Fortunately, where I live, they don't have giant monsters. Someone must have wiped them all out.
However, in the land of cinema, not only do huge menaces still exist, they positively thrive. And so, in light of a recent comments section demand by Killdumpster, I'm here to ask what is your favourite movie about giant monsters.
This isn't as easy a subject for me to discuss as I would have imagined, as thinking about it has made me realise there aren't that many giant monster movies that grab me. I do have a liking for all the old Japanese Godzilla films but my appreciation for them is purely ironic. Apart from the very first one, I wouldn't, for even one second, claim they're actually good films.
I do have an appreciation for the original King Kong but wouldn't claim to love it, I also have a soft spot for the 1976 remake but have never yet managed to make it all the way through the Peter Jackson version, finding it far too long for my liking.
I have a cheery emotional attachment to the original Mighty Joe Young but I suppose that really doesn't count as a monster movie, anymore than Digby, the Biggest Dog in the World does.
As mentioned a few days ago, the United Kingdom gave the world Gorgo but, other than that, I'm struggling to think of any British giant monster movies - apart from Konga, in which Michael Gough's mad scientist turns a chimpanzee into a huge gorilla and then gets it to kill people. Oddly, both Konga and Gorgo were given comic book adaptations by Steve Ditko, for Charlton.
When it comes to Hollywood, there are such wonders as The Valley of Gwangi, with its cowboys vs dinosaur hijinks. This is, of course, a classic, thanks to its Ray Harryhausen effects - as are The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and It Came From Beneath the Sea. It should also be noted that Harryhausen gave us 20 Million Miles to Earth, featuring a rapidly growing space monster on the loose in Post-War Italy.
And recent years have seen no shortage of American giant monster movies, with the most memorable to me being Cloverfield and Pacific Rim.
Cloverfield entertained me enough on first viewing but an attempt at a second watch left me bored and annoyed by its found-footage format.
I've never been able to work out whether I like Pacific Rim or not. However, I do know that I like the monsters in it.
South Korea famously gave us The Host which I still, to this day, have never got round to seeing. I can, therefore, pass no judgement on it but it looks promising.
So, at the end of all this, what conclusions have I come to about what my favourite giant monster movie is?
In retrospect, I think I'm going to have to go for 20 Million Miles to Earth because I like the idea of an endlessly growing monster, I like the Italian setting, I like the charm of Harryhausen's effects and I like that we get a tragic (for the monster) climax at the Colosseum. The ending may owe an awful lot to that of King Kong but it does it with style.
But those are just my random thoughts on the matter. If you have any monster movies you admire, love or revere, you're free to say so in the comments section below.
If you don't, you're also free to say so in the comments section below. This site has never been one to discourage outspoken apathy, which, along with unstoppable monsters, surely has to be the greatest and most underrated force in human history.
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43 comments:
The Host is worth a go, Steve, though if I recall, one of the japanese protaganists has unfeasibly dyed Mick Hucknallish ginger hair, which you can't stop looking at even when the monster is on screen.
Me, I'd go for the aforementioned Valley Of Gwangi ( the cough cough 'inspiration' for 2000AD's cowboy vs. dinosaur epic Flesh ) or how about Gorgo, which was always on when I was a kid. Haven't seen it in 40 years, but seem to remember it was sort of a british Godzilla, except an even bigger monster appeared at the end, which turned out to be Gorgo's mum. Or did I dream that?
You certainly didn't dream it, Pete. That's exactly what happened in Gorgo.
My two favorite "kaiju" films are Space Amoeba aka Yog, Monster from Space & War of the Gargantuas.
Space Amoeba is about an entity that came to earth on a fallen satellite and possessed various sea creatures, growing them to enormous size to cause mayhem. Also contains underlying themes about humans greed and man's ability to rise to heroic levels. Highly recommend.
War of the Gargantuas is technically a sequel to Frankenstein Conquers the World, which was originally conceived as Frankenstein Vs Godzilla. There were to hairy Bigfoot-like monsters, one good, the other evil. The green evil one would grab people, chew them up, then spit out their clothes like a hocker. Shocked the scrap outta me when I was a kid.
Here's a bit of Kaiju trivia. Inoshiro Honda had intended for Godzilla to be a giant octopus.
I think he must have had an octopus fixation, because they appear in King Kong vs Godzilla, Frankenstein Conquers the World (alternate ending) & War of the Gargantuas. Space Amoeba contains a giant squid.
I think the Japanese just have a thing for tentacles in general, as evidenced by anime I have viewed.
I have all Harryhausen's movies, as well as King Kong's & Godzilla's in my insane DVD library. I enjoy all of them, but I prefer Godzilla as an elemental force then the silly "hero".
One exception might be Godzilla Vs The Smog Monster. Saw it on a Saturday matinee and was blown away by how the monster would fly, spewing fumes that disintegrate people into skeletons. It kinda had a hippie environmental theme to it, with an annoying song that popped up here and there. I'm not a "tree-hugger" by any sense of the word, but I believe we should keep the planet as tidy as we can.
Here in the states during the sixties, there was an advertising campaign featuring an American Indian who would shed a tear every time he saw bales of trash thrown everywhere.
Pete, I agree that The Host is entertaining, even though I really don't care for movies heavily ladened with cgi. Those poor noodle venders!
Steve, have you ever seen Reptilicus? It was a Danish film, where Copenhagen was ravaged by an acid-spitting dragon marionette. Horrorible efx, but so much goofy fun.
I got into an argument with a guy about Valley of Gwangi. He said it was scifi, and I believe it's a western with dinosaur themes. I have it in the western section of my library.
Another Kaiju movie I can recommend is Dogora, Monster from Outer Space. A giant ghostly floating jellyfish that feeds off of carbon, at first coal then diamonds, then would eventually consume the World. It actually induced a nightmare in my young sleep. I was quite inactive.
Meant to say "It was quite impactive." Am doing laundry, messaging and drinking beer at the same time.
Steve, Europe isn't completely safe from giant monsters. Lair of the White Worm had possibilities, even though the titular creature only makes an appearance towards the end.
The Gamera movies were filled with wacky fun. In his list of adversaries were a laser-spitting giant vampire bat-beast, a space squid (there's those tentacles again) and a blade-headed beast controlled by alien-chicks that were going to eat the brains of earth boys they kidnapped, to supposively give them knowledge of our planet. Like I said, wacky fun.
Ultraman & Johnny Socko fall into the same category. Couldn't get home from school fast enough to watch them on tv.
Two non-Kaiju Inoshiro Honda films that I also recommend are H-Man & Attack of the Mushroom People.
Reptilicus was (like Konga and Gorgo) adapted by Charlton for a comic book. After the first two issues, their license for the copyright and trademark expired, so they changed the name to Reptisaurus, and it continued for six more issues.
I remember coming home from school and watching Ultraman, which was like a daily kaiju mini-movie. Never saw the Johnny Socko TV series, but I did see the movie version, Voyage Into Space. Don't know offhand if that was filmed as a feature-length movie to begin with, or if it was compiled from episodes of the series.
The Gamera movies were, indeed, wacky fun.
Ever hear of a Japanese movie called Monster From a Prehistoric Planet (aka Gappa the Triphibian Monster)? It was basically a remake (or rip-off) of Gorgo.
War of the Gargantuas sort of made sense after I learned that it was a sequel to Frankenstein Conquers the World. Although it still seemed more like a remake than a sequel. I didn't know until now that Frankenstein Conquers the World was originally conceived as Frankenstein vs. Godzilla. But I had read somewhere that Willis O' Brien had planned to do Frankenstein vs. King Kong, which eventually somehow morphed into King Kong vs. Godzilla.
I saw Dogora when I was a teenager, and what impressed me was Akiko Wakabayashi. She was also in Ghidrah (1965) and The Lost World of Sinbad. She and Mie Hama were both in Key of Keys (that Japanese spy-action movie that Woody Allen dubbed into What's Up Tiger Lily), King Kong vs. Godzilla, and the Bond movie You Only Live Twice. Mie was also in King Kong Escapes.
Objectively, I would say that the best giant monster movies were King Kong(the 1933 original), Them, and Gorgo. But my personal favorites would also include King Kong vs. Godzilla, Ghidrah, Destroy All Monsters, and Godzilla vs. Megalon. Guilty pleasures.
Harryhausen's classics are a whole category in themselves.
TC, yes, I have Gappa in my collection. The plot is virtually identical to Gorgo, just adding the cave talisman removal, also mom AND dad coming to retrieve the baby. Talk about standard family values.
While I can watch any Kaiju films at the drop of a hat, Rodan, X from Outer Space, etc, I never cared for Mothra.
The hairy butterfly or the caterpillars. I found the twin fairy girls, that spoke in unison, extremely annoying (the original pair were a singing duo called the Peanuts, Japanese pop music has come a LONG way since then.)
Any Godzilla movie I watch with them in it I keep the remote handy. I just can't handle the "Mothra Song" or the bad improv jazz ritual dances for that lame-ass bug.
It's about time for me to "open a can of worms"
I believe, since Ultraman was a year ahead than the creation of Mar-Vell, he was the inspiration for Marv's costume.
The poss of the coveted t-shirt designed by Gene Colan highly suggests this theory as a possibility.
TC, was primarily thinking about giant Japanese monster suits, but you brought up Them, starring James Arness (the original THING and also of Gunsmoke fame).
In that ballpark I'll toss in The Deadly Mantis & Tarantula (possibly Clint Eastwood's first film appearance, as a pilot that fire-bombed the spider).
War of the Gargantuas was so weird I had to watch the whole thing. That green gargantua fought a giant octopus and then ate some poor Japanese woman, then he spit out the dress. That's pretty hardcore.
There was one I saw when I was a kid, and I forget the name but I assume it was Japanese, where this giant statue comes to life after a local village got slaughtered by some warlord. I don't know if it was a statue of Buhdda or what, but it's face turned mean and it started clobbering the warlord's army.
Yikes! Scared the dickens outta me.
M.P.
Also, that scene in The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms where the monster eats that cop freaked me out when I was a kid.
M.P.
MP, oh boy. I remember the Beast/20,000F scarfing down the cop. Blew my young mind too!
The stone statue that kicks everyone's ass is called Majin. He probably could put a hurting on every single monster that was mentioned in this blog so far.
If you haven't seen the 2016 movie Colossal, do so immediately. It takes the original 'Godzilla as a metaphor' concept and does something new with it. Stunning film.
For me it has to be the carrot from The Great Vegetable Rebellion, a Lost In Space classic.
MP-
Just double checked, and the original Japanese name of the monster is DAIMAJIN. I have his first two movies, but there is a third PLUS A TV SERIES! YIKES!
Dangermash, I hope you're being sarcastic. Even Bill Mumy says that episode was the lowest the series ever got. Dr. Smith turned into human celery? Oh man. To think that when I was 5 or 6 I took that show seriously.
Killdumpster, I wanna take the opportunity to apologize for the crack I made about Pittsburgh the other day. I've been there, and it's truly a great town, with a culture all it's own. I was merely joking.
If you saw the podunk town I grew up in, you would laugh.
We were so small we couldn't afford a village idiot, so we had to take turns.
I think my dog was counted on the census as a registered voter. Knowing him, he was probably a Republican.
Thanks for telling me the name of that movie, because I would like to check that out on U-Tube.
M.P.
I still prefer the original 1933 version of King Kong rather than the remakes. I first saw the 1933 King Kong on TV in December 1976 - 43 years after its' original release. It's amazing to think that next year will be 43 years since 1976 !!
The first film I ever saw at the cinema featured giant monsters - "When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth" which I saw in 1973, aged 7. It was a cheap sequel to "One Million Years BC" and some of the monsters were just ordinary lizards in close-up. I wasn't fooled!
Has anybody seen "Night Of The Lepus" about giant killer rabbits?
The Amazing Colossal Man! Goes through the entire range of human emotions.
Heh. It's all good, brother. No offense taken. I have a better sense of humor than the average "yinzer", and we beat up our city all the time even though we love it.
Colin, I have seen Night of the Lepus. I must confess that, hard as it tried, it totally failed to convince me that rabbits are terrifying.
Charlie, The Amazing Colossal Man is a tragedy worth of Shakespeare himself.
Timothy, I shall have to hunt down Colossal and see what I make of it.
Killdumpster, I don't think I've seen Reptilicus although the title rings a bell. I agree with you that The Valley of Gwangi isn't science fiction. I'd see it more as Fantasy.
Everyone else, thanks for your comments so far.
Don't mo k the carrot man, Killdumpster. Despite the dodgy costume and the need to be regularly watered, I don’t think he'd look out of place in Ant Man's 1960s rogues gallery.
Clint Eastwood's first speaking role was as a lab technician in Revenge of the Creature, a sequel to The Creature From the Black Lagoon. But, yeah, he was also in Tarantula as one of the fighter pilots who take out the monster with napalm.
"Go ahead, arachnid punk. Make my day."
The ending shows the giant spider corpse burning just a few feet from the town, and the spreading fire looks like it would be as big a menace as the giant spider.
The NYPD cop with a .38 revolver shooting at the Beast From 20,000 Fathoms is the very definition of the old Army saying, "More guts than brains."
Majin and Talos (from Jason & the Argonauts) scared the snot out of me when I was nine or ten. To this day, I sometimes have nightmares about giant warrior statues coming to life.
Jason & the Argonauts is a Harryhauesn masterpiece, but Nigel Green didn't make a very convincing Hercules.
Charlie, I really have a hard time getting through any movie that was done by Bert I. Gordon, now that I'm no longer 7 years old. At least Colossal Man's sequel War of the Colossal Beast at least had him look more menacing than a giant Yul Brynner in diapers.
Man, the Beginning of the End, with Peter Graves & grasshoppers, Empire of the Ants,etc. Ugh.
I can't watch any of that guy's stuff unless it's Mystery Science Theater 3000.
I think Gordon did Earth Vs The Spider. I'm not sure, but that was another winner.
Lol. Yul Brenner in diapers indeed! But see, that is what makes Colossal Man truly tragic. I just watched it again a year ago on YouTube. Realistically (!) I imagine he would have been given a huge diaper to wear and had food delivered by the truck load! All these other monster films are implausible totally but not this one!
Now that you put it that way, I see your point. I own both, so ill watch them both, with this new perspective.
I always had a soft spot for the original Attack of the 50 Ft Woman. "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned". Especially if she's at Giant-Man level.
Steve-
Cheers for the excellent post. It was both thought-provoking and immensely enjoyable. Two great things that go great together.
The bad thing is I may have to change my name to Cyborg-dumpster. Maybe that way I only have to prove I'm not COMPLETELY a "robot". Lol
You're welcome, Killdumpster.
Websites do seem to be very discriminatory against robots. I wouldn't be surprised if they get so enraged by it that they decide to go on a homicidal rampage.
KD or CD (not sure how your are self-identifying at this moment, given we now live in a land where you can decide at any moment your demographic, lol.)
The Attack of the 50 Ft Women sounds really,kind of, sort of sickening. I am not one to judge a book by its cover but on the surface it just sounds cruel since it is a woman and not a man. I mean, haven't woman suffered enough? You know what John Lennon said...
Actually, I hate to admit it, but I do judge a book by its cover. When I go into the library's section of books for sale, or a book store (increasingly rare) I look for the orange cover / spine because that seems to be the color for factual, historical stuff.
And it really doesn't matter you are from Pitt. I doubt it had much to do with anything. Me, on the other hand, growing up in Gary... I admit to being two-bricks short.
Don't feel too bad for the 50Ft. Woman. She kicks everybody's butt, and gets revenge on her cheating husband.
What about Them!, the greatest giant creature film ever. and the VLM (very Large man) in recent Tick series was interesting.
Them! has already been brought up. A worthy member of the "giant insect" club. Loaded with classic character actors. Far superior to Empire of the Ants.
Dangermash, I don't think the carrot man from Lost In Space qualifies as a "giant monster". Although in the first season Dr. Smith did grow to gigantic proportions.
Charlie, You may want to check that episode out. They should titled it "The Amazing Colossal Whiney Priss". Lol..
I forgot about the giant hairy cylops in the first season of Lost In Space. I was totally in awe of it when I was 5 years old.
While not gigantic in this day & age, today is the anniversary of McDonald's Big Mac. Created in my hometown of Pittsbburgh.
It was a giant in the fast food industry at one time, and I'm sure it has caused monster heart-attacks to people whom consumed too many.
While not a film, I believe the Big Mac could be considered an evil "giant monster".
Think I'm going out for a couple.
Empire of the Ants was rubbish, but I suppose any movie with Joan Collins as a nasty vixen can't be ALL bad.
Sadly, I've never seen it. I have seen Food of the Gods, which is terrible.
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