Book Club of Desolation #3: Blood Feast (1963), by H.G. Lewis

Blood Feast may not have been the first trash movie I watched in this life. That honor goes to the ever-amusing I Eat Your Skin. But it was just a few short years after my first trembling, awkward encounter with the subgenre that would define my entire rueful, piteous existence that Blood Feast became another famous first. It was my first naive intimation with trash literature. While I only recently embraced the idea that trash literature could really exist, a hunger was born in me on those lazy high school days where nothing seemed bigger than being harassed by my teachers for reading a book with a cover and title like that. In those days, trash movies filled me with a vim and vigor that has maybe faded a little. Day jobs, bills, and mental instability have caught up with me, and now it seems like there is so little time--or energy--for movies. But there is a new chase now, and Blood Feast: The Novel started it all. My descent into trash books has just begun, and just as Blood Feast: The Movie is a great starting destination for the fecund road trip of cinema's most grotesque and bizarre, Blood Feast: The Novel will be show you that your local library can host sideshows too. In H.G. Lewis' prose, you'll be prepared for greater guardians of the deeps, like Ron Haydock. And from there, you'll maybe--just maybe--be safe in making the jump to Harry Stephen Keeler...

The plot of the Blood Feast book is essentially the same as the Blood Feast movie. "Essentially" being the key word. Fuad Ramses is still getting up to the ol' sacrifice-body-parts-to-Ishtar racket, and the police are still chasing him as he schemes to host his deadly Egyptian Feast. The book knows that you know the movie. And so that's why Blood Feast decides not to focus on the plot of Blood Feast at all, instead building intrigue in the world in which the film was set. That's why we spend a solid couple of pages learning about how the police chief killed his brother by accidentally stabbing him with a heroin needle, or how one of Ramses' murder victims once employed a secretary whose boobs were so big that she couldn't use a typewriter. (I assume she was Liliana "Chesty Morgan" Wilczkowska, taking a rest from crushing gangsters' skulls.) By the time we reach twenty pages, we've encountered so many sub-subplots and characters that it reaches DC Universe levels of continuity management. Just as every sentence is backstory, every line of dialogue is a joke of "that kind" of '60s humor:

"'What's that?' Squigg said quickly.

"'My mother's wart,' Thornton said uncomfortably. 'She had one like yours. She had it taken care of.'

"'What's wrong with a wart, Mr. Thordown?'

"'Thornton, Mrs. Squagg.'

"'Squigg, Mr. Thordown. Get it right.'

"'Yes, ma'am.'"

Name mispronunciation! Subtler and funnier here than it ever was in Godzilla '98.

Or how about the list of evil books Fuad Ramses keeps on his shelf: Wyer's De Prestigious Doemonum, Leloyer's History of Spectres, and...Voegtle's Dennis the Menace. (Wait, who's Voegtle?)

There is a new central plot in this one. Thornton and the other police spend a great deal of the book pursuing not Fuad Ramses, but a Mr. Karl Snarling, Cat Hangman Extraordinaire. Indeed, Snarling has committed the horrible crime of putting a poor pussy (a literal cat, I should say) to the gallows, and for that, society must punish him. Never mind the insane cultist with a machete, who was an actual character in the movie

Even as the police ignore Fuad Ramses, we learn much more about him than we ever could have previously hoped for. Fuad Ramses is elevated to the level of pulp villains gods that also hosts Doc Savage's John Sunlight or The Shadow's Voodoo Master. You see, years ago in Egypt, little Fuad's father was a drug dealer for Sphinx Cigarettes, which offer such "brands" as Half-and-Hashish and Cocaine-Cocakola. Fuad was addicted to these sickly cigs for much of his youth, and because the drugs in Sphinxes fuck up your blood pressure, all of his hair fell out. Thus he was known to the criminal underworld as "the Elliptical Egyptian," for the shape of his head. Evidently his floury hair in the movie was a wig, then. In addition to murderously worshipping Ishtar and being a drug dealer, Ramses is also a practical joker, though he pursues these "jokes" out of pure belligerence. The pranks range from scaring housewives with fake ghosts to throwing smokebombs into crowded movie theaters. All in the name of being eeeevil. It is mind-blowing. Indeed, Blood Feast is a pulp novel of the highest caliber, and that exposes a deeper level of its beauty...

Blood Feast serves as a fascinating glimpse into a fascinating man. This is the mind of the man who changed trash-horror and exploitation forever. A mind nourished on the weirdest of yesteryear's pulps, mixed with carny nostalgia and a cartoon sense of humor. The sort of stuff that cannot be properly conveyed on film, not for the sort of money Herschell Gordon was working with. Lensed through a paperback market that barred no content as long as there were books on the shelf and cash flowing in. This wasn't the last of Lewis' expeditions into the world of printed fiction, but sadly later entries were toned down. The director also penned novelizations of his ludicrous Two Thousand Maniacs, as well as the less entertaining duo of Color Me Blood Red and Moonshine Mountain, before reverting strictly to filmmaking guide books. I've yet to find copies of the latter two novels, even if they, like the Maniacs book, don't stray as much from the source material as Blood Feast. If you've got 'em, I'll buy 'em...!

Blood Feast: The Novel reminds one of the essential truth of trash's beauty--it contains splinters of the creator's soul. Stream-of-consciousness has never been purer or stranger, because the consciousness in question has already proved its owner's talent on film. It's still hard to believe this one exists, all those years after high school. Let it take you away.

---

Image Source: Amazon

Blood Feast (1963), by H.G. Lewis

In previously entries, I may have touched on the idea of there being a canon of trash cinema. Trash doesn't necessarily conform to such structure but there are films that fans of amusingly or charmingly bad cinema hold sacred, and have touched on hundreds of times. Jean Rollin's Zombie Lake always shows up, and I'm sure much of the totius corporis of Jess Franco and Al Adamson instantly qualify. Blood Feast is one of the cornerstones of this canon--for it is a revolution, a shattering of old shackles bound to the ankles of horror films. This was when gore started to become big, once and for all. Director Herschell Gordon "H.G." Lewis finds himself today in the dubious honor of sharing the title "Godfather of Gore" with Lucio Fulci, and most of the movies Lewis went on to make became similar trash masterpieces. To review Blood Feast is redundant, but this site is about sharing a certain type of love for movies, no matter how many times before it's been said. And because Blood Feast means so much to the world of trash, it's a great first-time movie for neophytes for the genre.

Someone is running around killing people and stealing their body parts! Eyes, brains, kneecaps, and tongues are all ripped clean from a mad, unknown maniac! I shouldn't say "unknown," of course--the movie makes it no secret that the murderer is the cryptic Fuad Ramses, a caterer who also worships the goddess Ishtar. Ishtar demands blood! Blood that flows from the conclusion of the "Egyptian Feast," a meal of flesh that is catered to the most obnoxiously bad white person actors ever. There are a couple of cops who are chasing them but that doesn't really matter. What matters is flashbacks to ancient Egyptian flashbacks and, as always, the violence. Mostly the violence. It all concludes in the inside of a garbage truck, with a final wash of Technicolor gore.

Blood Feast is a classic by same merit that makes a "good" movie a classic--it is endlessly entertaining. It is a trash classic, however, because it does not make you think. Rather, it's sort of a middle finger to the movie of the genius. Like any trash film, it's probably not something you want to overindulge in if you value yourself as an intellectual or if you want to be comprehensible in film discussions. (As a self-confessed idiot I've enjoyed my life of self-sabotage.) But it's still an eye-opening experience to see something that has this much pure audience pull in it. The word "pure" is meant to serve a certain purpose here, because '60s gore-trash represents a kinder, gentler sort of graphic violence than the nihilistic punk stuff that would rise from the '70s. H.G. Lewis usually made sure to have fun with his movies. They're bright and colorful, even beyond the blood, so there's always a sunny aesthetic to them. And, there is always goofiness in them. The soundtrack is loaded with slapstick, and everyone, especially Fuad Ramses, overacts to high Heaven. Compare this to a movie released just eight years later, Kent Bateman's Headless Eyes. That is a grungy, unforgiving movie that features similar violence (namely, eye-plucking) that ends up coming across as visceral rather than bouncy. Headless Eyes is still a great movie, but it's great for other reasons. It forms its own canon with gritty flicks like Messiah of Evil and Meatcleaver Massacre, whereas Blood Feast errs closer to the side of Adam West's Batman.

I do have to give more attention to the acting, because the fun Lewis evidently had passed through to his cast. Some people, like the guys playing the cops, treat it like a job--they have a hardboiled performance. But the lady who commissions Ramses for the Egyptian Feast at the beginning not only gets amazing lines ("Yes...yes...we must do it."), but she misses cues and trips over her lines pretty consistently. The king, of course, is Ramses himself. He gets no shortage of mugging, eye-closeups, or space for his body performances. Plus, he is apparently supposed to be elderly, by his actor, Mal Arnold, was a whole thirty years old at the time of production. So they just rub a bunch of flour on his hair and eyebrows. It's fine. What? Money was tight! They couldn't afford to reshoot that flubbed dialogue, or get actual makeup for their actors aside from they brought from home. What matters is the gore. It is through the gore that the revolution is transmitted.

Blood Feast was a notable contributor to the unraveling of traditional cinema. It is the sand that was fused to make the dark mirror of those movies that thrive on character development, coherent storytelling, and expertly-crafted effects. Here, we get the same joy we'd find in a Hitchcock film, except we barely meet the characters, the storyline is slipshod at best (you'll note how little time I spent on it), and the appearance of the film betrays a lack of funding. Any famous first of this type is worthy of examination, and I'm pleased to say that Blood Feast lives up to its legend.

To put it another way, here's a quote from one of the theater managers, who dropped it after Lewis asked how the movie had done: "These yahoos are laughin' and scratchin' and slashin' the seats and shootin' bullet holes in the screen. Then up comes that tongue scene. All you see is a bunch of white eyeballs!"

Of course, the story of Blood Feast doesn't end on the silver screen. In fact, it's just the beginning. H.G. Lewis wrote a novelization of it too!!

Noah (2014), by Darren Aronofsky

As they say: Now for something completely different.

I'm a critical latecomer to the rising trend of Christiansploitation. You may have noticed recently that theaters have been flooded by films like Miracles from Heaven, Do You Believe?, and War Room. Even if you're not familiar with the content, the trailers usually make no secret that they are religious films. The trailers have proven to be so formulaic, and the movies so prominent, that SNL has gotten up to imitating them and has done so with excellent accuracy. There are a fucking lot of these movies, and the craze will probably go on for at least a few more years.

These movies aren't the first of their kind--arguably, Christiansploitation (exploitation movies that usually have a Christian propaganda bend) is a genre as old as any form of exploitation. There have always been films that have proselytized in some way or another, most of them pretty harmlessly. These movies aren't quite movies in that they're a string of cliche sequences that are meant to appeal to established Christians while also ostensibly trying to pull at the heartstrings of the nonbeliever. They typically don't succeed in that latter goal, but if you like weepy soap opera tropes, you can still enjoy them from an exo-Christian perspective.

Some of these movies, however, decide to go that extra mile. The Fred Phelps sort of extra mile. War Room in particular stands out as a movie that perverts faith in that particular exploitation-y way. I haven't watched that one, but I did decide recently to expose myself to the Theater Experience of one of these movies.

So. I saw God's Not Dead 2. If you've been following the Christiansploitation scene at all...well. I'll leave your reactions to yourself. (They probably just involve calling me an idiot, which I understand.)

I won't talk about God's Not Dead 2 at length, and not because I want you to see this for yourself. Don't watch this movie. If you do, don't pay for it. Read the plot synopsis on Wikipedia or check out a direct review of it if you're that curious. Suffice it to say that it is both dumb and offensive in its misunderstanding of the American court system and in its paranoid, baseless climax. By watching God's Not Dead 2 in theaters, I have proven myself to be supremely irresponsible. There are other things I could have done with my time. Instead, I have given both time and money to a production group that has shown possession of a hateful and ignorant ideology. No, of course I don't mean religion or Christianity in general. God's Not Dead 2 is not a Christian movie. It's a movie created by bigots who, despite possessing privilege, have the audacity to claim they are victims of oppression by groups who are comparatively underprivileged.

As far as the actual Theater Experience goes--the only other person who attended beat us to the theater. He was a 20-something grad student who sighed a lot and texted through the whole movie. When we left the theater he was staring at the ground with the look of a man who wants to hang himself. His Internet must've been down for the day or something and this was the only other thing he could think of doing. Probably because he didn't have any wet paint lying around to watch dry.

Anyway, I'm being pretty self-indulgent here. We're here instead to talk about one of the weirder Christiansploitation movies--which, incidentally, happens to be one of the less preachy ones. In fact, this movie doesn't preach at all, and perhaps comes the closest to being a true Bible film in that involves a lot of strangeness and deeply unsettling graphic violence.

Indeed, I can best describe this movie as one of the Old Testament movies that Ned Flanders was making in that one Simpsons episode. And that's honestly probably why I'm featuring it on this site. Noah is very much a trash film, or very much like one. It's an overlooked genre film that is not afraid to fuck with its audience in its imagery. It did get a theatrical release, true, but how many people actually saw this? Or heard of it? What's that? It starred Russell Crowe and Emma Watson, and heavily featured Anthony Hopkins? Pffft. Trash films feature high-quality actors all the time. Usually not in starring roles, and usually not while they're still considered to be good--I'm thinking of John Carradine's trash flicks here--but...anyway. Point is, I thought I could get a good review of this movie. As such, I should actually discuss the plot of this fucking thing.

Admittedly, you probably already know the story--at least, the basic details of it. The film does make its own elaborations, but that's primarily because the Bible isn't particularly great at character arcs/development. We see the creation of the universe, following the Genesis passages, complete with weird psychedelic images, artsy snake motifs, and...Adam and Eve having golden-glowing skin (?). The main focus, sin, is established via the Original Sin and the Cain and Abel story. Make no mistake, this is a somber world, a world that's paying for its mistakes. Noah's father is killed by the mysterious degenerate known as Tubal-Cain, who will become the main source of pain for Noah's family for the rest of the movie. As Noah grows up he begins to have visions of the coming Flood, and slowly becomes obsessed with fulfilling God's will, which of course involves building the ark and saving the innocent beasts. However, as time goes on, he goes even further when he begins to see the flaws in his family, and he believes that God only wants them to deliver the animals while humanity goes extinct. This leads to one of the most emotionally draining sequences in the story, comprising much of the movie's second hour, which depicts the family's increasingly torturous life aboard the ark. Of course, there's a happy ending, but much of the film is dark, and, indeed, hard to interpret at times.

The movie is a fantasy film, and that is why it is great. It doesn't try to make the Bible work in real life. The film apparently takes place in some sort of weird proto-caveman era, though everyone looks like a modern human (we see at some point that the Earth has a single continent at this point in history)--plus, Emma Watson is on record as saying that the movie may be set in a post-apocalyptic future. Several of the creatures that evidently didn't make it to the ark are shown, and they include what appear to be ARMADILLO DRAGONS. There are also fucking golems in it. Basically, the golems are these Biblical creatures called Nephilim. Biblical scholars don't agree on what the Nephilim were, but in this movie, they're fallen angels who had stone accrete around their bodies when they crashed on Earth. They speak with Optimus Prime voices and jerk around like Harryhausen creations. Then there's Methusaleh, who lives in a swamp cave and helps Noah by giving him spiked spirit-quest tea. He's basically Yoda, if Yoda was played by Anthony Hopkins. And again. This is a Bible movie. I haven't seen many of them, but I'm pretty positive that rock golems, armadillo dragons, and cave sorcerers never show up in Passion of the Christ. For shame, Mr. Gibson. The movie also contains evolution, which you probably will not also see in a Christiansploitation film. We see bacteria become fish, fish become reptiles, reptiles become weasels, and weasels become humans. This movie really is supposed to take place in real life. While also being completely divorced from any sort of reality.

That this movie is a fantasy movie made me initially wonder if the film was actually rewritten to cash in on the Christiansploitation craze. But apparently, director Aronofsky has always wanted to make this movie. The fantasy oddity of the movie comes from the fact that Aronofsky, of course, also made Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan. If you don't feel like sitting down for two and a half hours, just envision a Noah's Ark movie as lensed through those two movies. You've got the characters tripping out, the relentlessly gloomy atmosphere, and of course, nightmarish levels of obsession. In regards to cash-ins, I do see some similarities to the Middle-earth movies, but I think that's due more to the influence those movies had on modern fantasy media.

The only fault that I'll give this movie is that another movie it shares elements with is 300. I don't like that Zack Snyder has left an impact on filmmaking--I hate literally everything he has done.* While fortunately Aronofsky doesn't mute the fuck out of his colors (in fact, the movie's colorfulness is one of the movie's prime highlights), he does have a lot of slow-mo. Slow-mo is dead. Or let it be dead. Please. I am probably just picking nits with that, but I hate being reminded of 300 in any form. Noah also happens to have the same grimness as 300, but the ending of Noah is uplifting rather than pointless. It moves in a positive direction but it is an Earn Your Happy Ending movie. Surprisingly, the ending does not involve Jesus. I like that. It enhances the thought that this is a Noah story, rather than the Noah story.

Okay. You got me. As I've been writing this I've been noticing that this movie was actually well received, and it did quite well at the box office. Today is the day, then, that the Mudman reviews a well-made mainstream movie. Whoops. But at least it's a weird one, and I will admit that I almost did a review for The Force Awakens. I had so many thoughts about that movie that I needed to get them out somewhere. But I slacked off on it and after a few weeks passed, I felt like I lost my window of relevance. As always, I want to share my love of the world through my writing, and so if I've encouraged you to have the experience of watching this movie and you enjoy it, this review has not failed. You deserve to be happy. Movies will make you happy.

Check out Noah if you want a look at religion as fantasy fiction. If you want to be offended, check out PureFlix Entertainment or Good Fight Ministries. Except don't. Religion should be about improving life, not making it worse, so if you're into religious films, see Noah instead of GND2.

---

* I have a funny story about Zack Snyder that actually relates to Christiansploitation.

It came to light recently--and I will post my source on this if I can find it again--that Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice topped at the box office because one of its main competitors on its opening weekend was God's Not Dead 2, which made a paltry $8 million dollars on said weekend. That weekend, when I went to the theater, I had only three choices: God's Not Dead, BvS, and Miracles from Heaven. We didn't even get Zootopia or My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, which is probably why at least the former didn't beat out BvS. BvS apparently did so well because it was only slightly less offensive than GND. In an alternate universe, Star Wars came out the same weekend as Dawn of Justice, and the DC Expanded Universe was no more. All for the want of a shitty religious movie--now made all the shittier.

Open Call for Odd Tales of Wonder Magazine!

Hello, everyone. As I've shared recently on Facebook and Tumblr, I'm starting up a new fiction magazine, called Odd Tales of Wonder! We're looking for stories featuring memorable central protagonists (heroes or villains) whose adventures or misadventures might be fun to continue in future stories. It's inspired greatly by the pulps of old, of which many will soon form subjects for future visits to the Book Club of Desolation. Pretty much any genre is acceptable, as is any length--no poetry or nonfiction for now. To get a full outline of how you may fit in, check out our website, or email us at oddtalesofwonder@gmail.com. You can also like us on the Book of Faces.

You'd be doing us a huge favor by passing the word onto writing friends as well. Every time you share, you get a Platonic astral hug from me!

We look forward to hearing from you! I'd love to see what sort of strangeness you can dream up.

SS Girls (1977), by Bruno Mattei

Recently, as Adam Mudman's A-List has come up on around thirty posts, I've gone back and reflected on what I've presented these last few months, and in doing so, I've tried to think of ways to make this blog relatable while also fulfilling my eternal mission of relaying the alien qualities of the movies I tend to highlight. After all, weirdness obtains greatness primarily in the context of normalcy, as insufferable as that context can be. In essence, I need to compare more of these movies to movies you're likely to have ever seen, like The Great Escape and Salon Kitty. Okay, there's a smaller chance you've seen Salon Kitty, which is unfortunate given that SS Girls (or Private House of the SS, I guess) is basically a remake of that. Except it's made by Bruno Mattei, he of Women's Prison Massacre and Hell of the Living Dead, and so this is like The Great Escape if there were prostitutes, blood-drinking, and Gabriele Carrara.

Brilliant and shining Gabriele Carrara! He is the star of this film, as he plays enthusiastic Nazi fanatic Hans Schellenberg. The line in the sand is drawn at him--there's no point in making comparisons from here on it. By merit of its star, SS Girls transcends any sort of expectations one can have for a World War II film.

It's 1945, and the Wehrmacht has been invaded by a buncha lousy Hitler-haters. The SS employs Hans Schellenberg to rip the truth out of five officers suspected of a plot to betray the Fuhrer, and so with the aid of Frau Inge and Professor Jurgen, Schellenberg acquires a group of prostitutes who are swiftly conditioned for any sort of sex, unnatural or otherwise, and likewise honed to physical perfection. Schellenberg then invites the officers to a proper Third Reich orgy, where people do all sorts of things that I'm sure the Nazis really did at their orgies, like lick wine off of people. As this occurs, Herr Schellenberg climaxes while playing the organ, and caresses nipples creepily but never does the deed himself. The plot succeeds and the officers, in throes of passion, confess to hating Hitler. They are put on trial by Schellenberg dressed in a Nazi Pope uniform, and promptly disposed of. Movies over, right? Of course not! We haven't yet gotten to see the next batch of officers Schellenberg and his girls are given to work on, including a blood-drinking guy and a Japanese Nazi with a Swastika drawn in permanent marker on his dishcloth headband. So it goes.

Claudio Fragasso wrote this, and so basically it's the same type of dialogue you'll see in Troll 2. Despite the subject matter, it surprisingly doesn't have someone exclaim, "They're eating her! And then they're going to eat me!" But instead, we do get gems like a quip by General von Kluger, the eyepatch-Nazi: "I may only have one eye but I've seen the orders and it's a fact...we're abouta get more pussy than we can handle." If you've seen any Italian movie from the '70s or '80s you will hear the same voice cast/accents, and it will be like coming home. No one is a European, and no one is as excited as Gabriele Carrara's dub actor, who, judging from the flawlessness of the performance, may well have been Carrara himself.

It truly is Carrara who makes the entire thing dodge any description but "operatic." I'm sorry, I know that's a pretentious thing to say, but this is the kind of acting I feel I need fancy glasses to watch. Perhaps Schellenberg himself says it best when he says, "It's almost like a play...that's it...a play." This line is followed immediately by his snarfing down a mouthful of roast chicken, clearly representative of the scenery. Either Carrara was a secret acting genius whose great talent allowed him to produce such a confusing performance (he only appeared elsewhere in Mattei's Women's Camp 119 and a Mondo flick called Mutant Sexual Behaviour), or he believed this was how Nazis really acted, and he believed in realism so much he was willing to die for it. The man does basically kill himself throwing his body and voice into the level of camp to which he stoops. I've never seen anything even fucking close to it.

Fortunately, it is generally comparable to other Nazisploitation movies, at least on the surface. There's the sex aspect, and gross sex at that. Schellenberg's girls learn to screw German shepherds and circus freaks in scenes that will make you cringe, then laugh your heart out. It's not Joe D'Amato at the wheel, so everything's softcore and none of the ghastly stuff is real. But at the edges of this seemingly normal abnormal sexuality is something greater. A normal Nazisploitation film wouldn't include a scene of a Little Person SS Officer lip-syncing to the Headless Horseman's laugh in the 1949 Disney Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Nor would it feature a scene in which a Nazi Pope shrieks "Am I funny, huh? Am I funny, huh?!" at a crowd of confused onlookers. So even if you have entered the deep levels of Nazisploitation and that has become your norm, this is even farther away. Farewell, Great Escape, I guess.

SS Girls is marred by one of the traditional faults of Nazisploitation, which is tedium. After the first and second batches of traitorous Third Reich Benedict Arnolds are done away with, we're left with a long half-hour in which the brothel reacts to news of Hitler's death. Not much of interest happens here, but that's okay. As long as we have that first hour, all will be well. The world will keep being a better place.

I was introduced to this movie about six months ago, but it feels like I've known it for lifetimes. The images strung together that make this movie are so random and wild that they always come out of nowhere, even when I know they're on their way. It's so relieving that this is emblematic of most of Mattei's movies, even some of his crasser and grosser ones.

And here, I started by saying that I wanted to take about being relatable. I chose a poor movie for the job, given that it's best measured in degrees of inverse relatability. Basically: take everything you know about a World War II movie. Then, translate your understanding of those movies into an equivalent amount of confusion and unfamiliarity. From there do everything you can to accept that anti-comprehension. Once you do accept it--you'll be free to laugh endlessly.

I can't say I'll be able to promise grounding and stability the next time around. My tastes have become too distorted for that. But again, if you can turn yourself inside out, you will find a great bliss. Bruno Mattei will guide you down this Stygian river more smoothly than anyone else, so if you can stand a lot of boobs, a lot of dubs, and a lot of tasteless exploitation, spend an evening with this one.

ENGH-SkreeeoOOoonk: A Retrospective on the Godzilla Series, Part 3 (The Millennium Era to the Present)

We're coming to the end of the Godzilla series proper. It has been a long road from 1954, and it'll be a hard road still. Fortunately, we do have some genuine goodies this time around, though the failures are heavier than ever. And the future is still ahead of us--Toho and Legendary are bringing a pair of new series, featuring, respectively, the scariest-looking Godzilla of all time, and a cinematic universe à la Marvel starring King Kong, King Ghidorah, Rodan, and Mothra (and Minilla). I'll give them a try, certainly.

A reminder before we get started: from here on out, all of these movies have their own canon separate from all other movies, except for the '54 original. Godzilla vs. Megaguirus, for example, is not a sequel to Godzilla 2000. There are some exceptions, however, and I'll get to those. For now--let's kick things off! Just don't expect a good kickoff, because Lucy yanks the ball away at the last second. Except Charlie Brown in this case is every living person, and Lucy is Roland fucking Emmerich.

Godzilla (1998)

 

...I got nuthin'.

Seriously--what am I supposed to add to the conversation about this movie? I will say that it was one of the few famously awful movies that I can certify is seriously awful. Critics and audiences hated Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever. I enjoyed it. It is not, shall we say, A-List material to me, but it's still not really as bad as everyone says it is. All the same, one of the points of this site is that I am, taste-wise, something of an idiot. Like anyone else, though, I defend my taste. And today, I defend my belief that all the bad stuff they say about the 1998 Roland Emmerich Godzilla is true. I fucking hate this movie. I hate it even more after seeing all the Godzilla movies. To put things in perspective, other movies that I legitimately hate include War Room and Disaster Movie. But, to put things in another perspective, I also hate Space Jam with every fiber of my being. I digress. I digress strongly and deliberately.

So basically, a giant monster appears in the Pacific Ocean. A variety of characters, including Dr. Nick Tatopoulus (Matthew Broderick), investigate. The running joke with Dr. Tatopoulus is that everyone keeps mispronouncing his name. I probably spelled it wrong but I don't care because for some reason Roland Emmerich was convinced that this name pronunciation gag was funny enough to last a whole movie. There are other vague characters who don't have silly foreign names, including Hank Azaria and Harry Shearer, probably a woman, and a bunch of French guys. Godzilla is French in this one--actually, French-Indonesian, because of nuclear tests in that area that mutated him from an iguana. Let us refer to him by his canon name, Zilla. Zilla looks awful. I mean, CGI was not advanced in 1998, which is why it should not have been used in this movie. Except CGI was advanced by the time of this movie, as demonstrated by the movie Godzilla famously rips off, Jurassic Park, which came out five years earlier. Zilla is gathering food to feed the children that she asexually spawns. In the end, the American military triumphs, gunning down both mother and children. Except, dun, dun, dun, sequel hook. Which never happened, except for an animated series. And, well, Final Wars. Kinda.

Everything that I just said has been echoed across basically every review for this movie. I have depressingly mainstream views when it comes to Emmerich's movies. I enjoyed Independence Day but hated 2012 and 10,000 BC. Then he decided to shit all over the history of the community he and I share (the queer one) with That One Movie and I lost my last scrap of respect for him. It was already pretty low with this movie. I suppose I'm being unfair by just agreeing with the popular conception that Emmerich is an inherently bad director, but honestly, in my mind, even Independence Day is not a stellar movie. Though Jeff Goldblum is always a treasure, because I can pretend Transylvania 6-5000 was never made...once again, I digress.

I don't like talking about Godzilla '98. I probably shouldn't have bothered. The movie is a bitter, crippling disappointment. Now you know I have that view, along with probably two-thirds of the people who saw this movie. If you like it, I don't hate you. I can see the appeal. It's just for me it's a tiny glint of appeal in a vast sea of lazy, money-hungry nonsense.

P.S. The tagline for this movie was "SIZE DOES MATTER." Classy.

Godzilla 2000 (1999)

Aaand...breathe. Take joy, pilgrim! The worst Godzilla movie is behind us. There's still some shit ahead, but fortunately, this next one is a true delight.
 

Godzilla 2000 manages to accomplish three awesome things: it doesn't fall on its ass trying to reboot the series; its version of Godzilla is both fun and impressive; and it manages to tell a good "Godzilla vs. New Monster" story while also being a reboot. That story is relatively straightforward--a UFO is found at the bottom of the ocean around the same time that Godzilla is returning, after a 46-year absence. While studying Godzilla, it is learned that Godzilla is so hard to destroy because his cells have a regenerative property to them. The scientists call this property "Organizer G-1." They eventually discover that the UFO is planning on stealing Godzilla's cells (sound familiar?) to regenerate new bodies for the aliens within, called Millennians. I assume from their name that the Millennians ended up on Earth trying to find a job that pays more than minimum wage so they could pay their student loans. When the UFO does absorb Godzilla's cells, the Millennians transform into a mutated Godzilla clone (sound familiar?!), called Orga, a name derived from the acronym for the Godzilla factor, "ORG-1." Of course, the resultant clone tries to kill Godzilla, and the battle is on...

Godzilla 2000 benefits strongly from its tone, which is, in the American version, extremely entertaining. Some people say that the English dub ruined what was a serious movie, but this movie would be pretty lackluster if it had a dourness to it. Basically, the dubs sort of function as parodies of some of the lines made up for redubbed Showa films. Quotes include such gems as "Great Caesar's Ghost!" and "As long as the beer's cold, who cares?" Add in awesome designs for Godzilla (though why is he green?) and Orga and you've got a solid way to whittle away a couple of hours. Little of the movie is draining, and it's good to see the tradition of Godzilla vs. New Monster continue--even if the film isn't called Godzilla vs. Orga.

Godzilla vs. Megaguirus (2000)

Godzilla vs. Megaguirus tried even harder to bring back the old formulas of the series than Godzilla 2000. That, however, is its weakness, as it lacks the heart of its predecessors. The movie doesn't outlive the coolness of its opening scene, and what's left is a drag. A sometimes-fun drag, but a drag all the same.

In the wake of Godzilla's 1954 attack, Japan has banned all uses of nuclear power, fearing that if Godzilla were to return, he would be drawn to these sources and attack the country once more. Additionally, a group of scientists have invented a black hole weapon called Dimension Tide. Naturally, Godzilla returns and attacks Japan regardless of the lack of nuclear energy to feed on, and Dimension Tide opens a chronal wormhole that eventually unleashes Megaguirus, a prehistoric monster dragonfly. The two monsters, just as naturally, begin fighting each other. Notably, however, this brings back the tradition that once the New Monster is dead, Godzilla's gotta go next, because nothing's stopping him! Godzilla is finally defeated in the end...or is he?

Again, that opening scene is cool. The movie starts with a flashback to the 1954 film--and it recreates scenes from that movie, shot for shot, using new sets and the suit they used for this movie's Godzilla. In living black and white, too! But again, the ensuing movie lacks conviction and love. It gets too caught up on the seriousness that would infest the next three entries, forgetting that even the more "mature" Heisei series found its best success by letting itself go--i.e. Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah. Movies that are too serious for their own good, in the way that this movie is, are boring to me. Because of that tedium, Megaguirus resembles one of the less-interesting Showa or Heisei "vs." movies, like Godzilla vs. Gigan or Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla. I'd rather watch Battra.

Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack! (2001)

Jesus, that title. And Jesus, this movie. Guess who thought it was gonna suck? It's always nice to have a pleasant surprise--indeed, this website is built on pleasant surprises. GMK, as the hip kids call it, comes across as a unique entry in the series, mainly because the premise is that Godzilla is a fucking demon.

Okay, previous Godzilla movies have shown Godzilla to be evil. But his destructiveness has generally been one motivated by his bestial nature, his quasi-mystical embodiment of change (creating life from death like a forest fire, a couple movies say), or his retaliation to being attacked. In this one, Godzilla is a nature avatar, as well as the ultimate evil. Mothra, Baragon, and King Ghidorah rise up to defend Earth from him. Yeah, you read that right--Godzilla is such a monster in this one that King Ghidorah is a good guy. Oh, and it's somehow discovered that Godzilla's cruelty is partially motivated by the fact that he is possessed by the ghosts of all Japanese people killed in World War II, who want vengeance on a nation that has forgotten their deaths! I wasn't kidding when I mentioned demons. Infernal powers fuel Godzilla's nuclear flame. The final shot is of Godzilla's bloody disembodied heart, beginning to beat again on the ocean floor after his apparent demise.

An excellent entry, full of a lot of great moments in addition to making a unified whole--one of my favorite parts is when two of the soldiers reference the events of the Emmerich Godzilla, and basically call the Americans stupid for mistaking a mutant iguana for Godzilla. (This was the first of two times that the '98 film was mentioned to be set in one of the Toho continuities.) My one problem is that this one once again tries to have these badass human characters be the central focus, without having infusing them with personality. I believe that a desire to ape the soldier heroes of this movie led to the crippling flaws that occupied the next two films. However, my dislike of the badass soldiers who are sold to us entirely on the idea that "they're badass!" is ultimately hypocritical, as we will see in the example of the undefined Captain Gordon.

Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla (2002)/Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. (2003)

 

With these, you will lose hope. You will be lost in the dark. I guarantee it. And that's sad. Barring Megaguirus, we weren't doing too bad post-TriStar, and the first two Mechagodzilla movies were so cool. But this duology, along with the '93 Mechagodzilla flick, is an experiment in agony. The worst feature has to be the sloppy plotting, so let's jump in.

Basically, these two movies concern Lieutenant Akane Yashiro, a member of an anti-Godzilla defense force that has built Mechagodzilla to defend the against the King of Monsters and the various other kaiju that have plagued mankind. By "various other kaiju," I mostly mean Gaira, from War of the Gargantuas. They call him "Bigfoot," and I will tell you here that even though I have not yet watched War of the Gargantuas, I can promise you that Gaira is not a Bigfoot. Nor have I come across Bigfoot stories that mention him behind several hundred feet tall. Anyway. Mechagodzilla is given the name "Kiryu," which I guess means "Machine Dragon." Kiryu then becomes our protagonist, defending Japan again Godzilla. But because the military used the original Godzilla's Oxygen Destroyer-bleached bones as the shape around which Kiryu was built (???), Godzilla's soul controls the robot.

The first movie is primarily concerned with showing the construction of Kiryu, and also focusing on the exploits of Akane. Akane is a nice lady, but she's not interesting. I can't remember a single thing we learn about her, outside of her ability to apparently mind-meld with Godzilla's soul. Because watching robots being built is boring, and our protagonist is boring, this movie is boring.

The second movie I remember as basically being the same as the first, except the Kiryu-building scenes are replaced with drab scenes featuring Mothra. Of course. When your Godzilla movie is tedious, adding Mothra to its sequel is like adding salt to a wheat salad. It's still bland, and because you've tasted salt so many times it adds nothing of interest.

I feel bad hating these movies as much as I do, because I'm sure that there are a lot of people out there who really like them. I'm sure kids would love the hell out of this, and I've probably lost sight of the fact that Godzilla is supposed to be kid-friendly. Perhaps you should give 'em a try on your own before listening to me, and see for yourself.

Godzilla: Final Wars (2004)

 

Yessss!

Another deep, deep breath. Let the familiar tides of Showa wash over you. For indeed, Godzilla: Final Wars is basically a giant piece of Showa continuity porn. It is Godzilla's Day of the Doctor. Really, it is an homage to the entire series, but Showa gets a huge preference. If a Showa movie with all the awesome combat of Destroy All Monsters but featuring the unhinged bullshittery of Godzilla's Revenge and Godzilla vs. Megalon was made in 2004, it was this movie.

We get the customary flashback to the 1954 film, intercut with scenes of pretty much all Toho movies ever, along with an amazing remix of the 1954 movie's theme. Megaguirus shows up in the same minute as Titanosaurus. We are slowly introduced to the weird future this movie inhabits. Basically, the appearance on kaiju on Earth resulted in the birth of superhuman mutants. They are like the X-Men, if the X-Men all shared the power of being good at Matrix stunts and movie martial arts. They are linked to an international group of solders who fly around killing monsters using the Gotengo ship from Atragon. They include Captain Douglas Gordon, the greatest hypermasculine action movie military hero ever. They could have made a more manic version of him with Reb Brown and it would be just as awesome. Captain Gordon is as cool as Reb Brown. I wholeheartedly believe that.

The Xiliens from Invasion of Astro-Monster show up around the same time that a group of monsters collectively reveal themselves--they include Manda, Anguirus, Rodan, King Caesar, Kamacuras, Kumonga, Ebirah, Hedorah, and Zilla. The Xiliens not only take the monsters away, saving the world, but they warn humanity that the rogue planet Gorath (from, well, Gorath) is about to crash into Earth. And that's not all--the Shobijin reveal that a weird alien mummy found by Doctor Miyuki Otanashi is actually Mothra's ancient enemy, Gigan. When Miyuki and some of the mutants discover that Gorath's collision is a hoax, it becomes apparent that the Xiliens have not Earth's salvation in mind, but its conquest...and only Godzilla can stop them.

This movie probably has the most complicated plot of all the films, so I've left a lot out. Also, giving out few details will hopefully give you the inclination to watch it for yourself. I first saw it when I had only seen two or three Godzilla films, and I loved it--and I loved it just as much when I rewatched it as the last film in my binge for this series. So regardless of your experience with the series, you'll find a wonderful welcome. I was initially hesitant to call Final Wars the best Godzilla movie of all time. It doesn't seem fair, because it's meant to appeal to those of us who are continuity addicts. I really am a huge sucker for this shit, whether it's Pre-Crisis DC lore or Star Wars Expanded Universe nonsense. But it is so well made. The human characters are awesome, whether they're Captain Gordon or our mutant lead, Shinichi Ozaki--the suit is easily the most aesthetically pleasing in the series--and the soundtrack is awesome, whether it's the remixes of classic Godzilla music, action movie hard rock, or Sum 41, who show up during the extremely brief scene where Godzilla kills the fuck out of Zilla...and blows up the Sydney Opera House, to boot.

Yes, it is basically a more intense modernized remake of Destroy All Monsters. In fact, the similarities between the two were another deterrent towards my proclaiming this to be the best. But this movie has a lot that Destroy All Monsters didn't, while lacking none of the earlier movie's frenetic energy. It will be tough for future entries to beat this one.

Godzilla (2014) 

This movie will be the progenitor of Godzilla's future, and that is no small burden. Whatever it has done, it will be the prototype shaping the products of many millions of dollars. Toho's upcoming series, beginning with Godzilla: Resurgence, will also have a role in that future, but for American audiences, it all starts here. So...is it worthy? Are we safe?

Yes and no. I mean, Godzilla 2014 is no masterpiece, but it's never worth it to expect greatness from Godzilla. Ultimately, its worst flaw is a lack of a precise-enough editor, which is a common flaw in American blockbusters these days. Everyone has to fight to breach 120 minutes, even when they really shouldn't. This movie could be about a half-hour shorter, and it'd be fine, but aside from that, it's actually pretty fun.

Bryan Cranston was a nuclear scientist at a Japanese power plant fifteen years ago, wherein an apparent accident involving an unexplained EMP caused a reactor breach and killed his wife. His son became a soldier and is estranged from his father in the present due to the latter's obsession with finding out the real reason behind the breach. It turns out that it's linked to MUTO, or Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism, a giant monster which begins feeding off the old reactor core in some sort of cocoon state. When MUTO awakens, it turns out to basically be a fusion between Orga, the Cloverfield monster, and Battra. It's a neat enough design. When Godzilla shows up, he is framed well enough that his dorky "chubby" design is forgivable. In this one, Godzilla fought the U.S. military in the '50s and went dormant after being bombed--he awakens in response to the destruction caused by MUTO and its similarly monstrous mate. The two monsters fight, and chase each other from Japan to San Francisco. This is filled with many, many shots of soldiers running and shooting Godzilla, along with dozens of images of cities behind destroyed and crowds being snuffed out. It has a gravitas to it, and it doesn't fuck things up at the end.

It's just that the movie can be broken down into three sections: the first hour explores the backstory and journey of Walter White and his son. Most of the second hour is the over-padded sequences of military actions against the monsters, along with cities being blown up. There is little character development here (indeed, Cranston dies and Ford, the son, doesn't really show up that much aside from brief and shallow emotional moments with his wife and kid) and every scene only lasts about two minutes before cutting to something else. It's the worst part of the movie, but the last fight between Godzilla and the two MUTOs is engaging enough to make up for it. The nuclear breath in this one gave me goosebumps, and I don't say that often.

There are still faults in the good chunks of the movie--there's a weird scene when Ford visits his father in Japan, where originally Cranston seems willing to give up his seemingly-paranoid search for the answer to his wife's death. But in the next scene, he's at it harder than ever, and the touching moment between the two of them is seemingly forgotten. Plus, they dedicate a lot of time to showing off that they got a Breaking Bad actor on the movie--Cranston throws a lot of temper tantrums in that first hour, which always seem to linger for an uncomfortably long time. The ending fight, also, is essentially still just soldiers running and buildings exploding, same as we've been watching for the last forty-five minutes.

You can tell Gareth Edwards is better at what he does than Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich, though, because there are some references to the original source material. The theme isn't the Godzilla theme, but you can tell that the original is somewhere in there. And, as slow as they can be the long scenes showing the aftermath of horrific destruction mirror the ones that are paraded in the 1954 film. Weirdly, though, some traces of the '98 film come back. There's a scene at the beginning, in the fifteen-years-ago part, where we zoom out to see a giant monster track. Except unlike in the '98 film, this is MUTO's track and not Godzilla's. Then near the end, there's the revelation of a cluster of hundreds of MUTO eggs, just like the Godzilla eggs in Madison Square Garden. And the Godzilla in this one has essentially the same head as Zilla. It comes across as something of an update to the TriStar shitstorm, and I'd be petty to say something like these connections drag down the movie. As long as you don't expect anything stellar in terms of plot and trope usage, you will probably like this one. I feel like I did.

I'm glad I can say that the future looks bright. Hit us with your best shot, Legendary!

Next time, in the fourth and final part, I'll talk about the other movies from Toho that were part of the Godzilla canon, or at least, contributed something to it, along with some of the spinoffs from the franchise. Thank you for reading the three parts of the main series and sharing this journey with me, and I look forward to seeing you next time.

---

Image Sources: Wikipedia, Wikizilla