David Vining's Blog, page 51

Space Amoeba

Toho’s final special effects science fiction film under its old studio system of contract players and Ishiro Honda’s final feature film for several years until Toho brought him back for the final Godzilla film of the Showa Era, Space Amoeba is an entertaining sendoff for the era, bringing together the basic narrative building blocks of this kind of film in the right amounts to work in combination with its interesting approach to the special effects behemoths that go stompy-stomp.

An unman...

All Monsters Attack

The Godzilla franchise had been trending towards kiddie for a few films, but this is the first in the series to actually be made explicitly for children. Released as part of the Toho Champion Matsuri, a festival program for children, All Monsters Attack was made very cheaply, very quickly, and reused a fair amount of footage from previous entries in the series, mostly Ebirah, Horror of the Deep. It’s easy to see how the Godzilla faithful would turn against this film. It’s barely a Godzilla f...

Latitude Zero

Based on a series of radio serials by Ted Sherdeman, Latitude Zero is a combination of utopian fantasy, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and The Wizard of Oz. It’s kind of an odd mix. It doesn’t really work. I am surprised at how good it looks, though. The budget was cut in half right before production because the American partner to Toho, Ambassador Productions, went bankrupt. With a distinct Star Trek The Original Series vibe (no idea if there was a direct influence or more of a general 60s s...

Destroy All Monsters

This was supposed to be the end of the whole Godzilla thing. Honda thought so, at least. It was a grand sendoff for everyone involved since the beginning with Honda, Eiji Tsuburaya, producer Tomoyuki Tanaka, and composer Akira Ifukube getting one final assignment from Toho to end the franchise on a grand note. And a grand note it is. This is epic silliness, and it is silly. However, Honda and Takeshi Kimura, while getting lost in the early nonsense for a bit, commit fully to doing the sillin...

King Kong Escapes

So much of the enjoyment of these kaiju films of the 60s is wrapped in how the third act plays out. If it’s generic monster smashy stuff, it can work decently. If it’s interesting in a new way, it can help to every so slightly elevate what came before. If it’s merely in line with pre-established character, it can almost save a film on its own. I think King Kong Escapes is the third of these, giving us an ending that fits the cultural impression of Kong, though not what actually came before. ...

Son of Godzilla

The return of Jun Fukuda to the Godzilla franchise pushes the whole affair more fully towards silliness and outright appeal to childish entertainment. Ishiro Honda did not approve, but he was not involved. There was almost always a certain seriousness to the monster action, making them real threats with puny humans underfoot, but the introduction of a kid monster, the child of our central hero monster who had gained favor with audiences over the years, pushes it all directly towards light-he...

Ebirah, Horror of the Deep

So much of what I get out of these monster movies from Japan in the 60s is how they take on the aspects of different genres to try and keep things interesting. This, the first Godzilla film not directed by Ishiro Honda since he was too busy to make Godzilla Raids Again, decides to take on the mantle of a James Bond film, but only the villain aspect of it. Like many of these films, it ends up being a showcase for Eiji Tsuburaya’s special effects work. Well, the work he supervised but was actu...

Come Marry Me

This is such a weird little film in the middle of science fiction and monster mashes from Ishiro Honda, and it really just seems to have come together because Toho wanted to use Honda’s bankable name on the project. It seems like a cheap little romance, something they could throw together pretty quickly, film on a handful of sets (with a couple of scenes on a boat at sea), and push out the door. It’s machine, studio filmmaking at its core, and the result is a small delight of a romantic come...

War of the Gargantuas

A direct sequel (with some small retconning) of Frankenstein vs. Baragon, War of the Gargantuas is mostly a generic Honda kaiju (or kaijin?) movie. There’s still the thin characters, the insistence on categorization as a major plot thread, and then Eiji Tsuburaya’s great special effects work. There’s an extra wrinkle in the final act that makes things slightly more interesting, though, so we have that in the end.

Two years after Frankenstein was supposedly killed fighting off first Barago...

Invasion of Astro-Monster

Huzzah! A Godzilla movie I actually like! Sure, it’s still not great cinema, but it doesn’t try to be. Invasion of Astro-Monster still only carries the modest ambition to entertain, but the writing is finally the kind of well-assembled series of events where character arcs and motives have bearings on the plot. It’s just about what I expect from B-movie efforts, to be honest. Throw on top Eiji Tsuburaya’s special effects work, and you’ve got an entertaining package of a film.

The two astr...