Mad God (2021)

directed by Phil Tippett

USA

83 minutes

4.5 stars out of 5

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I had to think a while about whether or not I wanted to even approach talking about this movie because it's the kind of thing where I can't possibly describe the scale and scope of it with words. I was lucky enough to see it on a big screen in an actual theater, which enhances the experience tenfold. Usually I'm not a puritan about what size the screen you're watching movies on is, but with this it's just basic logistics: Bigger screen means you get to absorb more of those precious details that fill up every centimeter of every frame. (It is also a very dark film, so seeing it in a theater means you don't have to stare at your grubby reflection in the iPad screen.)

Also, just a note: I'm aware that this was partially released as several separate shorts in the past, but I'm going to be talking about the movie as it was presented to me when I saw it, as one cohesive piece. I will reference the segments because you can definitely tell where the line between them is, but I feel like it was meant to be watched in the order that the full, 83-minute film is assembled in.

The first part of this film is unlike anything I've ever seen before. The whole thing is that way, really, but the beginning does not even try to ease us in; it's the most high-octane the film gets, and it sustains this pace for what must be a good half-hour or more. I was going to talk about the skilled worldbuilding here, but that's not the right word for it at all. This world is built. Everything is already here and we're in it now whether we like it or not. There is such a distinct story behind literally every object in this film that I'm surprised Phil Tippett's head didn't explode from the pressure of keeping all those narratives together. I have no doubt you could pause Mad God at any moment and extrapolate some deep and upsetting backstory from whatever is onscreen at the time. Not all of the bizarre entities inhabiting the world of Mad God play a role in the main storyline, but the storyline would be a void without them. The sights that the Assassin - as much of a "main character" as this can be said to have - walks past without giving them a further glance all help to cement the environment the film takes place in. I took a peek at some other reviews and found that there is some debate over whether or not this movie has a "narrative" - I don't believe it's necessary for a movie to have a narrative, but this one definitely does, even if the meaning of it is largely up to you to decide. And the narrative is shaped not by one overarching story belonging to one single character but by the mosaic of incredibly tiny individual pieces brought to the table by every weird and wild thing in every corner of this film.

We begin with the Assassin descending in a capsule through layers of strata composed of, again, individual objects that each tell a story even if they're on screen for half a second. Horned skulls, alien skulls, the bones of enormous beasts, discarded statues of holy figures and icons, and layers upon layers of other debris surround the capsule as it goes further and further down until it touches the floor. Very early on we see that life ("life" is a word with extremely blurry boundaries in the world of this film, but I don't feel like getting into that right now) takes all shapes and sizes, and one of the first things the Assassin does is step unthinkingly on a couple of gnomes no bigger than a fingertip who were apparently arguing over a Santa Claus carcass (it's that kind of movie). Soon we also see the Assassin walk past incomprehensibly large humanoid figures in a never-ending state of being shocked by electric chairs, and the Assassin is as dwarfed by these as the gnomes were by the Assassin's boot. This sets up what I feel is one of the main themes of the film: That there is always something bigger waiting to come step on you, that there's always a creature who either sees you as an ant or is too large or preoccupied to even see you at all. This is a backbone of many Lovecraftian works, and for that reason I at least partially classified this in my own brain as cosmic horror.

As I said, I run up against the limitations of language when thinking of ways to describe all that the Assassin encounters on their journey. Everything they see is a newly invented mechanism of suffering. A lot of the first part of the film takes place in a seemingly borderless "factory" where drones molded out of what looks like cat hair and given life produce large slabs of some material, which is obviously an incredibly dangerous job given that the drones seem to be dying by accident (or by design) by the hundreds, if not more. The disposability of life and the pointlessness of it all is what makes this environment feel like true hell. The drones toil for apparently no reason other than to produce more circumstances in which to toil. This is what everything and every being in Mad God is saying, really: Everything here is alive for no reason. There is no point. No end goal. An individual life is wholly valueless other than as a tool to maintain the circumstances in which life can continue, and it must continue in a state of pain and drudgery until the end of time. Again: Hell.

One of the most interesting revelations in this is that the Assassin is not necessarily an autonomous being but is themself a drone, sent down through some membrane into the world that they spend the film exploring by what at least outwardly looks like a human. This is, I feel, an extension of the "always something bigger to step on you" thing, and I'm fascinated by the idea of the person who was sending all these explorers down into this hell-world. It's made pretty clear that he's been sending them for ages, that enough of them have failed at whatever their mission was that there's now piles and piles of the suitcases they were equipped with just laying on the ground as waste. From the Assassin's name and the fact that they carry a bomb in said suitcase, we can infer their purpose, but - assassinate what? There is no ruler of this underworld, or at least we never get to see any. Personally one theory I came up with is that the human sending the drones is himself the "mad god" that the title refers to, and he's plumbing the depths to see if there's any other gods out there so that he can kill them and remain the sole capital-G God. This is entirely speculation, but is supported by the mishmash of religious objects seen throughout the film - Tippett does a very good job of presenting sacred items as nothing more than slabs of stone, and any sense of ritual or holiness is invented by the devout with no influence from the divine.

I'm also fascinated by the ending. As the film goes on, it approaches a point where it is, at least visually, at its least dank and crushingly hopeless. A figure with the face of a plague doctor delivers a squalling bundle, recently excavated from the chest cavity of who I think was implied to be the Assassin after being captured and failing their mission, to a smithy who pulverizes it and turns it into a fine gold dust. This dust stands out as being one of the only beautiful things in the film, though it comes from the body of a being that was entirely helpless and arguably innocent, at least in Mad God terms. The plague doctor figure uses this dust as a kind of method of divination that launches a colorful trip sequence where we see things that one could tentatively call optimism: A city is built, and through the windows of the buildings we can see not horrific acts of murder and depravity as we saw through windows earlier in the film but what look like normal things - bookshelves, people standing around. In time this city is demolished by youths spray-painting anarchy symbols on walls - not necessarily a bad outcome, but possibly the reckoning of a diseased and overgrown urban sprawl, which could give rise to better living conditions in its downfall. The visions produced by huffing dead baby dust (again, it's that kind of movie) are the only point at which things look slightly less than existentially horrific. But what is the meaning of this? How can ruthlessly killing and commodifying the remains of the film's only innocent creature produce visions of a brighter future? There's implications there that would take many, many paragraphs to unpack - and I'm going to wrap up this review here, although there is far more I could say.

The story of this film's creation is well-known: Phil Tippett along with a rotating crew of interns worked on it as a side-project to his larger film contributions (which are many) for 30 years, adding bits and pieces to it continuously to, from what I've heard, the detriment of his own mental health. Watching something like this where you know the monumental effort and time that went into making it is such a unique experience - I could not stop thinking about how the baby that supplied the doomed creature's cries could be nearing 30 years old by now. The aesthetic of the film is unashamedly lowbrow, and I love how it's not afraid to be powerfully, blasphemously disgusting. Rivers of feces and creatures that look to be composed entirely of hanging testicles are not uncommon sights in Mad God. This is not the kind of movie that everyone will appreciate thematically or visually, but as an object it's a deeply interesting reminder of the timelessness of art and a showcase of fervent dedication to one concept.

The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962)

directed by Joseph Green

USA

82 minutes

3 stars out of 5

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A note - there apparently is an "uncut" version of this that differs from the more readily available release only in the inclusion of a single scene, and I'm not sure whether the version I watched was cut or uncut. Either way, a single non-plot-relevant scene cut only for gore doesn't really change the impression the whole film makes, and while I always go out of my way to ensure completeness when I watch something, in this case I don't think it was too big of a deal.

So this is a bit of a cult classic that's typically associated with the ranks of cheesy sci-fi/horror films from the 1950s and '60s, but it has a weird stoicism to it that made it feel a little different from the lurid, bombastic titles of the era. Every character seems to practically be sleepwalking through the story, and for some reason that feels vaguely unsettling. The plot concerns a pioneering and super morally gross doctor who manages to save his wife Jan's head - and only her head - after a would-be fatal car wreck. It's most likely the fault of a mixture of bad acting with a sub-par script that we don't get a real picture of the doctor's personality, so he's not developed in a way that would make us feel sympathy or even revulsion towards him. He never shows any emotional depth, he's just always 100% committed to doing whatever he plans to do with no show of actually desiring or not desiring to do it. Obviously he's driven by a motive - getting his wife a new hot bod - but it just doesn't feel like he is. Him, and everyone around him, carry out their lot in life as if there never existed any other thing to do. This is why the movie has some very slightly off vibe to it.

It also feels somehow very sleazy and very tame at the same time. The main character doesn't just want a new body for his wife's severed head - he wants the best one, which seems to him to mean the sexiest one. Despite this, as a character he feels deeply sexless and disinterested. He attends strip clubs and stalks women who pose in lingerie for photographers, but does so with neither desire nor disdain. This all comes off as arrogance, really; in addition to the sheer hubris that he demonstrates by messing around with the touted "natural order of things", his assumption that he can go out and shop for women like picking up and squeezing avocados in a supermarket, and then manipulate them into coming back to his lab and detaching their heads from their bodies, speaks to a deep and somewhat terrifying center-of-the-universe mindset. Another review pointed out that Jan is absolutely caked in makeup, which Dr. Cortner would have had to apply himself - this is of course explained in reality by nothing more than the filmmakers abhorring the possibility of a woman onscreen with no makeup, but in-universe, it's a great example of how Cortner's real focus is on making sure his wife's appearance is preserved for him.

Far and away the best thing about The Brain That Wouldn't Die is the brain that wouldn't die. When you think about it, it should really be the head that wouldn't die, as said brain remains inside its native skull for the whole film. (But then, when you think about it, all any of us are is a brain.) This is my favorite part of the movie because this is where a kind of cosmic horror comes in that is only there because the film seems wholly unconcerned with explaining literally anything. For reasons never elaborated upon, detaching Jan's head from her body and hooking it up to various burbling test tubes and liquids grants her inhuman powers. Separated from her body, and in spite of a lack of appendages or even the ability to turn around on her own, Jan is able to communicate telepathically with the film's second horror, a mangled, barely-living failed experiment that got shoved in a closet because what else do you do with science experiments that are both A. horrible failures, and B. equipped with the ability to rend you apart. They share a common interest, which is a strong wish for revenge on the scientists who caused them to remain alive after they should have died. The idea that a brain untethered from a body could have some kind of latent, super-powerful psychic ability is downright Lovecraftian; a "forbidden knowledge" kind of concept that I really love despite it residing in a sub-par movie such as this.

I think medical horror surrounding the removal of one's agency against one's will is inherently more real and uncomfortable than a lot of other horror because it is a reality for a lot of people. Anybody who's ever had to go to a doctor is left without a choice other than to put your whole life in the hands of someone who is, at the end of the day, just some guy. We hope they'll be upstanding people with a genuine desire to help you, but often they have their own ideas of how your body should work that don't fit with your own lived experiences. Nobody's ever gotten their head cut off and reanimated for hubris reasons by a shady doctor in real life, but movies like this are only a slight fantasy - an extension of a valid and palpable real-life fear.

Rodan (1956)

directed by Ishirō Honda

Japan

82 minutes

5 stars out of 5

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I rewatched this last night and I had some more thoughts on it that I'm going to add to this updated review. Seeing it in pristine picture quality for the first time made me realize that this is not just a very good four-star movie but a full five-star movie.

Rodan is still not my favorite of the innumerable Toho kaiju, but I do appreciate him, especially after this. This film, containing his origin story, goes well beyond what can be boxed into the simple and easy definition of a monster movie, as is typical for Ishirō Honda. Just looking at the taglines from its international releases make it obvious how hard other audiences are missing the point. "The Super-Sonic Hell-Creature No Weapon Could Destroy!" is a laughable attempt at making it sound like militaristic action and a menacing, evil monster are what you can expect when the reality is far different. Also, there are two Rodans in this first film, and much like Godzilla, every movie after it that features Rodan has had to ignore the ending and either imply that one of the two survived or that the Rodan du jour is a different member of the species entirely.

There is much the same meaning behind this as there was 1954's Godzilla, but Rodan for some reason never became associated with the long-lasting spectre of humanity's obsession with nuclear power the way Godzilla did. It is fairly on-the-nose about it, too: Early on in the film one of the mine workers remarks to a supervisor that "they" say the Earth is getting warmer, and if it keeps up, sea levels will rise and there will be flooding (this is 1956 - yikes). The supervisor doesn't have much of a reaction besides kind of a distant "oh, sounds bad" but almost immediately the film kicks off its action by having everybody suddenly scramble in response to - surprise, surprise - flooding in one of the mines. The looming fear behind Rodan is that as we change the Earth with mining and nuclear weapons testing, things are going to be awoken that we can't put back to sleep. When the mine is flooded and the Meganulon larvae venture out to claim human victims, it is transformed from a space that we, filled with hubris, thought we had conquered and controlled, into something once again foreign and unknown. And there is a message about responsibility in this as well: It not only is saying that we're going to hurt ourselves by continuing to disrespect nature and giving rise to horrors, but we're going to claim innocent non-human victims in the process. I will talk about this in a minute, but I want to stress - and this film stresses it as well - that the two Rodans do absolutely nothing; they don't even really fight back. They're just large animals whose existence is inconvenient for humanity, and our reaction is not to attempt to preserve them or to acknowledge our hand in disrupting their natural life-cycle, but to fill them full of lead. We're afraid of them because we're afraid to confront what they say about us.

1956's Rodan has a sinister tone to it that feels more akin to a horror film than even the original Godzilla did two years before. For some reason I kept thinking about the original The Thing From Another World; I don't know why, there's not many similarities other than people threatened by a mystery creature. For some time, Rodan is just a series of people getting maimed by some unknown force down in a mine, and for audiences in the 50s, this must have been terrifying. It's genuinely eerie to see people come up against something they have absolutely no idea about. Men just keep going down into the mine and getting taken and sometimes killed by... something. The ones that come back are struck mute by the horror of what they've seen. Nobody knows if it will stop or if it can be stopped, or what it means for the rest of the world.

I actually want to talk more about this as a horror movie because it really struck me on my rewatch last night how purely scary it is. The scene where Kenji Sahara's character, stricken by amnesia after his encounter with Rodan in the mines and unable to communicate his terror of it, is reminded of his experience and flashes back to it - that all felt like a literal nightmare. I can't convey to you what watching that and understanding it feels like because everybody inherently experiences a film differently, and also there is a large camp of people who would never be able to see a guy going into a mine and watching a giant bird hatch from a giant egg as frightening. But it's just... that scene is so, so hallucinatory and terrifying. There's just this primal no no no no no! fear to it. Somebody at my book club (hi Candace) once said that there's no fear that's more real or more intense than when you're a child and you're absolutely certain, nightlights and locked doors be damned, that there's a monster in your room; it is real and it is right there in front of you. That's what Sahara's encounter with Rodan feels like. It feels like seeing the impossible and being totally unable to escape from the fact that everything you thought you knew about the world before is wrong.

You usually feel some degree of sympathy for the kaiju in Ishirō Honda's films, but Rodan feels like a special case even for Honda. There is nothing that makes him stand out aside from being larger than usual. He has no powers that are separate from his large size; he can't shoot fire or atomic breath in this first appearance, all he does is exist in a space that humans have claimed for our own. He doesn't even fight, actually. He doesn't intentionally harm anything or anyone at all. The force of his wings displace enough air that his presence in a city is akin to a devastating tornado, and there's nowhere for him to touch down that won't destroy buildings and people because of the scale of our human sprawl. Rodan is yet another being who never asked to be brought into existence and is now stuck living as a lumbering, too-big presence that humans revile and seek to destroy to preserve their own safety and survival, though Rodan has done nothing wrong.

From a technical standpoint, this movie is almost as impressive as the original Godzilla, and maybe even surpasses it, because this was Toho's first kaiju film shot in color, and the quality of the background paintings can be seen clearly without the characteristic muddiness of the black-and-white Godzilla. The miniature sets still hold up and rival anything produced today. Although it's a long time before we actually get to see Rodan, it never feels boring, and instead maintains tension by, as I said earlier, creating a deep sense of menace even while we only get the human side of things, just watching people be throttled by unknown creatures and never seeing them. The ending is overwhelmingly sad and - a rarity - depicts humans as being in the wrong; the aggressors against a creature who was never trying to do anything but live. As the rockets rain down on Rodan and it becomes clear that we're shooting ourselves in the foot too when the volcano begins to erupt, the audience is made to feel for Rodan as a fellow living being. The international releases do not get this. They only see the survival of humanity and society as necessary no matter what the price, paying little to no heed to what suffers and is lost as a consequence.

The last thing I'll say about this is another observation I had upon rewatching it. I don't mean to shame anybody for liking movies that aren't deep, that exist solely to entertain you for an hour or so. But those movies feel so ephemeral in comparison to something like Rodan. Watching the incredibly detailed miniature city being destroyed by someone in a big flying dinosaur suit, I just felt so aware that people were doing all this, were setting all of this up and scripting it and shooting it and eventually releasing it, 66 years ago, to tell me something, and that I, 66 years later and in a different country, was - hopefully, at least partially - apprehending it. The big franchise Marvel and DC films, the mega-blockbuster sequels (Top Gun, Jurassic Park) are so tied to our current time that they will be out of date and incomprehensible within a couple of years. But I deeply understand and feel spoken to by this movie that came out two years before my mother was born, and I'd venture a guess that no matter how much time passes from its original release, that will still be the case.

Orochi, the Eight-Headed Dragon (1994)

directed by Takao Okawara

Japan

105 minutes

3.5 stars out of 5

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I planned on watching this some time ago, but I had been watching so many similar movies around that time that I watched about five minutes and got bored and turned it off. Moods change, though, and I finally got around to sitting through the whole thing. It does not hurt at all that it's directed by Takao Okawara, who made some of my favorite Godzilla films, which are unfortunately also some of the most divisive (you can pry Godzilla 2000 from my cold dead hands, I think it's great). Orochi is definitely of its era, but there's a charm to it not despite but because of that.

This is kind of a loose remake of The Three Treasures, which is also a movie that's very dear to me, but I'm not entirely sure if it's specifically meant to be a remake of that movie or if it's more of a retelling of the same source mythology. I'm leaning towards the latter, and I'm not going to compare the two films overmuch here, because few similarities exist between them. The big, obvious difference is that Orochi uses CGI fairly heavily while such technology was not around in 1959, but you can't say that this renders one movie superior to the other, because I'm sure that if technology had been at this level in 1959, the original Three Treasures probably would have looked more like this too. I will say that it's very interesting seeing this specific kind of CGI used in a fantasy setting and it gives the movie a really unique feel because the visual effects used would look far more at home in a traditional sci-fi movie (or a Godzilla movie) than something that's meant to take place millennia ago. There's a lot of laser beams and glowing fog for a mythological tale. I would not change it, though - it's all part and parcel of the film, both as it was originally intended and as the object it has aged/is aging into.

So if one is unaware, this is based on the Shinto story of the birth of Japan (and the world in general). You don't need to be too familiar with this because everything that is relevant to the film is presented to the viewer through narration. Yamato Takeru is a good-hearted prince who is one half of a set of twins, the other half being sort of a typical evil foil to the protagonist's goodness, but there is a twist in that Yamato has a darker side as well. When under threat, he can manifest certain magical powers that lead to the unintended death of his mother and his twin. The death of his brother leads to his banishment from his father's kingdom for his own good, and this is the kickoff for most of the film. There's a whole lot of questing going on in this, and most of the time is spent roaming around from place to place as Yamato searches for the three objects that will, along with his inherent holy princeliness, give him the strength to defeat the titular evil dragon and also a couple other evil things (it's never just the one). He also, of course, falls in love along the way, but I'm genetically engineered to ignore romantic subplots, so I can't say much about that.

I kept feeling like there was a flatness to everybody's affect in Orochi that was keeping it a Good Movie when it could have been a Great Movie. With things like this that are meant to exist in a fantasy realm, so long ago that it blurs the line between history and myth, a certain formality and stiffness is appropriate to go with the archetypical characters and defined threads of fate that they follow. It can be hard to get really emotional and personal in this kind of story because everything is so widely known and already laid out. That all being said, I still felt like there was room for it to be a little more dramatic. Hiroshi Abe's character was breaking the mold of this a bit, and I wish he had had a bigger role because his performance was more along the lines of what I would have liked from everybody else. He's just a little bit hammy and it's appropriate for the setting. All the others seem afraid to dial up the ham factor even slightly.

But, while I can't say that characters are un-important, I'd argue that the big draw of this is that it's a special effects showcase first and foremost. Like I said, there is a lot of CGI, but the way it's used is really tasteful. The places where you can tell digital assistance played a part are mostly spots where physical effects would have looked clunky - at any point, even with today's higher standards - like when somebody shoots beams from their eyes, or is standing against a complicated backdrop, just stuff like that. When CGI is not used is when an unbelievably intricate, artful, visually stunning, impressively detailed suit or model could be used instead. This is what you expect from Toho. The really quite mind-blowing Orochi puppet, though it does look too large and heavy to move around a lot, is the centerpiece of the film. Less eye-grabbing but still deserving of notice was one particular wound application in a scene in which our hero spears somebody through the ribs - I'm using this as an example of the attention to detail that makes this movie worthwhile. We're all used to the whole sword-under-the-arm thing when someone gets stabbed on film, but in this moment we can see the spear go in and out the other side of the character's bare chest, and it looks really good. The prosthetic was seamless enough that I did not notice it, and this technique is actually used again when Yamato himself gets stabbed through the neck. That added level of seeing the blade physically pass all the way through is a step above and beyond, and it's the kind of thing I notice and appreciate as a fan of movies that tend to get bloody.

There's just something to this movie that I can't really describe with a single word. Somebody else said that this was Toho throwing every concept they had into a blender and I'll second that. I don't think it can be compared to others that came before it that are based on the same mythology because they're from such different eras. Maybe movies like this need some time to age to make them more fun to watch. I'd have trouble sitting through something like this produced using the glossiest modern-day CGI, but when I can almost see the wires and the rough edges around the green screen shots, my brain just inherently is more engaged.

The Magic Serpent (1966)

directed by Tetsuya Yamauchi

Japan

94 minutes

3.5 stars out of 5

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I'm not sure I have enough to say about this for a long review, but I'm going to give it a small one because it's worth that, at least. This is a little rougher around the edges than I typically expect from Toei, but then I suppose it would still be some years before they would produce Kamen Rider and become known more for their tokusatsu than their historical dramas. This is both of those things, but leans more heavily towards the historical drama side. A quick look at the director's filmography shows he literally only made movies about ninjas - hey, find your niche, I guess.

It can't be denied that even if the whole thing is not the best movie ever (I seem to be somewhat in the minority for rating this a little lower), there are individual moments that show it is well-made and fun nonetheless. The film starts out with one of these moments: The good and fair lord is usurped by someone he thought was his right-hand man, and when the lord's former friend comes to deliver the news that a rebel group is making headway in taking over his domain, the lord asks who the leader of this group could be. The traitor, and now leader, replies "ME!" and delivers a literal gut-stabbing to go with the back-stabbing. There's just certain lines like that, and certain specific moments, that make this more exciting than it would otherwise have been. Without constantly focusing on goofy one-liners, there's still a classic storybook aspect to this that I loved. It never gets too zealous with the drama, which is an achievement considering this is a movie where anybody can do anything because of magic.

The whole film exists in a fantasy register where some people have just ridiculous crazy magic powers and it's explained away as "eh, they're ninjas". I mean, we're talking people making it look like their head came off and is flying around and taunting guys, people turning into giant dragons and frogs, people flying on thunderbolts, et cetera. This isn't just ninja stuff as in amazing martial arts skills and impressive fight scenes - this is fully in the realm of the imaginary, where magic is physically possible and utilized as a combat skill alongside traditional fighting. Our main character undergoes the typical hero ordeal of having his parents killed at a young age and then being raised off on top of a mountain somewhere by a wise old man who teaches him unsurpassable magic skills (okay, maybe that only seems "typical" because I watch weird movies), and it's the equally typical death of this teacher that sets him off on a quest for justice not only for himself but also for his murdered parents. Stuff is messy and impossible, achieved visually with primitive green-screen techniques that of course don't hold up, but that's part of the charm with movies like this. I wouldn't smoothen out the edges of the flying decapitated head if you paid me. That's how this movie was made and that's how it needs to be appreciated.

As I said, there's much less cool dragon stuff here than there is historical drama and also a lot of family issues (determining who is whose father, getting revenge, and so forth), which is either good or bad depending on what kind of movie you want to watch. The film teases us a bit by starting right off with the dragon, who is actually responsible for the main character's parents' death, and then not showing it again until probably about fifteen minutes from the end. But it is a very good dragon. I had The Three Treasures on the brain when watching this (as I often do) and I was expecting a dragon operated more by puppetry than people, but no, there's a guy in there. It's done with suitmation - and some wires to assist the big floppy head, of course, but you can definitely tell it's a person in the suit. I was almost more impressed by the giant frog who fights the dragon, because I felt like there was some real frog-ness achieved there; you can do whatever you want with a dragon because they don't exist, but everyone knows how a frog acts and moves, and even though this was a giant, enchanted frog, the suit actor inside of it managed to move in such a way that it really did look like a living frog. I'm always noticing when suit actors put on a performance that is clearly reminiscent of a real animal. It's tough to communicate legible body language inside so many pounds of foam rubber.

I'd easily and heartily recommend this to anybody who's into the history of tokusatsu. I'm surprised that it seems to have been forgotten by many, but from a cursory glance, those who have seen it have left glowing reviews. I was falling asleep during this, which probably influenced my opinion of it, and I'm rating it a little lower than most because I have less patience for the wishy-washy romantic subplot type of thing, but all in all, yeah, it's pretty great. We can't argue with a movie where not just the hero and not just the villain but also the hero's love interest all turn into giant animals and fight each other.

Return of Daimajin (1966)

directed by Kenji Misumi

Japan

79 minutes

4 stars out of 5

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In keeping with the theme of watching somewhat unconventional kaiju films this month, here I watched something that I'm on the fence about calling a kaiju film at all. It's definitely adjacent, but while Daimajin is a giant thing, he isn't a giant monster. As this uses most of the techniques that a more monster-y tokusatsu film would use - miniatures, suitmation, et cetera - I feel comfortable categorizing it alongside such films, but it's not of them.

I watched the first Daimajin a long time ago, well before I was interested in or even aware of tokusatsu at all, and I was quite taken by it because I was still of the (very wrong) opinion that guys in goofy rubber suits could not possibly be an effective method of conveying any kind of moral or political message. The giant majin statue is not just a spirit-filled idol that comes to life and smashes things indiscriminately - it is a living god, an embodiment of the rage of a beaten-down people. It's a savior meting out justice that does not look pretty or neat and has no room for negotiations. It takes a while to get the majin's blood up, especially in this second film, but when you do, there's no escaping it. Return of Daimajin is far more of a historical piece than anything else - I almost want to call it an "epic", but it's difficult to apply that word to something that's barely 80 minutes long - and being helmed by Kenji Misumi, director of arguably some of the most famous samurai films of all time, guarantees that it's going to be as intense and unwavering as his other work.

The majority of this film's running time is spent watching everything slowly go down the drain as it seems like the fist of power will just keep coming down on a subjugated people over and over. An ambitious tyrant seeks control of a fertile mountainous region where people worship the giant majin statue that we all know and love, and in the process of seizing control of this land, much life is lost - deliberately; the tyrant has no qualms about snuffing out resistance by simply making it a numbers game, killing the opposing side until they just don't have enough people to fight him. It's not a sad film, but it's full of strife and turmoil and bound to make you at least a little angry about injustice.

Another thing that makes Return of Daimajin similar to many classic kaiju films is that the star of the show doesn't actually show up until the last twenty minutes. As a Godzilla fan, I am fairly used to that. I want to take a different approach to this, though, and re-examine the giant majin's place in the film as an object, because this isn't the kind of thing where you watch it specifically to see a huge monster stomp stuff. The draw of it shouldn't be the giant majin, and just waiting around for that one part to develop robs you of the ability to appreciate the film as a whole. This is a movie that has as much human story as it has practical effects. And I would argue that keeping the appearance of the living statue to the very very end is absolutely vital to enforcing how powerful the statue is - there has to be the suggestion of a possibility that maybe the god won't show up, maybe all the praying and suffering is for naught. Even though we know we will see the majin statue come to the rescue, we have to see it from the perspective of the oppressors for at least a little while and be able to doubt that the mountain-dwellers are actually doing anything effective when they pray to their god. This allows the appearance of the majin to feel more like a triumph and less like an inevitability.

And let me just say that the last twenty minutes of this are absolutely incredible. It is a long wait for the payoff, especially if you're not fond of or just not experienced with samurai film, but once Daimajin rises up and parts the waters to smite those who would subjugate his people, everything that came before was wholly worthwhile. I was not expecting Akira Ifukube's soundtrack, as I was unaware that he worked with studios outside of Toho, so as you can imagine, the arrival of Daimajin is backed by the most epic, compelling symphonic score you could hope for. I feel like Shiho Fujimura, who plays Lady Sayuri, does an understated but important job in carrying a large part of this film, and even though once Daimajin shows up, language kind of seems to fail everybody, she manages to convey a sense of deep awe and respect when facing him. There's a fluidity to the effects in this that you don't usually see, particularly in scenes like the iconic one where Daimajin takes Sayuri down from being crucified - there's no goofy "King Kong holding that lady" vibe where it is so clearly a doll that it takes you out of the moment, it just looks real. And the shots of Sayuri looking at Daimajin, no words, just reverence - that was perfect.

So it might be a little slow at times if you're not in general a fan of either historical stuff involving this specific time period and location or anything with giant creatures, but I feel like even someone who is not into those things would appreciate how well this movie is made as an artistic endeavor. I unfortunately can't remember the first movie well enough to say if I liked it better than this, but certainly it introduced me to a side of tokusatsu that I was unaware existed at that point.

Monster Seafood Wars (2020)

directed by Minoru Kawasaki

Japan

84 minutes

3 stars out of 5

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Life is happening to me pretty hard this KaiJune, but ever since I heard that word, I became determined to celebrate by watching some lesser-known (and also re-watching some of my favorite) kaiju films. I'm looking mostly for independent or old stuff that has slipped through the cracks, but Monster Seafood Wars here got me within about 30 seconds by having the first person onscreen be Ryo Kinomoto, who played Captain Hibiki in Ultraman Dyna. His character is also named Hibiki in this, which leads me to assume that it takes place in a desolate post-Dyna wasteland where everybody is forced to fend for themselves. One of the people from Ultraman Nexus is also in this, so I'd imagine that there's probably also people from other franchises that I don't recognize because the only thing I care about is Ultraman (kidding, but barely). I'll be going over plot details that may include spoilers but you really shouldn't care too much about that with this movie, it's too silly.

There's not much story to this, but - and this will be a running them with many issues the film has - that can also be said about a lot of tokusatsu. It starts out innocently enough: the main character gets knocked off his bike while on his way to deliver fresh seafood from his father's shop to a local shrine, and the seafood in his basket vanishes, only to return soon enough as enormous monsters (a crab, a squid, and an octopus) who duke it out with each other and lay waste to the city. We learn that the protagonist and a friend of his were involved with the creation of some kind of super-serum which seemed to have the effect of enlarging and powering up biological cells, although for whatever reason I found this part of the movie hard to understand. The kaiju here seem fairly mindless; truly animalistic unlike a lot of the kaiju we're familiar with who do have at least rudimentary goals and trajectories. These are pretty much just giant sea creatures who slap each other around, and oh, right, I forgot, the crab shoots fireballs. The squid has a very obvious Mothra chirp, and a lot of the old faithful Toho stock explosion sound effects (if you know, you know) are also used, which was a big surprise to me because I would think Toho would nuke you from orbit if you tried to do that without permission. Maybe these folks had permission, though. I don't know.

What I liked most about this movie is that it asks a question that I don't think I've ever heard a kaiju movie ask: What if we eat the kaiju? What if we eat the kaiju and they're delicious and tender and we have several hundred tons of their meat to go around? I would go so far as to say that Monster Seafood Wars is obsessed with this idea - more time than you would expect is devoted to nothing but people praising the kaiju seafood, raving about how tasty it is, blogging about eating it, talking to people who ate it, et cetera. It is mostly tongue-in-cheek, because a lot of this movie is making fun of consumerism and commodification, but that doesn't change the fact that you really, really have to be ready to sit through a good big chunk of time where there's nothing but people talking about various seafood dishes.

As it turns out, this is where the main character comes in. He admits that his goal in messing with the aforementioned growth/power serum was to create huge and highly nutritious version of normal food sources and thus more easily feed people in famine- and drought-stricken areas. A noble pursuit, but it runs into practical issues, such as "where are you going to keep giant seafood while it's still alive". Also, I'm not sure why the crab gained fireball powers. Maybe all crabs secretly have that but are too small to utilize it. We can't assume we know every crab secret.

(I also almost forgot that at the end there's a giant mecha made out of one of those Italian chef caricatures with the mustache and tall hat and whatnot. It's the defense team's secret weapon, piloted blind by a super-talented gamer, and it looks awesome. It's almost my favorite part of the movie.)

Again, like a lot of toku, this was obviously made on a pretty small budget. That's part and parcel of some of my favorite television and movies, so I don't count it as a point against it - it just leads to more resourcefulness, which leads to an aesthetically interesting and unique end product most of the time. The suits are quite good, in fact I'd say they're easily at the level of what you might expect to see in any Ultra series - maybe late Heisei Ultra, not the New Generation stuff, but still. There's a defense team, like there usually is, even though the film definitely is not focused on them and they mostly just kind of drift apart after their first weapon (the vinegar cannon, yes there is a vinegar cannon) is only half effective at best, and obviously it's made better because Hibiki taichō is there. The budget shows in the lack of huge panicked crowds and fortunately also a distinct lack of CGI, neither of which are particularly bad things. This just... feels like a movie made on the cheap by people who knew where to put the money and where not to. It's rough around the edges, but it's a little funny and you can tell the people behind it really love this kind of thing. It is a bit middle-of-the-road tonally, it could definitely have been either much, much sillier or a little more serious, but it's light-hearted enough to feel just right, most of the time. I would recommend this highly to anybody who's into this stuff.