Weekly Kaiju Movie Thread #64: Terror from the Stars

[Silver Kamen]

[Henry88]

Total votes : 28

[MekaGojira3k]

[klen7]

So when i think of Showa Ghidorah, my mind automatically goes to DAM and Gigan, but i rarely think about revisiting his first appearance, so it has been 10+ years since i have since this particular entry in the franchise despite owning it on DVD...

anyway here are my random observations from this viewing
- Continuity: a dead mothra and a resurrected Rodan... One of the quirks of growing up without the internet was that not only did i not know what Godzilla movies existed, I also had no idea what order they came in. So I had seen Ghidorah and Monster Zero before i had seen Godzilla vs Mothra. So it was interesting bringing it into context.
- Ghidorah as a monster is spectacular in many of the shots, it makes Kaiser Ghidorah look even stiffer when you see you the frenetic energy that he originally brought to the screen
- Magnets: what is it with this era and its inaccurate fascination with magnetism?
- The slapstick nature of the fights
- While watching it I felt like it should jump up a few spots in my ranking of the series, the morning after I feel like probably not.
- The first of the team-ups, its interesting that they decided to address the monsters teaming up

[Silver Kamen]

[Henry88]

malmes the assassin is pretty darn persistent even when there giant monsters fighting around him.

[Silver Kamen]

[klen7]

^ well they told him that if he failed that he would be killed... So that's some motivation to complete the job

[Silver Kamen]

[klen7]

I tried it... Its terrible for morale and employee retention

[Silver Kamen]

[Henry88]

I do enjoy the part when Godzilla comes to Mothra's rescue and he let her hitch a ride on this tail to boot.

[eabaker]

I decided on a whim to watch the English dub, since I haven't watched that version in over 15 years (when I started buying subbed bootlegs, I never really looked back) (this does not include watching with audio commentary). So, my thoughts are mostly on the Amercanization process.

First off, it pretty much goes without saying at this point that integrating the final human shoot-out sequence more with the final monster battle greatly increases the sense of urgency and the feeling that we are watching one story, not two stories welded together. However, less often mentioned is the detrimental effect this has on the mosnter side of things. The ending of the shoot-out comes so close to the ending of the monster battle that we really have no sense of the monster combat climaxing and resolving. So, the human drama is improved, but the big spectacular "Earth's Greatest Battle" (of the Japanese title) is kinda neutered.

It felt like this had almost exactly the same dub cast as Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace.

The dubbing for Princess Salno - especially in her alien form - reminded me a lot of the voice of the Ilia/V'ger probe in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

I find Shindo more likable in the American version, owing to both the vocal performance and some of the trims made. However, I also find him a little less dynamic, so it's an even trade-off.

In the end, I'll probably continue making the subbed version my default, but I was happy to find that this version holds up well, and I was certainly a lot mroe entertained than I was annoyed.

[klen7]

Who's got the next one?

[eabaker]

I sent a PM to somebody earlier today asking him to take it. If I don't hear back by around midnight Pacific time, I'll try to line up somebody else.