Attack of the Giant Teacher (2019)

directed by Yoshikazu Ishii

Japan

70 minutes

3 stars out of 5

____

Before I watched this, the impression I had of it was that it was basically a worse version of Big Man Japan (which I haven't seen, because it's two hours long and I'm tired), but now I see that, aside from the fact that they both feature a giant human man, the two films aren't alike at all. Attack of the Giant Teacher is a compact, earnest, charming little movie, and the film is carried more by the fun that everyone involved in making it seemed to have than by its simple plot.

Said plot is thus: Mr. Miyazawa is a teacher at a night school, leading a class of nontraditional students who we get to know to some extent over the course of the film. Miyazawa is a good teacher who cares about his students, but he learns at the beginning of the film that his school is to be shut down for poor performance. He and some of his students brainstorm the idea to put on a musical as the school's last hurrah for its open-house day that year - this isn't a "we have to put on a musical to save the school!" kind of plot; one of the more interesting things about it is how there's no sign that anything that happens during the film actually influences the fate of the school itself. It lends a bittersweet quality to the whole thing when you realize afterward that, even though Miyazawa not only saved his students but also his city, he will still be out of a job pretty soon. While all of this is happening, evil aliens are headed towards Earth to eat its people. Refugees whose planet was destroyed by these aliens are hiding among Miyazawa's students, and they give him special pills that will cause him to become gigantic enough to physically throw down with the alien mothership.

The only two students who get much in the way of backstory are the disguised alien couple, but all of them feel like real people. No one in the cast has much in the way of previous film credits, which adds to that vibe. (I would have sworn in a court of law that the actress who played Toko in Cell Phone Investigator 7 was in this, but apparently it was someone else.) There is a bit of a red herring in that there's one odd guy in the class who is absolutely convinced that the world is about to end, but it turns out that's just kind of how he is, he has no weird secret motive, he's just another one of the students. Similar to the sparse and inexperienced cast, the sets are pretty rudimentary, but this works in the film's favor considering that much of it is set in a small, underperforming night school. The green screen and miniatures are surprisingly good, perhaps owing to director Ishii's experience on mainstream toku.

I'm not saying that this is the best movie ever made, but I'm really surprised that all of the top reviews on Letterboxd are either very negative or dismiss the film outright as a joke. Like I said, this movie feels like something that everybody involved in it really wanted to make. It doesn't try overly hard to be funny, even though its premise may come off as inherently comedic to anybody who isn't expecting it. It kind of feels like The 12 Day Tale of the Kaiju that Died in 8, although I think that film did not do as good of a job selling the viewer on what it was saying. I'd really love to see another movie like this from Ishii: the tokusatsu is fun, the obvious visual reference to one of my favorite Ultraseven aliens delighted me, the cast is charming and carries the film well, and it's aesthetically pleasing in a bare-bones, honest sort of way.

Don't want to give too much away too early, buuuut...

I'm about to start on a special subtitling project starring a special gal who may look just a liiiiiittle bit familiar. (Consider my other blog when I say this.)

  

All will be revealed in time.

Truck Rascals VI: I Am A Man of Honor (1977)

directed by Norifumi Suzuki

Japan

103 minutes

3.5 stars out of 5

----

Yeah, sure, let's review a Truck Rascals movie. Why not.

In case somebody hasn't heard of it, since I don't think I've ever talked about these on here before: Truck Rascals was a series of ten films that ran through much of the 1970s, produced by Toei and directed by Norifumi Suzuki. A lot of the things I say about this movie will be applicable to the series in general, because after the first one or two films, they really hit on a predictable formula and each film kind of works on perfecting each aspect of that formula. On paper it seems like it would get old after a while, but it doesn't. The two protagonists of the series are Momojiro and Jonathan (played by Bunta Sugawara and Kin'ya Aikawa, respectively), who are both long-distance truckers, taking jobs that see them driving all over Japan, usually to multiple destinations within one film.

There are things that happen reliably in pretty much every entry in the series: Momojiro falls in love with a girl, signaled by a shot of the actress with glittering stars around her head (an effect that always reminds me of something that I'd see in an Ōbayashi film, for some reason) but isn't able to marry or pursue any kind of long-term relationship with her due to a whole bunch of factors that usually culminate in him doing something that ends their relationship in favor of her continued happiness, often with another man. Momo will usually encounter a rival trucker who he almost always gets into a fistfight with at some point. There's also a perilous race against time where at least Momo and sometimes Jonathan as well have to do some ill-advised high-speed trucking across dangerous obstacles (at least one reviewer has referred to the miniatures used to accomplish these scenes as "torakkusatsu"). Jonathan tries to run out on his wife and their ten kids a lot, which is toned down as the series goes on but is still kind of gross. Despite me being able to rattle off everything you can expect out of a Truck Rascals movie, they're really good every single time.

I Am a Man of Honor sees Momo trying to help out not just one but two women. The girl he falls in love with (Masako Natsume) turns out to have a sister who went missing in the middle of an unhappy marriage, leaving behind a young son and a remorseful husband who has managed to turn his life around. But then Momo's would-be girlfriend ends up having a boyfriend too. The truck race du jour comes when Natsume's character realizes that she really does want to go to Brazil with her boyfriend after all, but there's only a few hours to get partway across the country to meet him at the airport - easily manageable in Momo's truck, but requiring a little bridge-jumping and cop-avoiding on the way. One of the things that's great about this series is that even though Momo is a total meathead he does still seem to have respect for whoever he falls in love with. There is a lot - a lot - of misogyny throughout these films, but there's something refreshing about seeing tough-guy Sugawara act like an awkward high schooler when he falls in love, trying to pretend he's good at random stuff to impress girls and being as chivalrous as he can physically manage. 

The guest star this time is Tomisaburō Wakayama, paying direct tribute to his character in the Lone Wolf and Cub series. Having a crossover between Lone Wolf and Cub and Truck Rascals kind of feels like something I would think up while laying in bed at 2 AM unable to fall asleep, but Toei went ahead and did it. Wakayama is usually the star of his own show, so it's kind of fun to see him play a guest role in somebody else's film, and the inevitable fight scene between his character and Momo is over-the-top. There's an argument between the two of them about whether or not it's right to deck out your truck with lights and murals and ornaments the way Momo does or keep it simple and un-ostentatious, which feels like a made-up argument that nobody has ever had in real life, but it's interesting.

I'm starting to get the urge to rewatch these movies after a year or so, and I'm looking forward to revisiting them now that I know what to expect. These being subbed is largely the effort of two people, one of whom I know personally, and it's wild to think that a few years ago you could not see any of this series with subtitles at all.

The Revenge of Dr. X (1967)

directed by Norman Thomson

USA, Japan

94 minutes

1 star out of 5

----

I watched a video where some people watched (and made fun of) this movie and its badness compelled me. 94 minutes seemed like an eternity to sit through something that I knew from the jump would be awful, so to make it easier on myself, I decided early on that I would fast-forward through all the pointless scenes of people driving. Even with the running time shortened by doing that, let me tell you, I barely made it through this thing.

The plot - insofar as there is one - concerns an inexplicably cranky scientist whose concerned coworker gently suggests that he should go to Japan on vacation because being so cranky all the time may be bad for his health. While in Japan, the scientist, Dr. Bragan (there is no Dr. X in this movie - the film was found in a warehouse and the wrong opening credits were slapped onto it), begins research and experimentation towards his ultimate goal of creating a plant-human hybrid. Midway through the film he indeed reaches this goal, but the resulting creature of course has a thirst for blood, consuming many small animals and becoming generally unruly. However, Bragan refuses to destroy his creation, insisting on its miraculous nature as a brand-new life form and his own genius.

We're introduced to Dr. Bragan by seeing him visibly agitated about seemingly nothing at all and we never get any explanation about this - I wasn't sure if I was supposed to read him as some kind of tortured genius, clashing with polite society because of his radical ideas, or if he was being written from the beginning as just a flat-out mad scientist. James Craig's portrayal of the character is so all over the place that you can't get a feel for the character's "baseline".

This movie is just baffling to me. Everything about it. I don't understand how it got made. The state that it survives in today befits it - a god-awful pan-and-scan with so much visual noise that it looks like you're holding two magnets on either side of whatever device you're watching it on - but even if it were restored to something approaching HD, its air of stale faux exotica and faint smell of alcohol would remain. This is really one of the most unapologetically bad movies I've ever seen, and it's not even the kind of bad that is made palatable because you can tell the cast and crew were having fun. This is a movie that feels like nobody wanted to be in it. Exception made for Atsuko Rome, who barely kept this watchable and does seem to have enjoyed her time in the film. (I did an actual double-take when I read that Ryō Ikebe came to a party for the premiere of the film. That is honestly kind of insane.)

The reason why people like me are interested in this at all is because Toei (may have?) distributed it in Japan, where it was titled Akuma no niwa, "The Devil's Garden", a much more compelling and accurate title than any of the English ones it has gone by over the years. However, I was under the impression that the effects were also done by a Japanese crew a la Green Slime or something like that. While part of the film was shot in Japan with some Japanese cast members, I have no evidence that the monster suit itself was technically tokusatsu. It could have been, but I can't prove that it was. It sure does look like a really bad Kamen Rider kaizo ningen-of-the-week, though.

Reading Rome's interview makes me more inclined to be gentle towards this film, given the details of production that she remembers. She says: "I think this group production was more like a hobby. I don’t know the detail of things like that. But that was a group of people working for government, retired people from the U.S. military. Those people, I think, invested in it. Then they invited James Craig as the main person from the U.S." It would make a lot of sense if this movie was made by a bunch of non-professionals in a short period of time on funding from the U.S. military. That is certainly what it feels like. Rome is also asked who was in the monster suit and says that she didn't know but assumed it was a Japanese actor, bringing this perilously close to being tokusatsu after all.

Everything about Revenge of Dr. X screams "made by people who have seen a few movies and want to try making one". I love the absolutely pointless horror movie music whenever the hunchbacked assistant is on-screen - it means nothing, alludes to nothing, the assistant has nothing at all to do with the plot, the filmmakers just thought "well, we have to have horror movie music for this cliche hunchbacked assistant". I flip-flopped between being endeared by this movie and being genuinely almost bored to tears by it, but ultimately I think this is "so bad it's bad", not "so bad it's good".

Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973)

directed by Jun Fukuda

Japan

81 minutes

4 stars out of 5

----

This is probably the Godzilla movie that most fans would agree is the most notorious for being "bad", aside from, perhaps, All Monsters Attack. Maybe if its international distribution had gone differently, this wouldn't be the case. If someone hadn't mistakenly thought the film was in the public domain and began releasing a slurry of low-quality, badly-dubbed VHS tapes and TV broadcasts, allowing much of the Anglosphere's impression of the Godzilla series to be this low-budget entry that showcases the series at its goofiest, maybe this movie would have a better reputation. It certainly deserves it.

Godzilla vs. Megalon begins with a nuclear test. It's never specified who sets it off, but the reverberations are felt immediately: first on Monster Island, and then on a lake somewhere in Japan where people are just trying to have a nice afternoon outing. The weight of this opening nuclear test really hit me during that scene where Goro, Jinko (a nickname, his full name is Jinkawa... not beating the allegations with that one) and Roku are driving home. The Godzilla series has done a lot more looking at the large-scale, long-term effects of nuclear energy - Godzilla himself is a "large-scale, long-term effect of nuclear energy" - than it has bringing it down to a personal level, so in a way, seeing our trio have to cancel their fun trip early feels almost more affecting than a scene of city-level devastation. We've seen destruction and misery inflicted upon the masses, but I don't think the series has ever made it more personal than making us watch this gay couple and their kid have to abandon their afternoon plans and go home because of earthquakes caused by some distant nuclear test, conducted by people we never even see.

I don't want to make it seem like I think this movie should be taken deadly serious, because it's very obviously not intended to be. This was meant to be an entertaining movie that kids would like. It's actually because of that that including a part where the main characters are personally affected by nuclear testing feels like such a smart choice.

The characters in Godzilla vs. Megalon live in a cool house covered with colorful artwork and seem to spend their free time messing around with robots. I love how vibrant this movie is, like almost all of Jun Fukuda's work that is in color. One thing that stands out to me is how the Seatopian agents are dressed: both of them, especially Kotaro Tomita's character, look like something out of Yellow Submarine. The movie plays it fast and loose with the idea of science and invention, and that can come off a little silly (Jet Jaguar developing a personality and deciding to save the day through sheer force of will, Goro Ibuki and boyfriend having the technology to casually deduce trace evidence left behind after the Seatopians break in, even just random side details like the Baby-Rider), but I just love the world this takes place in. I love the contrast between the nuclear test at the start of the film and the understated optimism of Goro Ibuki's work as an inventor.

The thing this movie gets absolutely pitch-perfect is kaiju fights. Am I brave enough to say that this has some of the best fights in the series? No, I'd get pilloried in the streets. But I do kind of think it does. The way you can almost imagine dialogue being exchanged between the monsters: Megalon and Gigan trading "why I oughta" gestures when they first meet, then teaming up and taking great delight in torturing Jet Jaguar and Godzilla as a gruesome twosome. Megalon, Gigan, Jet Jaguar and Godzilla all feel like such distinct personalities, it's hard not to cheer for them even as an adult. (And I wouldn't fault anybody for cheering for the bad guys: they're just so diabolical and gleeful about it that you almost want to see them beat on Godzilla and Jet Jaguar.)

Fukuda himself may have hated his Godzilla movies, but he had the touch that was necessary to bring this kind of super-modern, energetic, lovable Godzilla to life. Is it the Godzilla that Honda envisioned? Certainly not, but I personally have gotten over my hangups about the idea of Godzilla having to be only one thing. We all understand where Godzilla comes from, and the best Godzilla movies are the ones that return to that origin, but there's room to mess around a little in the margins.