And indeed, it is worth pointing out that Godzilla movies
Speaker 1: are definitely an area where there is a People have
Speaker 1: written whole books on this, there have been academic papers
Speaker 1: on this. This is this is a well explored region
Speaker 1: of weird cinema. But I do wonder at times they
Speaker 1: get into the sillier zone, kid friendly zone, and I
Speaker 1: wonder what are the different forces involved. I mean, part
Speaker 1: of it is clearly like the reception to Godzilla by
Speaker 1: young viewers, But then also I wonder how much of
Speaker 1: it is the filmmakers realizing like not only the limitations
Speaker 1: of rubber suit monster effects, but also the potential for
Speaker 1: humor with those suits. You know, like, if you're going
Speaker 1: for just hard you know, sci fi or really serious
Speaker 1: grim horror with it, it feels like you maybe you've
Speaker 1: got to be a little a little more careful about
Speaker 1: how you use the suit and how you show the
Speaker 1: suit where if you open that up a little bit,
Speaker 1: then there's all this potential for like the goofy er
Speaker 1: stuff to take place.
Speaker 4: Yes, I fully agree with that, though there are some
Speaker 4: films that have managed to do both. Actually, and that's
Speaker 4: one thing I love about shin Godzilla. I think it
Speaker 4: succeeds fully in real grim horror and funny camp in
Speaker 4: the same movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a careful tight rope to walk though.
Speaker 4: But anyway, back to the film we're going to talk
Speaker 4: about today. It arrives in nineteen sixty nine, and it
Speaker 4: has long been regarded as one of the worst Godzilla films.
Speaker 4: It seems recently though, a lot of critics have kind
Speaker 4: of softened on it. They've kind of started to come
Speaker 4: around a little bit. And you can see the reasons
Speaker 4: for both, both for the initial harsh reaction and the
Speaker 4: softening and warming up to this movie. There are certainly
Speaker 4: elements that are not as impressive as other films in
Speaker 4: the franchise. The stakes are less all encompassing. I mean,
Speaker 4: this is not a world world defining conflict to save
Speaker 4: the planet from a three headed monster from outer space
Speaker 4: or whatever. Instead, it is a child dealing with loneliness
Speaker 4: and bullying, who has dreams about monsters that inspire him
Speaker 4: to stand up for himself. It's hard for that to
Speaker 4: feel as epic as the other Godzilla movies, either in
Speaker 4: either an awe inspiring and scary way or in a
Speaker 4: funny way. And I think one thing that has to
Speaker 4: be acknowledged is that the original special effects and production
Speaker 4: values in this film are very limited compared to some
Speaker 4: other films in the franchise, and a lot of the
Speaker 4: special effects sequences that do appear are recycled from previous movies.
Speaker 4: We'll talk more about that as we go on. But
Speaker 4: on the other hand, I think a lot of people
Speaker 4: have kind of come around on this movie today as
Speaker 4: simply a different kind of creature than most other films
Speaker 4: in the Godzilla series. It is a sweeter, more modest,
Speaker 4: more intimate meditation on what Godzilla had come to mean
Speaker 4: for the children of Japan, end of the world.
Speaker 1: Having just watched this film this morning for the first time,
Speaker 1: it's hard to imagine people hating it. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: seventy minutes, it's sixty nine minutes long for crying out loud.
Speaker 1: I mean, you don't spend too much time in this picture,
Speaker 1: and it has a lot of monsters in it. I
Speaker 1: have to come back to the sort of the Glenn
Speaker 1: Danzig school of filmmaking. I believe he was asking an
Speaker 1: interview what makes a great vampire film? And he said, well,
Speaker 1: a lot of vampires, and so this film takes kind
Speaker 1: of that part, like what makes a great monster film?
Speaker 1: A lot of great kaiju film? Well, a lot of kaiju.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of kaiju in this picture. I
Speaker 1: don't know if all of them are present, as the
Speaker 1: title would suggest, but a lot of them are present.
Speaker 1: And Okay, once you've checked that box off, once you're
Speaker 1: definitely giving the audience all the monsters, what else are
Speaker 1: you going to give them? And what can you give
Speaker 1: them this a little different? What can you do that
Speaker 1: would maybe be a satisfying and different story while still
Speaker 1: delivering all of the things that this picture has to
Speaker 1: deliver for the audience that they're expecting.
Speaker 4: I think that's a great point, and I think you
Speaker 4: could also argue that given the general trends in the
Speaker 4: Godzilla series up to this point, increasingly kind of sillier
Speaker 4: and campier type movies and increasing use of Godzilla as
Speaker 4: a face rather than a heal. I think you could
Speaker 4: argue it was inevitable that these movies would end up
Speaker 4: including movies that were explicitly meant for kids, not just
Speaker 4: movies that kids happened to love. So just before All
Speaker 4: Monster's Attack came out, a couple of years before, in
Speaker 4: nineteen sixty seven, we get Son of Godzilla, which, true
Speaker 4: to title, introduced a new character to the Kaiju pantheon,
Speaker 4: that is Manila, who is yes, Godzilla's son, and the
Speaker 4: movie deals with parenting themes, showing Godzilla teaching his child
Speaker 4: how to roar and how to blast out his atomic breath.
Speaker 4: In fact, we see some scenes from that movie of
Speaker 4: this type taken whole cloth and shown again in All
Speaker 4: Monsters Attack. And I have read that the introduction of
Speaker 4: Manila in this movie was the result of a desire
Speaker 4: at the studio at Toho to introduce acute character and
Speaker 4: acute relationship to create a movie that would not just
Speaker 4: appeal to kids, but also to the young parents who
Speaker 4: would be taking kids to see movies.
Speaker 1: It makes sense, yeah, I mean, if you want to
Speaker 1: introduce your children to these monster movies that by this point,
Speaker 1: you know, you've you've you've grown up on it helps
Speaker 1: if there's some sort of cute element. I mean I've
Speaker 1: I've encountered that myself with my own son. You know,
Speaker 1: is there is there a baby Yoda in there, a
Speaker 1: grogu that can you know get I mean Star Wars
Speaker 1: has tons of stuff like that obviously, but you know,
Speaker 1: is there some sort of like cute element that will
Speaker 1: definitely catch their attention that they can latch onto, and
Speaker 1: then perhaps they'll they'll latch onto the rest of a
Speaker 1: even franchise as well.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I mean just watch the Turn like you know,
Speaker 4: your your your harsh, cynical twenty somethings. Star Wars geeks
Speaker 4: hate the e Walks until they have kids, and then
Speaker 4: they watch Return with their kids and then they're like, oh,
Speaker 4: they're actually kind of great.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And we'll describe Manila in a in a little
Speaker 1: bit here. He is cute.
Speaker 4: He is, in fact, more than once we noticed Minila
Speaker 4: in this movie doing specific sort of sounds and postures
Speaker 4: reminiscent of our baby.
Speaker 1: Uh so the donkey sound that he keeps making.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, of course, the donkey sound. But no, he
Speaker 4: does at one point he does a kind of I
Speaker 4: don't know, like a pose where he's like wiggling his
Speaker 4: arms and legs and he just looks like a human baby.
Speaker 4: But anyway, so a lot of footage from Son of
Speaker 4: Godzilla would end up being reused in All Monsters Attack,
Speaker 4: and in fact, not just footage from Sun but also
Speaker 4: from recent Kaiju movies like Ebirah Horror of the Deep
Speaker 4: that came out in nineteen sixty six. That's more of
Speaker 4: your classic meat Slam that's where Godzilla battles a giant
Speaker 4: shrimp crayfish type monster. But also it used footage from
Speaker 4: King Kong Escapes from sixty seven and from Destroy All
Speaker 4: Monsters from sixty eight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Destroy All Monsters also has been a lot in it.
Speaker 4: So why so much recycled footage from other Toho movies? Well,
Speaker 4: the answer appears to be extreme constraints on time and budget.
Speaker 4: I've read that this was in part due to cost
Speaker 4: overruns from other movies Tohoe is making in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 4: as well as just general money problems at the studio.
Speaker 4: These were hard times at Toho, but for whatever reason,
Speaker 4: the edict came down that this movie had to be
Speaker 4: made fast and cheap. And I think you can say
Speaker 4: that when it comes to special effects sequences, it kind
Speaker 4: of shows, especially to the original ones and how much
Speaker 4: footage is reused. But at the same time, I don't
Speaker 4: think this movie is hack work. All Monsters Attack was
Speaker 4: directed by Ishiro Honda, the A list Toho director who
Speaker 4: had made the original Godzilla as well as most of
Speaker 4: the big movies in the series since then, and despite
Speaker 4: all the limitations on the production, Honda apparently cited All
Speaker 4: Monsters Attack as one of his personal favorites from the
Speaker 4: entire series. I was wondering a bit why this was,
Speaker 4: and so I was reading from Godzilla, The Official Guide
Speaker 4: to the King of the Monsters. This was the official
Speaker 4: Toho licensed book on the series, written by Graham Skipper
Speaker 4: twenty twenty two, and Skipper writes quote All Monsters Attack
Speaker 4: was truly a labor of love for Honda, a small
Speaker 4: film that focused less on the big monster fights and
Speaker 4: more on one young child learning how to stand up
Speaker 4: for himself. While Honda loved the spectacle and undeniable artistry
Speaker 4: of orchestrating giant monsters rampaging through cities, he also loved
Speaker 4: the emotional core of the people at the heart of
Speaker 4: these stories. Here he was mostly left to do as
Speaker 4: he pleased within the constraints, and thus we get what
Speaker 4: today feels like a small indie film rather than a
Speaker 4: Kaiju blockbuster, and I think that's right on the money.
Speaker 4: We're kind of left in the end with a cozy
Speaker 4: little film about childhood struggles, bullying, courage and the inspiration
Speaker 4: that we take from our myths. And it's also a
Speaker 4: film in which all the monster slamming is relegated to
Speaker 4: dream sequences. But there is something very charming about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Again, it checks off the box of all the monsters,
Speaker 1: lots of monster stuff happening on screen, but then it
Speaker 1: figures out something very interesting to do with the rest
Speaker 1: of them picture, and in that it has a lot
Speaker 1: in common I think with a rather different Kaiju movie,
Speaker 1: a rather different Godzilla movie that we previously covered on
Speaker 1: Weird House. That's nineteen seventy one's Godzilla versus Hetera, which
Speaker 1: I would say is not as memorable from a character standpoint.
Speaker 1: I think this movie has a has more heart, but
Speaker 1: that one definitely had a lot of style, a lot
Speaker 1: of like in a hit message at the core of it,
Speaker 1: while also giving us monsters.
Speaker 4: Yes, Hetera is I think a better movie from the
Speaker 4: point of view of just like weird imagery and having
Speaker 4: lots of crazy visual flare and stuff that stands out
Speaker 4: like that, but all monsters attack has it has a
Speaker 4: soul and hetera. I don't know, maybe.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: Well, when we were thinking about elevator pitches for this one,
Speaker 1: I instantly thought The never Ending.
Speaker 2: Story but with Kaiju Oof.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it really does remind me quite a bit
Speaker 1: of the nineteen eighty four film adaptation of Michael Inda's
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine novel The never Ending Story.
Speaker 2: I love both of these, by.
Speaker 1: The way, I know Michael Inda did not like the
Speaker 1: film adaptation, but I have rum in my heart for
Speaker 1: both of them. But in the film adaptation of The
Speaker 1: Neverending Story, we have a kind of lonely child in
Speaker 1: the city with a disrupted home life who finds courage
Speaker 1: in the realm of fantasy, and in the film, at
Speaker 1: any rate, he eventually unleashes a luck dragon on his bullies.
Speaker 1: In this film, we have a lonely latch key kid
Speaker 1: in late sixties Japan living in a heavily industrialized area,
Speaker 1: and he finds courage through his dream jaunts to Monster Island.
Speaker 1: Instead of actually summoning a kaiju to defeat his bullies
Speaker 1: and bank robbers. He home alones them, as Lister Mail.
Speaker 4: Suggested, Yeah, he lays traps essentially and gets them to
Speaker 4: fall through holes in the floor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, Well, let's go ahead and listen to
Speaker 1: the trailer audio on this one. This is the English
Speaker 1: dub trailer, which I think works best for the podcast
Speaker 1: format here, though this is not the cut of the
Speaker 1: film I ended up watching. Usually, I'm all for the
Speaker 1: English dub on a film like this lets me focus
Speaker 1: more on the monsters, and you know, and the human
Speaker 1: performances are generally less important in a picture like this.
Speaker 1: But HBO Max only offered subtitles, so I watched it
Speaker 1: as if I were viewing a Krosawa film.
Speaker 2: Where is the Armor Computer Golong? Yes?
Speaker 1: Yes, do you take a jet? Take a jet?
Speaker 2: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 5: Welcome aboard Pan American Flight one Director Monster Island. We'll
Speaker 5: be fine at thirty five thousand and eight and we'll
Speaker 5: arrive on schedule.
Speaker 4: We hope you up a pleasant flight. Thank you?
Speaker 2: Are you Muster Island?
Speaker 1: Overland?
Speaker 2: We are ready to land?
Speaker 5: Oh godzilla, a comacara?
Speaker 2: All right? Sounds like a party, huh.
Speaker 4: I mean, if I hadn't already watched it, I would,
Speaker 4: by the ways. Speaking of advertising for this film, I
Speaker 4: haven't confirmed this, but the Internet alleges that the tagline
Speaker 4: was see prehistoric monsters crawl out of the hidden depths
Speaker 4: of the Earth and take revenge against the living. That's
Speaker 4: not even close. Doesn't not even remotely describing this.
Speaker 2: Movie, not at all.
Speaker 1: All Right, if you're wondering where you can watch this picture, well,
Speaker 1: as of this recording, you can watch it on HBO Max,
Speaker 1: but all streaming is subject to change, especially HBO Max
Speaker 1: as of late, so watch it while you can there,
Speaker 1: I guess. But it's also available on Blu Ray from
Speaker 1: the Criterion collection on there. Just absolutely worshipful Godzilla the
Speaker 1: Shoa Era films nineteen fifty fourth through nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 1: I've looked at the physical packaging for this at Atlanta's
Speaker 1: own Video Drone. They have them for rent there, of course,
Speaker 1: and the packaging is just splendid. It has all this
Speaker 1: amazing new artwork in at these very flashy, colorful illustrations
Speaker 1: of Godzilla and the monsters that he battles.
Speaker 4: I may have to pick that up one day.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's it's great. It's a nice package. All right.
Speaker 1: Well let's get into the people here involved in this film. So,
Speaker 1: as we noted already, Ishirohanda is the director of nineteen
Speaker 1: eleven through nineteen ninety three legendary Toho film director who,
Speaker 1: of course helm fifty four's Godzilla in the movie that
Speaker 1: started it all, and he directed forty four pictures in total,
Speaker 1: eight of those Godzilla films, culminating in seventy five's Terror
Speaker 1: of Mecca Godzilla. But he also directed rodin the Mysterians
Speaker 1: the Human Vapor Matango, which, by the way, if you're
Speaker 1: out there enjoying the current mushroom zombie horror series on television,
Speaker 1: well you need to go back and watch Matango. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if they were the first mushroom zombie type picture,
Speaker 1: but they have to be one of the first.
Speaker 4: Else maybe you should do Matango on the show.
Speaker 2: We probably should. Yeah, okay, but oh.
Speaker 1: Other films he did include Frankenstein Versus Beragon, The War
Speaker 1: of the Garganshuas Space, Amiba, and Moore. He was a
Speaker 1: friend of director Akira Corrasawa and served as director counselor
Speaker 1: or chief assistant director on Carrisawa's nineteen eighty five epic Ryan.
Speaker 1: His name continues to appear in the credits on god
Speaker 1: Zilla movies and in other homages. He also directed nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty three's Atragon, which we previously covered on Weird House,
Speaker 1: and of course, as we mentioned, we also covered seventy
Speaker 1: one's Godzilla versus Hetera, which he did not direct, but
Speaker 1: still Godzilla picture.
Speaker 4: Hondo is a masterful director, and you can just feel
Speaker 4: his storytelling confidence even when he's working with what appeared
Speaker 4: to be extremely limiting constraints on like his budget and
Speaker 4: what he could do with the movie. You just see
Speaker 4: him like kind of just accepting it and plowing straight
Speaker 4: through and making the best movie he could.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Now getting into some of the other connections, I
Speaker 1: guess it's one of the situations when you start looking
Speaker 1: at the people involved in certainly Toho pictures, you see
Speaker 1: like this, the Japanese studio system of the day in place,
Speaker 1: So a lot of these, you know, were frequent Toho
Speaker 1: actors or frequent Honda collaborators. So the screenplay here was
Speaker 1: by Shinichi Sekazawa, who lived nineteen twenty through nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: a frequent collaborator with Honda inscribe of many Godzilla movies,
Speaker 1: beginning with nineteen sixty two's King Kong Versus Godzilla. And
Speaker 1: he also wrote Azragon, which we covered or he was
Speaker 1: one of the writers on it. I forget how that
Speaker 1: shook out. But anyway, getting into the actors here, of
Speaker 1: course we have to call out Haruo Nakajima, who plays Godzilla.
Speaker 1: He is the man in the suit. He lived nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty nine through twenty seventeen. He played Godzilla in twelve
Speaker 1: consecutive films. He was also in Mathra in the War
Speaker 1: of the garganshuas as well as a Kira kurosaw was
Speaker 1: seven Samurai in a bit role and not as a
Speaker 1: giant monster. He's generally considered a legend and the rubber
Speaker 1: monster suit actor par excellence.
Speaker 4: Was he ever a pro wrestler?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 4: How did he get all those moves down?
Speaker 1: I don't think he had a wrestling background. He just,
Speaker 1: you know, I think like a lot of these, well,
Speaker 1: the way these different monster actors end up in the
Speaker 1: suits that often come in to find them, like sometimes
Speaker 1: it's a case where they're like, you know, a studied
Speaker 1: physical performer, other times they're like they're the willing person.
Speaker 1: They're the person that was around that was like, yes,
Speaker 1: I will do this, and it became their thing, and
Speaker 1: certainly Nakajima became like one of the most legendary rubber
Speaker 1: suit I mean certainly the most legendary Kaiju actor of
Speaker 1: all time. Now when it comes to Manila, the Little
Speaker 1: Godzilla creature Godzilla's Son, this performance is by little Man Machin,
Speaker 1: whose real name was Masseo Fukuzawa, who the nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: one through two thousand he played Manila in three films
Speaker 1: Son of Godzilla Destroyed All Monsters and All Monsters Attack,
Speaker 1: which we previously noted, and he followed this up with
Speaker 1: a couple of Kaiju projects, Ultraman Story from eighty four
Speaker 1: ultra Q the Movie from nineteen ninety. He also played
Speaker 1: the juvenile version of the title Kaiju in the North
Speaker 1: Korean kaiju movie Pulgasari from nineteen eighty five WOW. His
Speaker 1: final film was the nineteen ninety one Tokasatsu film Micka
Speaker 1: Droid Robo Kill Beneath Disco Club Leila. I haven't seen it,
Speaker 1: but you may have seen the cover art He's got,
Speaker 1: you know, like some dark soldier with red eyes on it.
Speaker 1: This is not what I've seen, but it's I think
Speaker 1: some people really dig it. But anyway, this was a
Speaker 1: diminutive suit actor who according to Godzilla Wiki.
Speaker 2: I looked at Godzilla.
Speaker 1: Wiki in addition to the normal databases on this one,
Speaker 1: because they generally just have excellent information about Godzilla pictures.
Speaker 1: They say that he worked prior to this as a
Speaker 1: mini wrestler, but I couldn't find out really anything about that,
Speaker 1: like where he wrestled, who he wrestled for, or what
Speaker 1: his name was. I'm guessing he was a little man
Speaker 1: when he wrestled, But I mean, there were some Japanese
Speaker 1: mini wrestlers, but I think even the that I'm aware of,
Speaker 1: they worked outside of Japan frequently, so I don't know
Speaker 1: how much of a scene there was for this in
Speaker 1: Japanese wrestling during this time period. He played a couple
Speaker 1: of dwarf roles in the early sixties, including the Toshira
Speaker 1: Mafuni Sinbad movie or well, I'm not sure if it's
Speaker 1: actually a Sinbad movie, but it was released in the
Speaker 1: West as The Lost World of Sinbad.
Speaker 4: Oh, I've never seen that one.
Speaker 1: Now. A note on Manila here. He's not to be
Speaker 1: confused with god Zuki, the juvenile flying kaiju from the
Speaker 1: Hanna Barbara cartoon The Godzilla Power Hour from seventy eight.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of you out there know exactly
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. Also, he's not to be confused
Speaker 1: with Godzilla Junior, who debuted in Toho's nineteen ninety three
Speaker 1: film Godzilla Versus Mecha Godzilla two and appeared in two
Speaker 1: pictures after that. Both god Zuki and Godzilla Junior have
Speaker 1: baby dragon vibes, while Manila here he's more I don't know,
Speaker 1: how would you describe him. He's kind of like baby
Speaker 1: turtle without a shell, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, baby turtle, baby fraud. Kind of like tadpole, a
Speaker 4: quadrupedal tadpole. I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Very reminiscent though, of a human toddler, not only in
Speaker 1: his appearance but also in the way he moves around.
Speaker 4: Yes, I mean, I think they were really trying to
Speaker 4: play up that baby angle to make Manila as cute
Speaker 4: as possible. That was the directive.
Speaker 1: Yes, Now, we mentioned that there's a human child at
Speaker 1: the center of this picture. The child is the character
Speaker 1: Ichiro Miki or just Ichiro. I don't even know this
Speaker 1: is a case where they really say his last name
Speaker 1: in the picture, but was played by TOMINOI Yazaki. Dates unknown.
Speaker 1: He was a Japanese child actor. This was his first film,
Speaker 1: followed by mostly TV roles, some ultraman, some common Rider
Speaker 1: through a Round seventy three or seventy four. His other
Speaker 1: film is the nineteen seventy two monster flick digorro Versus Goliath.
Speaker 1: I've read that there have been a to sort of
Speaker 1: find this actor as an adult and you know, get
Speaker 1: his his take on what filming this movie was like.
Speaker 1: But I don't think any of those those searches wherever fruitful.
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure you know what became of him.
Speaker 1: But I lived a private life after his child acting
Speaker 1: days were behind him.
Speaker 4: Leave Ichiro alone, let him live his life.
Speaker 1: Now there's another character of note in the picture. So again,
Speaker 1: Ichiro is a latch key kid, so his parents work
Speaker 1: a lot. He's left to go home and look after
Speaker 1: himself and his We meet this friend of his, this
Speaker 1: this man who lives in the same apartment complex that
Speaker 1: is a toy maker or a toy designer, an inventor
Speaker 1: of sorts.
Speaker 4: Right, yeah, he At one point, he's building something he
Speaker 4: calls a quote kiddy computer in the subtitles on the
Speaker 4: version I saw, But it's like a computer that shows
Speaker 4: live footage of a moon landing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in great quality, was really in color.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but yeah, so I don't know what's going on there.
Speaker 4: But yeah, he's a toy maker and he is he's
Speaker 4: essentially Ichiro's friend, like he's a friend, and he looks
Speaker 4: after Ichiro sometimes when his parents are both working and
Speaker 4: can't come home.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: This character's name is Shinpei Innami, played by the actor
Speaker 1: Hideo i'm Amoto who lived nineteen twenty six through two
Speaker 1: thousand and three. And this is a sometimes these various
Speaker 1: Toho actors are actors that you just kind of see
Speaker 1: another Toho films, and there's kind of like, you know,
Speaker 1: just an ensemble of Toho actors. But there's a very
Speaker 1: good chance folks out there have seen i'm Amoto before
Speaker 1: because he has very distinctive looks, tall, thin Japanese character
Speaker 1: actor with kind of gaunt features that are maybe not
Speaker 1: accentuated much in this picture because he's just playing a
Speaker 1: normal human and nothing. You know, he's not an assassin
Speaker 1: or anything, but he worked in a number of notable films.
Speaker 1: His work includes kuros was Yojimbo from sixty one, Quite
Speaker 1: On from sixty four, Sword of Doom, and The Tango
Speaker 1: from sixty six. He was also in Message for Space
Speaker 1: and Attragon, so two films that we previously covered, though
Speaker 1: I think those were smaller roles in those pictures. He
Speaker 1: was also in International Secret Police Key of Keys from
Speaker 1: sixty five, which is known to many Western moviegoers as
Speaker 1: the movie that What's Up Tiger Lily? The Woody Allen
Speaker 1: picture was a dub off. That was a picture where
Speaker 1: they took a Japanese film and dubbed over it with
Speaker 1: like new comedic dialogue. I've never seen it, but that's
Speaker 1: the basic pitch.
Speaker 4: I think I've never seen it either.
Speaker 2: Anyway.
Speaker 1: I'm Amoto was in a string of Godzilla and Kaiju movies,
Speaker 1: as well as nineteen ninety six's Echo Echo Azarak two,
Speaker 1: Birth of the Wizard and nineteen eighty seven's Mighty Jack.
Speaker 4: Was that featured on Mystery Science Theater?
Speaker 2: It was, Yes, Mighty Jack.
Speaker 4: Well, he's very good in this role on him to
Speaker 4: be the kindly, understanding adult in an uncaring world.
Speaker 1: Yes, let's see, I'm going to skip a bit in
Speaker 1: the cast. Here we do see Isiro's father a little bit.
Speaker 1: He's played by Kenji Sahara, who was born in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty two and is presumably still alive. He's a Japanese
Speaker 1: actor who has the distinction of being in the most
Speaker 1: Godzilla films, or at least was at one point he
Speaker 1: was in thirteen of them, which I think puts him
Speaker 1: what won over the Man in the Suit, in addition
Speaker 1: to numerous other Toho pictures. He was in the first
Speaker 1: Godzilla movie as a newspaper reporter and a party guy
Speaker 1: in a boat, and his last Godzilla film was two
Speaker 1: thousand and four's Final Wars, and it looks like he
Speaker 1: was last active around twenty eleven and then finally. The
Speaker 1: music in this one is by Kunio mia Uchi, who
Speaker 1: lived nineteen thirty two through two thousand and six, Japanese
Speaker 1: Toho composer whose first big score was The Human Vapor
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty. He followed this up with such films
Speaker 1: and TV shows as Mighty Jack, Ultraman, Godzilla Versus Geegan,
Speaker 1: and his stock music was used in twenty twenty two's
Speaker 1: Shin Ultraman, which I haven't seen yet, but apparently Joe
Speaker 1: it gives Ultraman the Shin Godzilla treatment. Oh well, that's
Speaker 1: what the title and the posters seem to imply.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 4: I've looked this up before, but I always forget what
Speaker 4: it is that the title Shin Godzilla means. And I
Speaker 4: think the deal is that Shin is a word that
Speaker 4: has multiple meanings, like it could be interpreted to mean
Speaker 4: the word god, or it could be interpreted to mean
Speaker 4: something like original or pure m. Is that right?
Speaker 1: I believe that that sounds familiar. I haven't looked into
Speaker 1: it recently, but I remember reading about it when Shin
Speaker 1: Godzilla first came out, and it's kind of like taken
Speaker 1: on its own meeting to me, like you put Shin
Speaker 1: on the beginning of something, and I'm expecting it to
Speaker 1: have like a lot of scenes of bureaucracy dealing with
Speaker 1: an outrageous event. So like, I think you could apply
Speaker 1: it to anything, Shin Godzilla, Shen king Kong, I don't know,
Speaker 1: Shin Mettango. You could really go crazy.
Speaker 4: With it, Shin critters, Shien critters, Shen gremlins too.
Speaker 2: That's what we want to see, all right?
Speaker 4: You ready to look at some stuff about the plot.
Speaker 2: Let's do it well.
Speaker 4: Of course, we start with that beautiful Toho logo. I
Speaker 4: know I've said this on the show before, but it
Speaker 4: makes me feel so good every time I see the
Speaker 4: Toho logo, Really, something in my chest just relaxes.
Speaker 1: There's something about how it looks like there's light shining
Speaker 1: through glass on it that it feels like I am
Speaker 1: in the waiting room at an office for a professional
Speaker 1: that I trust, you know, like I don't know if
Speaker 1: I'm going to a doctor in this scenario or what
Speaker 1: I'm going to a Toho picture, and I trust that
Speaker 1: I'm going to be taken care of.
Speaker 4: You're in good hands. Yeah, Now, how to describe the
Speaker 4: score that plays with the opening credits. The music throughout
Speaker 4: this movie is generally rather strange in a way that
Speaker 4: I liked. It's got this opening jazz tune that makes
Speaker 4: me think a little bit of the Pink Panther. But
Speaker 4: after many cups of coffee and then once the singing starts,
Speaker 4: it gets really weird.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I guess the vibe is kind of hip and fun,
Speaker 1: at least until you start reading the subtitles. For me,
Speaker 1: for the opening theme song.
Speaker 4: Oh we'll get to that in a second. But also
Speaker 4: I love how the opening credits are full of monster
Speaker 4: fight clips, and there was one I genuinely laughed out loud.
Speaker 4: So it's showing Godzilla fighting with one of the spider monsters.
Speaker 4: I think that's the monster they fight originally in Son
Speaker 4: of Godzilla, and they show the fight again in this movie.
Speaker 4: And so it's showing this big spider and then there
Speaker 4: is just a freeze frame on the spider spraying spider
Speaker 4: juice out of its mouth.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Again, this is the movie that knows the kids out
Speaker 1: there want monsters. Know, people come to Godzola to sea monsters,
Speaker 1: and they're gonna start delivering right away.
Speaker 4: And I enjoy how the spider has a Sam Elliott mustache.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very furry. It's a disturbingly furry spider.
Speaker 4: It's a bristly spider. It's got like pink crystals for
Speaker 4: eyes and Sam Elliot upper lip.
Speaker 1: Just because they're using stock footage from old films though,
Speaker 1: doesn't mean they're not gonna go ahead and use footage
Speaker 1: from later on in the picture, which I always feel
Speaker 1: like is a little cheap in a movie. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to see the trailer is probably already
Speaker 1: ruined enough. I don't need the film itself ruining itself,
Speaker 1: because we do see like this really sick Judo throw
Speaker 1: from Godzilla where he drops a monster right on its head.
Speaker 1: And of course this is a scene from later on
Speaker 1: in the film. It's essentially like the finishing move Godzilla uses.
Speaker 4: That's so good. It's a triple dip. It's from another
Speaker 4: movie already, and then they show it to you twice
Speaker 4: in this movie, so you could see they were trying
Speaker 4: to pad out the run time. I think, well, then again,
Speaker 4: I don't know they would have had a credit sequence anyway.
Speaker 4: Maybe they just might as well, let's show that fight
Speaker 4: again in the credits.
Speaker 2: Why not.
Speaker 4: I totally accept your criticism of that as a move.
Speaker 4: But a lot of movies we have loved have done that.
Speaker 4: The Really Bloody Sword showed you the entire movie during
Speaker 4: the opening credits.
Speaker 1: They absolutely did. Yeah, sometimes you can you can pin
Speaker 1: it on like Western distributors of movies from Europe or Asia,
Speaker 1: and clearly it's just like, well, let's keep them interested
Speaker 1: so they don't leave the theater or drive away from
Speaker 1: the drive in. But yeah, this is the original vision
Speaker 1: for the pictures, So you can't blame it on anybody else.
Speaker 4: Oh, but let's come back to it. So it's singing
Speaker 4: the song through the opening credits and they play it
Speaker 4: again later on. What is the deal with the lyrics here?
Speaker 4: They are intriguing.
Speaker 1: An energetic female vocalist that, according to the subtitles, is
Speaker 1: basically saying, don't be afraid of monsters, kids. Monsters are
Speaker 1: actually themselves shocked by the real threat industrial pollution, a.
Speaker 4: Theme that would become central to the later film Godzilla
Speaker 4: versus Hetero, which is the one we previously covered on
Speaker 4: Weird House before. Hetera is just a wicked pollution monster
Speaker 4: who like powers up by huffing smokestacks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in that movie, it's like the central theme and
Speaker 1: the threat at the center of the film is the
Speaker 1: physical embodiment of that real world threat. In this movie,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about this. I guess it kind of
Speaker 1: helps to ground the film in a world where the
Speaker 1: monsters have lost their power. Later much later in the picture,
Speaker 1: the monsters the kaiju are compared to gods, and if
Speaker 1: we're to take that and run with it, back to
Speaker 1: the beginning of the picture. Here, this is like we're
Speaker 1: living in the Twilight of the Gods. This is a
Speaker 1: world that has lost its faith. The grown ups have
Speaker 1: lost their faith anyway, and the only people who really
Speaker 1: have faith in the gods aka big rubber monsters are
Speaker 1: the children.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's exactly right. But a theme of
Speaker 4: this song, apart from the thing about the pollution, yeah,
Speaker 4: is explicitly about the monsters being weakened somehow. Like one
Speaker 4: part says says, the monsters are crying, why is earth
Speaker 4: such a hard place to live?
Speaker 2: Oh, that's the leering.
Speaker 4: And then another part is I'm paraphrasing for this part,
Speaker 4: but it's like wham bam, crash. You can smash everything,
Speaker 4: but still it's not easy being a monster.
Speaker 2: See.
Speaker 1: This is again why they probably had to have a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of monster footage at the beginning of the picture.
Speaker 1: You can't have this be the first thing kids watch.
Speaker 1: They're gonna lose all hope.
Speaker 4: But anyway, as the credits finish out, we see we
Speaker 4: see some setting. It's the industrial I think it's supposed
Speaker 4: to be Kawasaki, but it's an industrial area of Japan
Speaker 4: with a lot of I don't know, oil refineries and
Speaker 4: factories and just smokestacks pouring smog everywhere, a barren world
Speaker 4: populated only by smoke and factories and trucks. But amidst
Speaker 4: this unforgiving landscape, we see a couple of sweet kids.
Speaker 4: ITCHI row our main kid. He's walking along holding hands
Speaker 4: with his friends at Chico and they are there. I
Speaker 4: guess they're trying to make their way home after school
Speaker 4: through this infernal landscape of suet and asthma.
Speaker 1: It reminds me once again of last week's picture, Let's
Speaker 1: Sleeping corpses Lie, where we start off in a very
Speaker 1: industrial British city and we're supposed to be Manchester, I
Speaker 1: think is Manchester. And the only thing that really calls
Speaker 1: out like any kind of like spirit of fun or
Speaker 1: rebellion or anything like that is the streaker in this film,
Speaker 1: it's the children. Like everything is kind of gross and
Speaker 1: grimy and busy, but these children are just a basket
Speaker 1: of joy, you know, holding the hands against all the
Speaker 1: grime behind them. And I have to say, I really
Speaker 1: love these kids, especially each hero played by Yazaki here,
Speaker 1: he's just so good. It's just a really solid kid's performance,
Speaker 1: Like there's a lot of energy and authenticity to it.
Speaker 1: That you don't always see in a child actor.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is a cute kid. I was a little
Speaker 4: confused as to why some reviewers had in the past
Speaker 4: written stuff that they considered Ichiro annoying. But I think
Speaker 4: maybe I knew I was reading something that made me
Speaker 4: understand a little better. I think it's possible that part
Speaker 4: of the reaction to this character was that some people
Speaker 4: were hearing a particular dub of the film where his
Speaker 4: lines were dubbed by an adult who did this really nasal,
Speaker 4: whiny voice for all of his speaking parts. And I
Speaker 4: can't be sure, but I think that dub exists, and
Speaker 4: I think that is not the version I saw, So
Speaker 4: I don't know if that is the reason for sure,
Speaker 4: but that would partially explain it, because I thought eachio
Speaker 4: is great.
Speaker 1: That is a great, great point, and that's probably the reason.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of a film like say, House by
Speaker 1: the Cemetery. It's Bob is Bob the kid and then.
Speaker 4: Bob, yes, Bob the demon child with an adult voice.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's clearly dubbed by a grown woman, and it
Speaker 1: creates a weird energy in the film. You kind of
Speaker 1: there's an uncanniness to him that, and there's a certain
Speaker 1: amount of uncanny is that's supposed to be there, and
Speaker 1: I mean there's this added layer of the uncanny and
Speaker 1: in a picture like this, Yeah, Eachiro is not supposed
Speaker 1: to be uncanny. He's not supposed to be weird. And
Speaker 1: you get the wrong dub on there, and it's going
Speaker 1: to totally change the feeling you get exactly.
Speaker 4: So I think that may very well be what's going on.
Speaker 4: But so we follow Eachiro around and a lot of
Speaker 4: the early parts of the movie are just sort of
Speaker 4: establishing his daily life and his struggles, and uh, maybe
Speaker 4: we could talk a little bit about elements from from
Speaker 4: each of these these things that are established. So one
Speaker 4: theme of the movie is bullying. Eachi Ro is consistently
Speaker 4: bullied by a gang of bigger kids who are led
Speaker 4: by this this sadist bully king named Gabara. So we
Speaker 4: see them knock eachi Ro over on purpose as they
Speaker 4: run by, and they taunt him and they call him
Speaker 4: weak and they make him feel helpless, and you really
Speaker 4: feel for eachi Row like there's a you know, these
Speaker 4: moments where the camera just lingers on his face as
Speaker 4: he looks frustrated and sad and knows that he can't
Speaker 4: really fight back.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, he's a good kick, and he
Speaker 1: just doesn't want to make anything worse. He doesn't want
Speaker 1: to escalate things.
Speaker 4: Then you've got another theme, So bullying is one. Another
Speaker 4: theme is Ichiro's love of the Kaiju. I wonder what
Speaker 4: you thought about this. Does the movie take place in
Speaker 4: a world basically in the real world where monsters don't exist,
Speaker 4: but the children are familiar with the existing Godzilla movies,
Speaker 4: or does it take place in a world where the
Speaker 4: events of the previous Godzilla movies are known of as
Speaker 4: real events that have previously happened in the world. I
Speaker 4: couldn't tell which, but I think maybe it's the former,
Speaker 4: Like he's literally seen the films.
Speaker 1: I think, so if I had to choose one, I
Speaker 1: would go in that direction, just because basically, I mean,
Speaker 1: no particular thing leads me to think that they'll There
Speaker 1: is a part where we see a Kaiju action figure
Speaker 1: or doll, but I think we saw one in Hetera
Speaker 1: as well, So that's that alone is not an indicator.
Speaker 1: But I think overall, I get the feeling that, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a world in which the monsters are only
Speaker 1: on TV and in the minds of children.
Speaker 4: So Itchiro is having monster paradolia, Like a car goes
Speaker 4: by and he's like, Oh, that car, the screeching, it
Speaker 4: sounds just like Manila. It goes key ki key.
Speaker 1: I don't think I ever heard Manila make a kiki
Speaker 1: ki sound, unless that's supposed to be the donkey sound.
Speaker 1: Maybe we're getting into that whole situation where we're not
Speaker 1: sure what or not. It just it varies what sound
Speaker 1: an animal makes based on the language in which you're
Speaker 1: describing it. So maybe donkeys go kiki ki in Japanese.
Speaker 4: Yeah, maybe I couldn't say okay. So that's another theme.
Speaker 4: Ichiro he get is bullied. He loves the monsters. But
Speaker 4: also a theme of this movie is loneliness, and I
Speaker 4: think it tackles that in a pretty head on way.
Speaker 4: Ichiro's family here is working class, and both of his
Speaker 4: parents work long hours to make ends meet, and he
Speaker 4: is often home alone after school fending for himself. So
Speaker 4: we see a scene where he's walking by the train
Speaker 4: tracks in this old, busted industrial landscape and a train
Speaker 4: starts going by, and the conductor in the front of
Speaker 4: the train or the engineer, I guess whatever. The guy
Speaker 4: in the front of the train is his dad, and
Speaker 4: his dad calls out, oh, hey, Chio, I'm working tonight.
Speaker 4: Be good till your mom gets home. And then actually,
Speaker 4: after this, we stick with Echiro's father for a little bit.
Speaker 4: We see him take a smoke break with his coworker,
Speaker 4: and we learn that the father wants to save up
Speaker 4: enough money that they can move away from the smog,
Speaker 4: move out to the country or to a place where
Speaker 4: the air is clean. So you see that he's working
Speaker 4: long hours too, I guess, try to get his family
Speaker 4: to this better place. But then also in the scene,
Speaker 4: we learn from his coworker who's reading a newspaper that
Speaker 4: there are a couple of bank robbers on the loose,
Speaker 4: leeing police with a suitcase full of money, and these
Speaker 4: are Chekhov's bank robbers. They will show up later, but
Speaker 4: we learned that they took fifty million yen, and you
Speaker 4: can just see Itchio's father dreaming about what he could
Speaker 4: do with money like that. Now we come back to bullying.
Speaker 4: There's another bullying scene where Ichiro and Sachiko are walking
Speaker 4: around and Ichiro finds a vacuum tube in the grass.
Speaker 4: I guess because this is an area that used to
Speaker 4: be like an electronics factory, and he finds it, and
Speaker 4: then the bullies come up on him and they take
Speaker 4: away his vacuum tube and they call him a baby,
Speaker 4: and they like mock him to his face. And for
Speaker 4: some reason, I've found something very heart wrenching about the
Speaker 4: theft of Ichiro's vacuum tube. I think it's because he
Speaker 4: found it. And this kind of hit me in a
Speaker 4: strong way because I have memories of being a little
Speaker 4: kid and finding a treasure of some kind just lying
Speaker 4: out on the ground somewhere. That's a powerfully nostalgic kind
Speaker 4: of memory. And I have one specific memory of something
Speaker 4: like this happening to me. And I was out at
Speaker 4: some event, I think, and I found a loose spool
Speaker 4: of tape from an audio cassette and I was like
Speaker 4: holding it and letting it blow in the wind, and
Speaker 4: then an older kid took it away from me and
Speaker 4: threw it over the edge of a bridge, and that, yeah,
Speaker 4: that really.
Speaker 2: Stuck with me.
Speaker 4: So so anyway, I felt the vacuum tube scene very hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this felt like a very authentic moment in this picture, Like,
Speaker 1: because I think we can all we all have memories
Speaker 1: like that where we find some sort of weird bit
Speaker 1: of discarded technology or orgistrate garbage, but it's fascinating and
Speaker 1: we want to want to keep it. And and then
Speaker 1: also the childhood insult of him being a baby, Like
Speaker 1: I definitely I don't have memories of this myself, but
Speaker 1: I've seen that watching my son grow up, Like there
Speaker 1: was a period where to call someone a baby was
Speaker 1: the was the biggest insult, to the point where he
Speaker 1: would call the cat a baby, you.
Speaker 4: Know, if he was mad at the cat sick burn.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like it's it's clearly you know, it's clearly hurting Ichiro.
Speaker 1: But to hear this, but then there's also this kind
Speaker 1: of innocence to it, like these kids are so young,
Speaker 1: even their their cruelty has a certain innocence to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah. But then one more element of Itchiro's daily life
Speaker 4: we learn about is his friendship with Shinpey, the toymaker.
Speaker 4: And so when when he's coming home, I think, I
Speaker 4: guess Shinpey is like maybe his neighbor. And so he
Speaker 4: comes home and sees him working on this this electronic device,
Speaker 4: the kiddie computer that shows people landing on the moon,
Speaker 4: and it's clear that you know, he's welcome hanging out
Speaker 4: in this guy's shop and they're friendly, and Shinpey is
Speaker 4: a good, you know, nurturing influence on this kid. But
Speaker 4: it's also funny because he makes this computer. He expects
Speaker 4: Ichio to be all impressed. But what Ichiro says is, Ah,
Speaker 4: the Moon's okay, but there's somewhere else I'd rather go
Speaker 4: Monster Island. And then he just starts listing all the monsters,
Speaker 4: and I was like, oh, this also made me. This
Speaker 4: seems authentic. Don't don't kids love to list all the
Speaker 4: monsters or list all the whatevers?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: God, they do. And I'm not going to be a hypocrite.
Speaker 1: I'm also gonna admit I love to list the monsters
Speaker 1: and I've never grown out of that. But yeah, like,
Speaker 1: my son will definitely list all the Pokemon, all the
Speaker 1: dungeons and dragons, dragon varieties, and I think that's great.
Speaker 1: I love it too.
Speaker 2: I love a good monster list.
Speaker 4: But I think we see one of the reasons that
Speaker 4: Ichio is so infatuated with the monsters. He talks about
Speaker 4: how they're all stronger than Gabberra, his bully, and He's like,
Speaker 4: you know, they don't have to worry about bullies. They
Speaker 4: can do what we what they want. They're free because
Speaker 4: they're strong. And then eventually we see Ichiro go back
Speaker 4: home and there's kind of a lonely snack scene where he,
Speaker 4: you know, his mom left out a snack for him.
Speaker 4: He has that. He watches some TV and he watches
Speaker 4: like The New where he learns about the bank robbers
Speaker 4: stealing the fifty million yen. He switches, I think, to
Speaker 4: a soap opera where the people are like saying, oh,
Speaker 4: I love you, and then he there's a really funny
Speaker 4: moment where he I can't remember the phrase he says
Speaker 4: in Japanese, but the translation is he just goes yuck.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But then it segues to him playing around with this
Speaker 4: like toy radio he's put together that he dreams like
Speaker 4: of calling Monster Island, which segues into a dream of
Speaker 4: him visiting Monster Island. And this is going to be
Speaker 4: one of the major themes for the rest of the
Speaker 4: movie is these recurring visits in dreams to Monster Island
Speaker 4: where all the monsters live, where we're going to see
Speaker 4: a lot of fights between monsters. So much of this
Speaker 4: is going to be footage from other movies, but I
Speaker 4: think some original stuff too. And this is where Ichiro
Speaker 4: meets Manila, the son of Godzilla, and they become friends
Speaker 4: because they have a lot in common. It turns out
Speaker 4: Manila is also being bullied I a monster on Monster Island,
Speaker 4: and that monster has the same name as Echio's bully.
Speaker 4: They're both called Gabbara.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: By the way, he initially dream travels to Monster Island
Speaker 1: via direct flight, which I thought was a marvelous dream sequence. Yes,
Speaker 1: I love how in these scenes with Manila he's he's
Speaker 1: also as He's like, hey, I hear you know Godzilla.
Speaker 1: Do you think you could introduce me to him? Because
Speaker 1: I'd love to climb on his back, And Manila's like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I see, I'll see what Manila talks in this.
Speaker 1: By the way, yes, Manila says, well, I'll see what
Speaker 1: I can do. But you know, Godzilla, he didn't like
Speaker 1: me around all the time because he gets onto me
Speaker 1: for not being strong enough, for not standing up for
Speaker 1: myself enough. And of course that again mirrors the situation
Speaker 1: with each hero.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, that's right, because we actually do see a
Speaker 4: scene where Ichio's father says, you know, he he feels
Speaker 4: for his son, but he wishes he would stand up
Speaker 4: for himself. So we're gonna get some some slams, some
Speaker 4: smackdowns on the island. I think we see Godzilla fighting
Speaker 4: Ebi Rah. I think the Ebrah Horror of the Deep,
Speaker 4: the shrimp crayfish monster. We see various fights take place,
Speaker 4: and in a way, Ichio kind of like watches and
Speaker 4: learns from them. But he also learns from watching Son
Speaker 4: of Godzilla like like morph up and try to fight
Speaker 4: against Gabrah. He like he like grows and he and
Speaker 4: they fight and Gabra always wins at first, but you
Speaker 4: kind of like pick up some clues along the way
Speaker 4: about how he might beat him later on.
Speaker 1: Now, Gabra is pretty interesting. He's he's again our our
Speaker 1: main kaiju antagonist, and he is original of this picture.
Speaker 1: So many of the other Kaiju we encounter are ourtest
Speaker 1: clips from other scenes or maybe reused puppets even in
Speaker 1: the films that they that they originally appeared in. But
Speaker 1: Gabra exists for this picture. This is his first picture
Speaker 1: where we see this costume, and I think he's pretty great.
Speaker 1: I've read that he's supposed to resemble a mutated frog
Speaker 1: or toad, but he winds up with more feline features
Speaker 1: somehow kind of looks like a green panther.
Speaker 4: He's like a lizard cat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think these feelings of like cat similarities
Speaker 1: are also accentuated by he's green and scaly, but he
Speaker 1: has this shock of orange hair on the top of
Speaker 1: his head amid these various horns like this, this row
Speaker 1: of horns down his head as well, and I feel
Speaker 1: like the orange hair, the green skin, it kind of
Speaker 1: gives him a cartoon leprechaun. Look, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4: Yep, yep.
Speaker 1: Though I've of course that's not what they were going
Speaker 1: for here. I've read that what they were originally aiming
Speaker 1: for with this design was more of a something that
Speaker 1: alluded to the Japanese only, you know, kind of an
Speaker 1: ogre figure. And if you go to the wiki Zilla
Speaker 1: page for this monster, you can actually see some of
Speaker 1: the preliminary sketches the way they envision this creature. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I can definitely see a sense of the one here
Speaker 1: before it's realized in the suit.
Speaker 4: Oh, that almost kind of makes sense with so Gabra
Speaker 4: being like this bully who just waylays each hero while
Speaker 4: he's on the way home from school, like sits by
Speaker 4: the roadside and attacks him as he goes past. He's
Speaker 4: kind of like a bandit in a way, and that
Speaker 4: I think there's classically a little bit of overlap between
Speaker 4: the concepts of some ony and like banditry ideas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And I think also there are often ideas
Speaker 1: of lightning with the ony, and indeed Gabra here has
Speaker 1: an electricity attack that he uses, but he doesn't have
Speaker 1: a breath weapon. I thought that was interesting. He doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to have a projectile weapon, which I think is
Speaker 1: an interesting choice because a lot of times in these
Speaker 1: movies you see some sort of like a ranged specialist kaiju,
Speaker 1: and that's generally the that's a weak point for Godzilla
Speaker 1: or for Gamera, whoever's facing such a Kaiju, even though
Speaker 1: Godzilla of course has an amazing breath weapon that he
Speaker 1: can use a range.
Speaker 4: Now, for all of the kind of like sweet elements
Speaker 4: of this movie, there are also some things that ring
Speaker 4: kind of weird. One of them is when we're seeing
Speaker 4: Godzilla training son of Godzilla here training Manila how to
Speaker 4: use his radiation breath. He's he does it by like
Speaker 4: stomping on his tail. He's like, oh yeah, I step
Speaker 4: on your tail. That makes you really shoot the radiation.
Speaker 4: And until then he can only kind of like blow
Speaker 4: these like rings of radiation that don't really do anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I get like Godzilla's lesson here is that
Speaker 1: you must feel pain and and give in to your anger,
Speaker 1: Like he's basically giving him the dark side of the
Speaker 1: force spiel.
Speaker 4: You strike me down with all of your journey towards
Speaker 4: Monster Island will be complete.
Speaker 1: So again, there may be a generational divide on the
Speaker 1: message here, the parenting message of Godzilla. But I mean
Speaker 1: it's a music.
Speaker 4: In the picture, yes, I mean there are several things.
Speaker 4: There's also a real world thing where you know, there's
Speaker 4: a very nice message about giving eachiero confidence to stand
Speaker 4: up to his bullies. But I don't know if the
Speaker 4: exact way that he does that in the end is
Speaker 4: the best. But I think he kind of like fights them,
Speaker 4: but then he also at their goating, like pulls a
Speaker 4: mean pryank on a guy who's just trying to paint
Speaker 4: a sign and gets him covered in paint. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and this was what the bullies were trying
Speaker 1: to get him to do earlier in the picture. They're like, hey,
Speaker 1: see that guy painting the sign on the top of
Speaker 1: the ladder, you should go blow the horn on his motorcycle.
Speaker 1: So he falls off the ladder and he's like, of course,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do that. I'm a good kid,
Speaker 1: and they make fun of him, and then later he's like,
Speaker 1: I'm a brave kid. Now watching me go make that
Speaker 1: man fall off the ladder, and he does so.
Speaker 4: I think that's a little confused there. But there's another
Speaker 4: major plot line I don't think I'm going to go
Speaker 4: into great detail on unless there's anything about it you
Speaker 4: wanted to hit rob But a major part of the
Speaker 4: real world plot, apart from what's happening in the Dreams
Speaker 4: of Monster Island, is the developing story about the bank
Speaker 4: robbers with the fifty million yen who are hiding out
Speaker 4: in a nearby factory. I think it's near the place
Speaker 4: where Ichiro found the vacuum tube, and ultimately he is
Speaker 4: kidnapped by these bank robbers because we know Itchiro loves
Speaker 4: to like find and pick up treasures, and one of
Speaker 4: the treasures he finds and picks up is a driver's
Speaker 4: license dropped by one of the robbers, and uh, now
Speaker 4: he knows who they are, so they have to kidnap him,
Speaker 4: and then ultimately he has to outsmart them with tricks
Speaker 4: and traps, and after the robbers are caught, there's this
Speaker 4: very interesting scene where it's almost like the movie is
Speaker 4: telling us the moral of the story and like the
Speaker 4: press hail little Ichiro is a hero, and Ichiro gives
Speaker 4: credit for his heroism too, Manila to the monster from
Speaker 4: the Godzilla movies and uh and there. So there's this
Speaker 4: exchange where the toy maker his friend Shinpey, is hanging
Speaker 4: out there near all of the reporters and he explains
Speaker 4: to them. He says, he means Manila the monster. I
Speaker 4: think I understand. He's like a higher power. And one
Speaker 4: of the reporters asks for clarification. He says a higher power,
Speaker 4: and Shinpey says, that's right. Adults believe in gods, so
Speaker 4: why can't children have their own gods too, like Manila?
Speaker 4: And it's kind of a funny line, but oh, something
Speaker 4: stirred in me there.
Speaker 1: I absolutely agree. Yeah, this is this is one of
Speaker 1: my favorite parts of the picture really because I think
Speaker 1: it's it's rather insightful and accurate, and I think it's
Speaker 1: a thing that we've maybe touched on to some degree
Speaker 1: in our discussion of Godzilla on Weird House before, but
Speaker 1: here it's directly brought up in the picture. This idea
Speaker 1: that toy monsters an ultimately monster media in general, that
Speaker 1: these are icons that connect children in the natural world
Speaker 1: to the powerful realm of super beings. In this film
Speaker 1: localized on Monster Island, which one can easily compare to
Speaker 1: the various sacred mountains of various cultures around the world.
Speaker 1: So the monsters are strength and courage, they are the
Speaker 1: absolute personification or expression of emotion, and they have considerable
Speaker 1: power over the grown up human world while not being
Speaker 1: a part of that world. And of course we see
Speaker 1: a sequence in this where the humans come in jet
Speaker 1: planes to conquer Monster Island and Godzilla has to fight
Speaker 1: them off and destroy some some jet fighters. That sort
Speaker 1: of thing. I think that was maybe a scene from
Speaker 1: a previous picture. I'm not sure. It could kind of
Speaker 1: feel like filler and again checking off the boxes of
Speaker 1: what a monster movie should give you, but it also
Speaker 1: I think works in this sort of vision of what
Speaker 1: is what is the energy of the kaiju, and why
Speaker 1: is it so attractive to children. It's like it is
Speaker 1: big body energy incarnate, you know, and it is the
Speaker 1: expression of these emotions that there may be only beginning
Speaker 1: to understand at certain ages.
Speaker 4: I think that's all correct. And there was another angle
Speaker 4: in which I was thinking about this. Maybe this is
Speaker 4: too much of a reach, but it made me think
Speaker 4: about this is almost kind of painting a picture of
Speaker 4: a world highlighting the difference between like the gods of
Speaker 4: children and the gods of adults, which is where many
Speaker 4: adults might literally believe that the gods exist but don't
Speaker 4: take their lessons and their meaning to heart. Meanwhile, you
Speaker 4: can have children who can treat known fictional entities like
Speaker 4: the monsters of Godzilla like gods, and even though they
Speaker 4: don't literally believe they exist, they do take their meaning
Speaker 4: to heart. And so it's almost like a question of
Speaker 4: like adults taking their gods literally but not seriously, and
Speaker 4: children taking their gods seriously but not literally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it brings me back to another thing
Speaker 1: I think we've discussed in the show before, like this
Speaker 1: this space for mythology in our modern viewpoint, Like I
Speaker 1: don't think the world needs to be just truth and fiction.
Speaker 1: That it needs to be just the real and the unreal,
Speaker 1: you know, the difference between skeptical and fundamentalist viewpoints, Like
Speaker 1: I feel like there needs to be a room for mythology,
Speaker 1: and under that like a very loose version of mythology
Speaker 1: in which you have room for actual myths that have
Speaker 1: cultural resonance, but also fictional things, things like Godzilla, things
Speaker 1: like Star Wars, or any bit of media or imagination
Speaker 1: that ends up becoming meaningful to somebody.
Speaker 4: Yes, I think we should take Eachiro's attitude to heart
Speaker 4: right because he can find absolutely a raw core meaningfulness
Speaker 4: in his in his mythology without it being in fact
Speaker 4: true that Manila is a physical monster that exists in
Speaker 4: the world. Yeah, though, coming back to my question from earlier,
Speaker 4: I still don't know for sure whether the film is
Speaker 4: saying that he's just a character in a movie in
Speaker 4: the world of the film, or whether he was real.
Speaker 4: Not quite clear, but assuming it's the former, that it's
Speaker 4: a character in a.
Speaker 1: Movie, Yeah, Yeah, I like the ambiguity though in a
Speaker 1: way it works well with this kind of children's viewpoint
Speaker 1: of the world, a world in which yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe they are real. Maybe they are, it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: at the end because they're real to him. So this
Speaker 1: was a really fun one. I'm glad we did this one.
Speaker 1: I always have a certain amount of hesitation with Kaiju movies,
Speaker 1: just because you don't want to spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time on one that is just a monster suit film,
Speaker 1: Like there's so many. There are a lot of great
Speaker 1: monster suit films, so they've got to have something else
Speaker 1: going on in them to really be to really be
Speaker 1: worth talking about. And this film definitely had other things
Speaker 1: going for it besides some awesome monster battles. Well, I
Speaker 1: take that back. I wouldn't say the monster battles are
Speaker 1: awesome in this picture. Don't want this one just for
Speaker 1: the monster battles, but it provides a nice balance of things.
Speaker 4: Well, I agree, But I don't know. I might feel different.
Speaker 4: Maybe I'm just more gung ho about any any great
Speaker 4: big monster beat down.
Speaker 1: I didn't feel like Godzilla was ever in real danger
Speaker 1: in this one. I always knew he had this one handled.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't just Godzilla's battle. It was also Godzilla's
Speaker 1: son's battle. So there's a different, different dynamic going on here.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we're going to go ahead and close
Speaker 1: this one out, but we'd love to hear from everyone
Speaker 1: out there, if you have thoughts on all Monsters Attack,
Speaker 1: if you have other favorite Kaiju movies that you would
Speaker 1: like to suggest for the future on Weird House Cinema,
Speaker 1: or just discuss in general. You know, we read listener
Speaker 1: mail usually on our listener Mail episodes on Mondays in
Speaker 1: the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed, so we're
Speaker 1: happy to discuss all of that. There a reminder that
Speaker 1: we're primarily a science podcast with Core episodes on Tuesdays
Speaker 1: and Thursdays, Monster Factor Artifact episode on win and then
Speaker 1: on Friday, we set aside most serious concerns to just
Speaker 1: talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. And
Speaker 1: if you want to see a list of all the
Speaker 1: films we've done before, we can go to a couple
Speaker 1: of places. I blog about all these movies. At s
Speaker 1: Immuta music dot com. It's just a personal blog that
Speaker 1: I maintain that is mostly weird house stuff these days.
Speaker 1: And then if you go to letterbox dot com, it's
Speaker 1: l E T T e r box d dot com.
Speaker 1: That's a cool website where you can chronicle your own
Speaker 1: cinematic explorations and make lists and so forth. At ad Reviews,
Speaker 1: we have an account there. Our account is weird House,
Speaker 1: and we have a list there that has all the
Speaker 1: movies that we've discussed in order, and occasionally you'll get
Speaker 1: a glimpse ahead at what is about to come up
Speaker 1: for us.
Speaker 4: Huge thanks to our audio producer Jjposway. If you would
Speaker 4: like to get in touch with us with feedback on
Speaker 4: this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
Speaker 4: the future, or just to say hello, you can email
Speaker 4: us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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