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]

Thanks for posting this, Luke.

Luke Blanchard said:

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.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

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

I originally wrote: “Fed by protein and (presumably?) radiation…,” but I changed it because the atomic bomb was shown exploding, but the conceit of the new monster was that the heart cannot die and would have grown a new body eventually, anyway. It wasn’t made explicit, but maybe the radiation contributed to the creature’s unnatural growth. (He had to be a giant to fight Baragon.) Just to mention it, throughout the movie, everyone refers to the monster itself as “Frankenstein.”

[Richard Willis]

Jeff of Earth-J said:

Just to mention it, throughout the movie, everyone refers to the monster itself as “Frankenstein.”

Like most people, he took his daddy’s name. And like some celebrities, he only has a single name.

[Ronald Morgan]

I read the original version decades ago, so when I reread parts of the book a few years ago I wondered why the ending wasn't the same. I remember the book was based on a nightmare she had of the Monster looking down at her with its watery eyes, and read she just wrote that scene at first and was encouraged by Shelley to expand it into a novel.

[JD DeLuzio]

Mighty Joe young had to have come from someplace else.

He came from Africa or, Golden Age Hollywood's version thereof. No explanation is given for his size or unusual intelligence. That's just Joe.

[Richard Willis]

I think Mighty Joe Young came from a corporate board room. "Let's make our own King Kong! "

[JD DeLuzio]

And since they were all drinking coffee, they named him Joe.

Richard Willis said:

I think Mighty Joe Young came from a corporate board room. "Let's make our own King Kong! "

[Ronald Morgan]

Maybe they were playing craps and somebody rolled a four just as the boss asked what they should call him.

[Richard Willis]

Coincidentally, since today was pretty warm, I went out in this T-Shirt, by the great B. Kliban. He's climbing San Francisco's pyramid-shaped Transamerica building. The pilots in the bi-planes are mice. There are apparently several versions of this using different tall buildings.

[The Baron]

Last night I re-watched Furankenshutain Tai Chitei Kaijū Baragon (1965). It was amusing hearing Nick Adams dubbed into Japanese.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

BATTLE OF THE GARGANTUAS: This is the sequel to Frankenstein Conquers the World (or Furankenshutain Tai Chitei Kaijū Baragon if you prefer). It can’t really be called a Frankenstein movie anymore because the creature’s origins are never mentioned. It’s now referred to exclusively as “Gargantua.” The flashback scenes have been refilmed, with Gargantua looking more like a little Bigfoot than a wild boy. This one is better than I remembered it (not that I didn’t like it before).

[The Baron]

My plan is to watch Furankenshutain no Kaijū: Sanda tai Gaira tonight, which is the Japanese original of War of the Gargantuas.  As you might guess from the title, the original makes the Frankenstein connection more clear. Dunno why it was changed when it was localized.