Movies I Have Seen Lately

[The Baron]

Saw a Takashi Miike picture called The Great Yokai War. "Yokai" is a Japanese term for monsters from folklore, as opposed to the more familiar kaiju. It's a kids' picture, about a young boy from Tokyo sent out to live in the countryside with his older sister and his intermittently senile grandfather. When a vengeful spirit appears, the boy gets caught up in a war between warring groups of yokai and must find his courage to become the "Kirin Rider", the hero who will set everything to rights. It's not a bad picture - nothing deep, but an amusing story. Some of the yokai are really trippy, Japanese folklore can get pretty "out there", apparently.

[Richard Willis]

Now that I look at the trailer again, the helicopters seem to lack rocket-firing capabilities. They "only" have M-16s, (I think) two kinds of machines guns and both hand grenades and grenade launchers. Even without rockets, they probably could have killed a giant ape as long as they didn't get too close. 

Richard Willis said:

Jeff of Earth-J said:

The new version of the original took place in 1933 and the upcoming remake is set in 1973.
That makes two “sets” of films. The new one is set in the Viet Nam era. I’m looking forward to the soundtrack album, which features CCR among others.
I may also throw throw in some of the sequels such as Son of Kong and Kong Lives!, but I haven’t decided yet.

I noticed in the trailer that the soldier were wearing helmets and uniforms from "my" era, so I figured it was a period piece. I guess if it was set today it would be too easy to find Kong with real-time satellite infrared and blow him away with a drone. Even in the trailer, I wondered how it was so hard to kill him with rocket-firing helicopters.

[Ronald Morgan]

That's why that sort of film needs to be set in the past. Or much more powerful monsters than giant monkeys need to be used.

What happens when you drop a nuke on Cthulhu? He regenerates a few minutes later, only now he's radioactive.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

I have read Frankenstein twice and listened to an audiobook of it once. (I like the “flowery language.”) Tracy and I were listening to it in the car one time and the creature used some multisyllabic word, then described a bird as “a little, flitting thing.” Tracy asked incredulously, “Waitaminute. He knows the word ‘[WORD]’ but doesn’t know the word ‘bird’?”

Last night we watched Frankenstein Conquers the World. I found the remastered, widescreen DVD to be a worthy successor to the remastered, widescreen DVDs of the Hammer Frankensteins (just as the Hammers were worthy successors to the Universal Studios ones]. The monster’s heart is transported by submarine in 1945 from Germany to Japan just in time to be lost in the atomic bomb explosion. Fed by protein and radiation, the heart grows a new body around itself.

Frankenstein Conquers the World fits my “theory” that (at least on Earth-J), all of the movies are “true” and exist in the same timeline as the progeny and legacy of Frankenstein spreads through generations and across the globe. [NOTE TO SELF: Re-watch Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter soon.] I have a similar theory about King Kong: each of the movie Kongs is from a different South Pacific isle.

NEXT UP: War of the Gargantuas (the sequel to Frankenstein Conquers the World).

[Luke Blanchard]

There's an interesting article on the extent of Percy Shelley's editing of the 1818 edition and the differences between the 1818 and 1831 editions here.

[Ronald Morgan]

It had to have taken a long time to tell the entire novel to the captain, but he does die right after finishing.
 
Richard Willis said:

Ronald Morgan said:

Or see the doctor gasp out his story to a sea captain just before he dies?

IIRC, that’s how the reader hears the story in her original novel. I think Dr. Frankenstein was dying of exposure to the Arctic cold. It wasn't a sudden death.

[Ronald Morgan]

The first island only appears in the original King Kong and Son of Kong. Mighty Joe Young had to have come from someplace else.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

Interesting. I remember from reading the introduction to the volume I have and from studying it in college that there were differences in the editions, but I wouldn’t have been able to remember what they were. It was interesting to see the differences quoted side by side. (I may have seen something along these lines before but have forgotten.) I do remember my college professor pointing out that Mary Shelley originally began the book with what is now chapter five, but I haven’t seen that assertion corroborated elsewhere.

I have a comic book story of Frankenstein which deals mostly with Mary Shelley. I should pull that out and re-read it now that I am in the mood. (I also like to think that all f the comic book versions of Frankenstein are, impossibly, in the same continuity somehow.)

[Luke Blanchard]

If you'll forgive me, the side-by-side comparisons in the article are between what Mary wrote in her manuscript and Percy's edits, before the first edition. He died in 1822. The article doesn't get into the differences between the 1818 and 1831 editions until its final section.

The 1831 edition has an introduction by Mary in which she describes the book's origin. She says it was inspired by a dream, and she began by writing the dream down, beginning with the words that open ch. V in the 1831 edition. They began v. 1 ch. IV in the 1818 edition.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

Thanks for the clarification.

[Luke Blanchard]

Doctor Hmmm? said:

Which is why I re-read Dracula every couple of years, and have never, ever been able to get through Frankenstein a second time.

It's interesting how we pair them. They're like monster counterparts to Doc Savage and the Shadow, and Superman and Batman.

[Doctor Hmmm?]

The scientific monster versus the supernatural one? Or just blame Universal for marrying them in the pop culture zeitgeist.

[Richard Willis]

Jeff of Earth-J said:

Tracy and I were listening to it in the car one time and the creature used some multisyllabic word, then described a bird as “a little, flitting thing.” Tracy asked incredulously, “Waitaminute. He knows the word ‘[WORD]’ but doesn’t know the word ‘bird’?”

IIRC, that brain used in the book was that of the “saintly genius*,” not the “Abby Normal” one. It could be said that the creature had large holes in his memory, but wasn’t a complete blank slate.

* The movies’ use of an abnormal/criminal brain undercuts Shelley’s implied message that even the finest minds can be driven to bad acts when totally ostracized and denied all chance at happiness.

The monster’s heart is transported by submarine in 1945 from Germany to Japan just in time to be lost in the atomic bomb explosion. Fed by protein and radiation, the heart grows a new body around itself.

I don’t think even Stan Lee went that far with his radiation creations.