My brain diarrhea somehow wound up on the Blu-ray case for Howl From Beyond the Fog!!!?! Cool!!
Hey! I’m not dead!
Where are the last two months’ reviews? I’ll tell you: fuckin’ nowhere! Life is hard. Many, many things are total dogshit when it comes to life in 2020, but one of like four things that isn’t a complete, blood-shitting, teeth-grinding nightmare is being a kaiju fan! Holy shit there is so much going on and coming up! It even occasionally makes me hope that our inevitable extinction level event (be it a global ecological catastrophe, World War III, or uh tainted Moon water?) will hold off until…. maybe like 2022 or ’23 (tops).
For October I was considering doing a mini episode round-up of Ultraman Z, the current and absolutely excellent installment of the long-running Ultraman series. Buuuut October also saw the birth of a cool new kaiju art challenge, Titanotober! But it’s also been forever since I reviewed Ultraman ’66 episodes. But also also but I’ve been wanting to review Gamera vs. Guiron for like, the last year or so.
In classic Matt fashion I couldn’t figure out which one to commit to. Throw in long hours at work, maintaining inter-personal relationships (that is, largely failing at maintaining said relationships), the chores and daily duties of everyday life, plus the twin siren songs of Animal Crossing AND Super Mario 3D All-Stars and you have a Voltron of responsibilities and distractions that’s better at eradicating free time better than actual Voltron is at killing off space monsters!
So what? So this time I’m doing something a little different and dipping into a little bit of everything that’s swirling around in the kaijuverse… ESPECIALLY GODZILLA SINGULAR POINT HOLY FUCKING SHIT YOU SEEN THIS?!?!?!
If you haven’t, check it out! Then slap the “read more of Matt’s bullshit” button! If you want. You do you. Self care, etc. XOXOXOX
2020 still sucks boiling hot dogshit through a straw made out of electrified razor blades and barbed wire, so let’s ignore it for a little while longer and finish off our deep dive into 1996’s delightfully doofy Rebirth of Mothra! If you missed part 1 of the review you can rub your eyeballs all over it here.
There is SO MUCH more monster moth mayhem to unpack and I can’t wait. I will say this before we pick up the recap where we left off (Desghidorah’s grand entrance): I think this is one of my favorite Heisei-era Toho monster flicks. This movie is way the fuck more solid than it gets credit for. It doesn’t have the earnest sci-fi seriousness of Return of Godzilla, it doesn’t have the astonishingly good practical effects of Godzilla vs. Biollante, and it’s not hilariously, mind-bendingly weird like Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, but it’s got it’s own, different set of goals and nails ’em! More on that and a whole bunch more after the jump!
First and foremost, Black Lives Matter, Arrest the Cops that Murdered Breonna Taylor, Defund the Police. Furthermore, Trans Rights, Love is Love, No Human is Illegal. Also, wear a mask, wash your hands, and social distance–it doesn’t matter if you’re not at risk for COVID-19, doing those things will save the folks that are.
So uh, everybody having an extremely cool, normal time here in the year or our lord two-thousand and twenty? I’ve been struggling (and failing) to get back on the monthly review train, and living in the middle of a hell shit nightmare garbage world isn’t really helping. BUT some slick new hardware (my very own first ever laptop!) should help me turn that around going forward!
But let’s not dwell on the fact that every time you make the grave error of accidentally paying attention to the news it’s a firehose spraying four hundred quadrillion gallons of boiling hot diarrhea directly into your open eyes, nose and mouth. How? BY REVIEWING A GOOFY-ASS, FEEL-GOOD, KID-FRIENDLY, VERY 90s MONSTER MOVIE MY FRIENDS.
I’m finally digging into the Rebirth of Mothra (or just Mothra in Japan) trilogy here on MONSTERS CONQUER THE WORLD! Reasonably enough I’m starting with the first entry in the trilogy, 1996’s Rebirth of Mothra. I’ve seen all three entries, but it’s been at least 10 years now (probably closer to 15?). Something about these left a… not-awesome taste in my mouth. The taste was so not-awesome that I knew I’d really need to work up some chutzpah to revisit and write at length about these films.
EXCEPT THAT SHIT ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT APPLY TO THE FIRST MOVIE. What happened? Did I change? Did the movie change? Is some other movie to blame for this trilogy’s dookie-riffic reputation (HMMM?)? Can Mothra save us from the relentless dogshit hell nightmare reality of 2020? Read on and find out!
I pride myself on keeping Monsters Conquer the World a worry-free bubble; a monster-filled refuge from the horrors of everyday life. But with everything that’s happening right now, I MUST make an exception.
We must hold our police accountable for their brutality, corruption and continuous abuse of power. Peaceful protesters are out there risking their necks and fighting the good fight, but they need help from EVERYONE in order to keep it up.
Not everyone can march, not everyone can donate money, but there are other ways to support this vital cause. There are petitions to sign, information to share, even ways to help via streaming.
If you’re not sure where to start or just have questions, I recommend https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/ . Using this site I was able to quickly and easily donate to the Detroit chapter of The Bail Project. Please do what you can.
Look, I realize that’s probably the worst review title I’ve ever cooked up, but when your review style is “R-rated, kaiju-obsessed Gene Shalit” things like this happen.
Also, I came up with the review title before actually watching Howl From Beyond the Fog! Now that I’ve seen it, I can say with certainty that the review title is an amazingly bad fit. Now that it’s there though, I can’t think of a better one. ANYWAYS
I helped Kickstart this bad boy! Keizo Murase, the designer of the original Varan suit (and special effects whiz for The H-Man, Mighty Peking Man, and more) was tapped to create Howl’s GORGEOUS monster suit. Frankly that was enough to get some buck-a-roos from me, but Howl’s also an ambitious short film that takes place in rural Japan in 1909–a refreshing change of scenery from the usual modern day city smash-em-ups.
ALSO IT’S A PUPPET MOVIE?!
How does that work? Does it work? Read on my babies!
A lost episode of Monsters Conquer the World Podcast has risen to the surface thanks to Ralph’s audio necromancy! Join in as he and Matt dive into the murky waters of Organism 46-B! Is Vladimir Putin’s sinister spy-squid the next great horror of the information age?… or are we being trolled? We also tour Antarctica and sample its many conspiracy theories. Russian accents galore!
Listen in as we expose the disturbing truth about one of the newest additions to the cryptid canon and explore the well-documented scientific tragedy directly connected to it!
Monsters Conquer the World Podcast is available where ever you go casting about for your favorite pods, or click your clackers on this webzone: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/monsters-conquer-the-world
Like Organism 46-B after a kill-frenzy, MCTW Podcast will be going back into indefinite suspended animation after this episode. Host and musical/audio engineering super pimp Ralph has stepped away from the podcast, and those are big goddamn shoes to fill. I can fit my whole body in just ONE of his shoes. I really want to make at least a few more episodes, but there are a ton of moving parts to lock down before that dream can become reality. Until then, watch out for Volkswagen-sized, 14-legged, shape-shifting hypnotist squids!
All right mother humpers, time to make like machine gunfire from a helicopter and finish off King Kong (1976)! That joke made me sad as I was typing it! But this is a classic, tragic beauty and the beast tale, just like its 1933 grandpappy and its 2005… un-pappy? Anti-pappy? Reverse pappy?…
ANYWAY you can click here to read part 1 of the review if you missed it or if you just can’t get enough of that totally gnar-gnar, flavor-blasted MCTW content.
In part 1 we set the stage, took a peek at the creative team behind the movie, and stopped just as King Kong met
Jessica Lange Dwan! Can King Kong and Dwan save the midtown youth center by putting on a funky-fresh talent show with all their hip inner-city friends, or will the evil real estate tycoon bulldoze it to make way for a subdivision of ugly McMansions?? Don’t believe me that that’s totally the actual, real plot of the movie? Better read on to make sure!
As a monster movie fan I’ve seen all the Godzillas, all the Gameras… but only most of the Kings Kong. This month I am one step closer to Kongpletion, because I finally saw the 1976 remake, King Kong! We got Jessica Lange, we got Jeff Bridges, we got Charles Grodin, we got the guy who played Odo in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, we got some tasty American suitmation, and it’s all in a lavish, mid-70s Dino De Laurentiis super-production!
So what the fuck took me so long? For one thing, Kong ’76 has always had sort of a mixed reception… for another thing, they took out the dinosaurs. And the expedition to Skull Island (only they make sure to NOT call it Skull Island) switched from an ambitious-but-doomed movie shoot to an ill-advised oil survey (because it’s the 70s, so you gotsta get those gas crisis references in!) These are all really minor, nitpicky things, but in my brain they all pointed to the distinct possibility that this was a King Kong movie that was embarrassed to be a King Kong movie, and I wasn’t exactly champing at the bit for another one of those.
I’m psyched to be wrong though! Kong ’76 is a mixed bag, but it’s a beautiful mixed bag! Most importantly, it IS 110% an honest-to-Godzilla King Kong movie! There’s also a shitload of BUCK NUTTY behind-the-scenes stories about Kong ’76’s conception and creation. Plus it’s fascinating seeing how this movie clearly laid some (unintentional?) groundwork for 2017’s terrific Kong: Skull Island. So hit pause on Deep Throat, grab your
pet rocks Petrox, and get ready to feel feelings about the Twin Towers all over again, because we’re setting sail for (definitely not) Skull Island!
Monsters Conquer the World Podcast is here with a spooktacular new episode! Just in time for Halloween, we’re taking on the classic Mexican ghost story La Llorona and its 2019 film adaptation, The Curse of La Llorona! We’ve got a super special guest to guide us through the wild and woolly world of the weeping woman, our good friend Richard (inventor of the Monsters Conquer the World signature cocktail!)! Richard grew up hearing tales of La Llorona, so we were super excited to get his perspective on the movie and of course dive into the deep folkloric roots of this iconic ghoul!
We weigh in on jump scares and anti jump scares, Mexico’s horrifying(?) Hairy Hand, the real-life historical figure that (may have) inspired La Llorona, Steve Urkel, and so much more!
We also get some bonus ghost stories–enough to fill up the adjoining Shadow Episode, which I super duper recommend checking out! Come for La Lechuza, Mexico’s terrifying owl witch, and stay for Richard’s run in with a Curandero! Plus Ralph and Richard discuss the nature of ghost stories and superstitions and what they mean not only in Mexican folklore, but the human experience at large. Shit is dope, friendos.
Monsters Conquer the World Podcast is available everywhere you pick up your favorite casted pods, but you can also just clack on this lonk if you wunt: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/monsters-conquer-the-world
I hope you enjoy the episode (and Shadow Episode)–due to life stuff I had to be more hands-off this time, but Ralph and Richard totally crushed it–this is absolutely one of my favorite episodes we’ve done. That said, between my work schedule (which will continue to be crazy through the end of the year), the hectic insanity of the holiday season, and just needing to make sure our personal lives don’t fall apart, Ralph and I have decided that Monsters Conquer the World Podcast will be on hiatus at least through November and December. We don’t have an exact return time locked in yet, but we’re aiming for January or February. We’ve still got a bunch of episode ideas that we’re psyched about, so hopefully life will have chilled out enough by then so we can actually make those episodes. Of course Patreon will be on hold while we’re gone, but monthly(-ish) blog posts won’t be effected–my review of the 1976 King Kong should be ready to drop (at least in part) before All Hallow’s Eve. Our Discord channel, Facebook, and Twitter will keep functioning as normal too!