31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: Crimson Peak

The next few films will get short shrift in the writeup department, unfortunately, as I try and catch up.

"Beware Crimson Peak!"

Down on his luck Baronette Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) woos Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska), the daughter of a rich American industrialist. After her father's mysterious death, Thomas takes Edith to his ancient, crumbling family home on Crimson Peak - so named because the oils in the red clay of the soil stain the snow blood red. And oh yeah, when Edith was a kid her dead mother showed up as a ghost to warn her away from Crimson Peak.

Why are ghosts never clear with their warnings? No "stay the hell away from Thomas Sharpe, he and his sister are bad news!"

This is all very gothic, like the definition of Gothic Fiction in the dictionary would have Castle of Otranto as the first example and Crimson Peak as the last. And in that genre it works exceedingly well - it's all atmospherically rotting woodwork and black lacquered halls that seem to wander in ways the house couldn't possibly hold. There are dark family secrets and an innocent woman in grave circumstances she only becomes aware of through the intervention of spirits. The plot is a bit obvious, but that's also part of the charm - you know what's coming, even when the protagonists don't.

Every time I see a house like this in a film I think "dear Lord, the dusting..."

Unfortunately, the film is let down on two fronts. Other than the main trio of characters Thomas, his sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain) and Edith, the casting is a bit lackluster and I don't really buy either Jim Beaver or Charlie Hunnam in their roles. And the special effects - particularly of the ghosts - are too modern and realistic for the mood. They're well done - I mean, this is Del Toro here - but the realistic gore and violence clashes with the generally period and genre specific atmosphere.

Is that a cleaver in your head or are you just happy to see me? Cleaver? Okay then.

Tom Hiddleston is the standout here, as he often is. I found myself liking and sympathizing with his character, even when I knew what his past was. We shouldn't forgive him anything, and I didn't - but I sure wanted to.

Bottom Line: very good movie that I didn't enjoy as much as I should have because of the way the gore and violence - minimal as it was - kept knocking me out of the story. Worth it for the visuals alone.

Whose idea was it to build here, anyway? 'Cause they should be fired.

31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: The Burrowers

"If you so much as touch that gun without my say-so, I will holster it in your ass."

There was a recent discussion on a message board I frequent about horror westerns. I can't remember the list - was Dust Devils on there? Bone Tomahawk  was. High Plains Drifter counts, I think. There's also Sundown, Grim Prairie Tales, and... geez, I'm sure there were more. It just seems like there aren't a lot of horror westerns and even fewer good ones.

Supernaturals! That one with Nichelle Nichols! That was... not really a western, I guess. Never mind. Ghost Town? No, modern day. White Buffalo?

"Don't ferget Billy the Kid vs Dracula!"

Nevermind.

The point is, I don't really think of horror when I think of westerns, and hearing the two genres mentioned together doesn't really inspire my interest. Curiosity, maybe - like hearing that someone has deep-fried an orange - but it doesn't immediately make me want to try it. So when Tom B recommended The Burrowers back in 2013 I didn't exactly rush out to get a copy. When I did finally watch it - on Netflix, probably a year or so later - I was pleasantly surprised. And I was looking forward to watching again this year.

The Medium
I've got the DVD from Lionsgate - purchased used for under five bucks. There doesn't appear to be a blu-ray available, which is too bad as the cinematography would definitely benefit from being seen in high-def. It's also for rent on any of the standard online streaming sites, and that might be preferable if it's in HD.

The Movie

Yes, The Burrowers is  a horror/western. In the absence of a huge amount of evidence for my claim, I'll still say that I think the key to a really good one of these is to make sure both sides of the coin are treated equally well. In this, The Burrowers succeeds admirably. The western aspect feels authentic and true to the genre, and the horror - the monster sub-genre, specifically - is also handled with care and attention to the details and tension that make it work. The result is something that is more than the sum of its parts. Each would work fine separately, but it's the combination that makes it memorable.

"He keeps going on like this and I'm liable to stick this gun up his..."

A multiple family homestead is attacked, presumably by a local tribe, and an entire family is missing. Despite misgivings over the circumstances - one family seems to have been shot by the  patriarch - a posse is formed to track down them down and bring the missing family back home. We've got two old Indian War vets, John Clay (Clancy Brown) and William Parcher (William Mapother), Fergus Coffey (Karl Geary),  an Irish immigrant and suitor of one of the missing girls, and Dobie, the young son of a woman Parcher is wooing. They are joined in their pursuit by a local attachment of the US cavelry, lead by Eugene Victor Tooms... er, that is, by Henry Victor (Dough Hutchinson).

"Why, my fingers are of normal length, sir, why do you ask?"

The natural camaraderie that springs up between the men in the main group is one of the best parts of the film. And that includes the cook, Walnut Callaghan (Robert Ri'chard) that joins them after they leave the Cavalry. (Something about their casual racism and propensity for overzealous acts of violence seems to rub them the wrong way.) I also just love their dialogue. An exchange between Coffey and Callaghan is less than 30 words, but they're friends once it's done. And you get the sense of a long history between Clay and Parcher, without any long soliloquy's or flashbacks.

John Clay: Why do you spend so much time rubbin' that boy's belly? He already thinks you're Jesus Crockett.

William Parcher: I'm courtin' his mother.

Clay: That's Gertrude Spacks' boy?

Parcher: Yeah.

Clay: Skinny woman. Might as well just poke the boy.

Parcher: (smiling) That's not a very godly sentiment, John.

"Well, I'm not a very godly man, Clay."

Coffey is the main protagonist and it's his goal of finding his love, Maryanne (House of the Devil's Jocelin Donahue) that drives the men forward, deep into the wilds. Unfortunately for them all, it's not a Native American tribe that's taken the family. It's something far, far worse. Something that lives underground, attacks at night and buries you alive, paralyzed by poison, until it comes back to feed.

The monsters are really well done, especially for a low-budger monster movie. I've seen quite a few low budget movies that are let down by their monster - Dark Was the Night, for instance - and The Burrowers manages to avoid that trap. They're not perfect - and, as usual, lose a bit of their power to scare when seen in full - but much better than I would have expected and absolutely creepy as hell when only half-glimpsed by firelight.

Or glimpsed by paralyzed, half-buried eyeball.

Things start to go badly for the men when Clay is killed in an ambush. Parcher is cut by one of the creatures and starts to succumb to an infection cause by the venom. Their only hope is the possibility that the Ute may know something about how to fight the things, but even when they finally find a couple of members of the tribe things don't go as planned.

In addition to the script and the acting, the cinematography is fantastic. Whether it's sweeping vistas of prairie or claustrophobic pine forests, the screen always has something worth looking at. If I have a complaint, it's that the movie does seem to drag a bit at times - I didn't mind this time around, but I remember wanting to get a look at the monsters a lot sooner the first time I watched it.

Well, everything's okay now...

The Bottom Line

The Burrowers is just a well done, low-budget western horror movie. It punches well above its weight class in terms of script, cinematography, acting and special effects. I'm not sure why it didn't get picked up for a wider release, other than it's a bit of an anomaly. It's too much of a unicorn to be able to market properly. Personally, I think it should appeal to fans of westerns and fans of horror movies. Really enjoyed it.

31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: Basket Case

"What's in the basket?"

How have I never seen Basket Case? I mean, there are a ton of horror films I haven't seen. I've got a list as long as my arm of 'classics' and seminal films and just your bog-standard mainstream releases - but Basket Case? It feels like I should turn in my horror fan card or something.

Part of the problem is that for years I mixed Basket Case up with Larry Cohen's It's Alive. They're very different films, but the Davis child was somehow associated with Belial in my head. Another issue was that none of my friends ever mentioned it - it was never a "have you seen" or "you gotta see!" kinda film in our circle. Whatever the reason, my adolescence passed by without Basket Case and it eventually became that film that I sorta thought I had seen, but couldn't remember much about.

A few years ago I was digging through a list of recommended 80's horror films and came across a picture of Belial. "Hey,"  I thought, "this doesn't look at all like the baby from It's Alive."  The synopsis didn't sound familiar either, so I put it on the mental list of things to catch up with eventually. Chris, Waffle King recommended it last year and when I saw it was on Shudder I decided this was the year to watch it.

Belial.

Not Belial.

The Medium

Shudder via Amazon streaming. The picture quality is as good as one could expect from streaming a film originally shot on 16 millimeter. In fact, it was almost too good. This is a movie that feels like it should be watched on VHS with rolling static lines constantly warring with the tracking buttons on your remote. Which makes it really weird that there's a fully restored blu-ray edition available.

The Movie

So let's get this out of the way: Basket Case is not a good movie. It  looks and feels like an extremely cheap 70's exploitation film, and I mean really cheap. The entire budget actually makes an appearance on-screen as a wad of cash flashed by the main character. It's not an exceptionally big wad, either.

Maybe not as cheap as that guy's shirt.

And yet... there's something about it. Something endearing and likeable. That's a pretty weird thing to say about a movie in which a separated mutant twin goes on a killing rampage.

After an opening scene in which a doctor is stalked and killed by a horrible monster puppet hand we're introduced to the main character, Duane (Kevin Van Hentenryck). A tall and curly-mopped kid from upstate New York, he arrives in Times Square with a wicker basket and a wad of cash. He checks into a seedy, rundown hotel - the Broslin. Some people are interested in his cash, but pretty much everyone asks the same question as Brad Pitt's character in Se7en, "what's in the box?"

Relax, Frances.

This is early 80's Time Square, the dirty, porno theater and prostitutes, junkies and muggers Times Square. You can almost feel the slime creeping off the screen. This is the most realistic part of the movie as well, you feel like you are there in this squalid little hotel with the peeling paint, narrow hallways and thin walls. Nothing else is particularly realistic, including the contents of the basket. Which happens to be Duane's brother, his malformed, formerly-conjoined twin, Belial.

Surprise!

Now, Belial is a pretty crappy special effect muppet, a latex monster with very little in the way of mobility, expression or realism in any way. And yet this stupid thing, this lump of not-flesh, is also weirdly effective. He can be terrifying, all teeth, black eyes and horrific screech, and he can be tender or pathetic. I dunno - he shouldn't work at all, you should laugh every time you see him (and some of the stop motion bits ARE laughable), but again there's a certain, ephemeral something about the design that just works.

Duane and Belial aren't just hitting the Big Apple for a night out, they're on a mission. Seems a number of doctors performed an illegal and extensive operation to separate them when they were children (seen in flashback and gruesomely done on a dining room table). Belial ended up being tossed in the trash, but he's got a psychic connection with Duane, who found him and hid him away. Now they're out for revenge - well, Belial is, anyway. Duane just wants his brother to be happy. Of course he wouldn't say no to a little happiness for himself as well.

Duane, meet happiness. Don't get attached.

The central action of the movie - beyond the straightforward revenge storyline - involves Belial's fear of abandonment. Duane is his only connection to the outside world, the only way - beyond violence - that he interacts with it. When Duane meets a girl he likes, this threatens to bring Belial's world crashing down, and he'll do anything to prevent it from happening.

Just two bros having a heart-to-heart in the john.

The director, Frank Henenlotter has gone on to make a couple of Basket Case sequels, but you may know him better for Frankenhooker or the crazy-ass Brain Damage. I've only seen Brain Damage, but I'll have to check out the others. I'm sure they're low-budget, skeevy and weird and I won't know why, but I'll end up liking them.

The Bottom Line

It's impossible to praise this movie on any traditional level. It's poorly lit and shot, the acting is - at best - amateurish, the story is threadbare, the dialogue hokey, the effects sub-par, the editing... I think you get the drift. It's even just reprehensible as only a low-budget exploitation film can be. If you don't care to see a lumpy puppet grinding on a bloody corpse, then you'll want to pass this one by. However...

Basket Case somehow rounds that horn of terrible and becomes something worthy of watching. It's funny, horrifying and even occasionally moving. I ended up really liking it - in the same sort of way I like CHUD or Redneck Zombies. It's terrible. I know it is. And I don't care.

31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: Nightmare on Elm Street 4 & 5: The Dream Warrior Trilogy Conclusion

Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Warrior Trilogy part 2: The Dream Master

Set an indeterminate time after the events of Dream Warriors, the kids who survived - Kristen, Joey and Kincaid - have been released from the psychiatric hospital and are enjoying life as regular high school students. That is, until Kristen starts having nightmares again - and begins to be afraid that Freddy is coming back.

It's always a bit distracting when a character in a series is recast. Tuesday Night is... okay as Kristen, but hers is a substantially different version than Arquette's - enough that it feels like a different character. Not that character really matters here.

Kristen is right, of course, and Freddy IS back, and still after the remaining Elm Street kids. Kincaid and Joey are dispatched pretty quickly. Kristen is next, but not before dragging her friend Alice into her dream. Freddy is delighted to have a new set of kids to stalk and murder - but Alice has absorbed Kristen's ability to bring people into her dreams. AND to absorb their unique qualities if they die in dreams.

There's actually a lot to enjoy in Dream Master, spectacle wise. Debbie, the weight lifter friend is deathly afraid of bugs and the sequence in which Freddy slowly turns her into a cockroach before trapping her in a roach motel is pretty epic. The final confrontation between Alice - all 'roided up on her friends' powers - and Freddy in a dream church is also pretty well done.

They check in, but they don't... oh, Freddy does that exact line? Okay then.

There's an idea introduced earlier in the movie about the guardians of dreams - the dream masters of the title. One to guard the nightmare gate, the other the regular dream gate. (The gates of horn and ivory, to borrow from Gaiman.) Freddy even has a great line, "I've been guarding my gate for a looong time." There's something interesting and possibly awesome there - a titanic struggle between supernatural forces, with Alice maybe locked in combat with Freddy for all time. It's not followed up on, however, and is dropped in the next movie.

Freddy is finally at his zenith with the over-the-top murder sequences and constant quips. He's no longer truly frightening and instead is a figure of sinister mirth, more interesting by far than the interchangeable teenagers he's set against.

Not sure those shades work for him, though.

Alice has a zero to hero arc which feels a bit unearned, but I do like her 'A-Team' moment of gearing up for battle. How she defeats Freddy seems cheap - a half-remembered line about mirrors - but it's better than being beaten up by a fetus. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Bottom Line

The series takes a sharp lurch in a downward direction here, with less emphasis on story and character and more (much more) on the effects and Freddy himself. Dream Master is still fun, and definitely not a waste of time, but the few moments of real interest are few and fleeting.

As a complete tangent - I watched this movie in the theater specifically because the story was co-written by William Kotzwinkle. Most folks may know him as the guy who wrote the novelizations of ET and Superman III, but at the time the movie came out I was in a play he was directing based on his book Herr Nightingale and the Satin Woman. I like to think he was the one that inserted the stuff about the dream guardians.

Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Warrior Trilogy part 3: The Dream Child

Not the nadir, but close. The Dream Child is a darker Nightmare, but it's just not very good. Alice is back, with the same actress playing her this time (Lisa Wilcox). She has a new group of friends, that I can actually (mostly) differentiate this time around, though the acting is generally poor. And Freddy, of course. Can't have a Nightmare film without him.

Alice is having nightmares (of course), but not about Freddy - at least not directly. She dreams that she's a nun trapped in a tower with roughly 100 maniacs. That's right, she's dreaming about Freddy's mother, Amanda Kreuger. Alice tells Dan, her boyfriend (and the only other survivor from the previous film) and he reminds her that she's a dream master, and can control her own dreams.

Therein's the rub, though. The dreams aren't hers, and they get progressively darker and soon she sees a monstrous Freddy baby born. She chases it through the dream until it finds the clawed gloves left behind by Freddy after his defeat in the previous movie. And just like that, Freddy's back, baby! (Sorry.) And Alice is unable to control any of it.

What's up with the long arm, though?

So, as usual, much of the film is taken up by the set pieces as Freddy takes out Alice's friends. They're... I don't know, they just feel cheap and flat. In fact, the whole film feels that way. The story, the characters, the effects. There are some moments that feel meant to be deeper - I mean there are themes of teen pregnancy, eating disorders, abortion - but they aren't used in any meaningful way except as set dressing, except for Alice's pregnancy.

Which is the big 'twist' of course - despite the title giving it completely away. Alice's unborn child is dreaming, and that's how Freddy is getting back in. On top of that, he's also feeding the child with the souls of his victims, hoping to turn the kid into a sort of Mini-Me of Freddy.

And why does a fetus look like he's six years old, anyway?

There's a nicely dark tone, almost gothic, in the film that I like. And an M. C. Escher inspired chase sequence that's kinda fun. Generally, however, the film drags and the set pieces are neither as epic nor as interesting as in previous installments. When the child finally turns on Freddy (more for plot related reasons than any character driven choices) it's a relief.

Bottom Line

Another step or two down in quality, unfortunately. There are the bones of a good movie here, but it all feels both heavy-handed and cheap. Freddy seems to be just going by the numbers and none of the characters are really worth remembering. If it wasn't the final film in the loosely related Dream Warriors trilogy I'd suggest skipping it.

31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Warrior Trilogy part 1: Dream Warriors

Nightmare on Elm Street movie releases were event films in the 80's. The original's heady combination of slasher flick and dark fantasy had proven a hit for New Line Cinema and they were quick to build a franchise. The sequel, Freddy's Revenge, had done okay box office, but for many - including myself - it didn't really feel like an Elm Street movie. Freddy and the rules of the nightmares all seemed drastically different and, while an interesting movie in its own way, it just wasn't much fun.

That changed with the release of Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, which once again put the focus on Freddy and the Elm Street kids. It also ramped up the special effects and gave Freddy a lot more screen time. It was really the start of the more over-the-top, Freddy-centric nature of the later films. This proved to be box office gold, but it led the series down a path that ended up in self-parody and emphasized spectacle and one-liners over characters and story.

First step on said path.

The Medium

Some time ago I purchased the Nightmare on Elm Street blu-ray collection. This is actually the first time I've dug it out to watch these entries in the series, though! They're excellent, if not quite as good in either the quality or extras department as the first and last films. It's much better than the old DVDs, though, and can usually be found at a decent price.

The Movie

Dream Warriors. Admit it - the theme song is already in your head. This was probably the first of the Nightmare films I got to see in the actual theater and for a long time was my favorite of the bunch. Time has dampened my enthusiasm somewhat - the first and the seventh are my favorites nowadays - but it's still an enjoyable entry in the series and manages a better balance between story and spectacle than the later entries.

That song really does get in your head, though.

Nice to see Wes Craven's name on the screenplay, and I'd forgotten that Frank Darabont had also worked on it.

Kristen Parker (Patricia Arquette) is sent to the Westin Hills psychiatric hospital after an apparent suicide attempt. There she meets several other patients who are experiencing the same issues she is - namely persistent and terrifying nightmares featuring a disfigured killer sporting knives on one hand. The kindly Dr. Gordon is sympathetic, but disbelieving and it's not until a new therapist - Nancy Thompson - arrives that anyone will listen to the kids, and even with her arrival it'll be too late for some.

I'd forgotten Patricia Arquette was in this, and the guy from Body Double. And Laurence Fishburne as an orderly (and billed in the credits as 'Larry' Fishburne)! It was also a great idea to bring back both Heather Langenkamp and John Saxon to reprise their roles from the first film.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I'd be doing too.

This is probably the last of the main Nightmare films where I'm really invested in the characters. They're broadly drawn and more defined by their character quirks (so that Freddy can more easily terrorize them), but they're still sympathetic and interesting. I also like the venue change - putting the kids in a psychiatric hospital rather than a high school affords a more contained setting and forces them to interact with each other in different ways. Less "he-ing and she-ing" (in the words of my old acting teacher) and more friendship and support.

Or support group, anyway.

I'm less enthused about the 'origin story' for Freddy. A nun raped in a tower,  the 'bastard child of a hundred maniacs' feels like something out of a much earlier (and cheaper) sort of film.

The big twist for this movie is that Kristen actually has the ability to pull people into her dreams, an ability that allows for the kids to (eventually) work together in an effort to defeat Freddy. The scene where she first does this - hauling Nancy into a nightmare version of the old house on Elm Street - is a nicely horrifying set piece. Freddy appears as an enormous snake and begins to swallow Kristen alive. Nancy is pulled in to the dream and stabs the Freddy-snake in the eye. He turns and, upon seeing his old nemesis, growls "you..." before disappearing. It's a good effect and the moment of recognition is creepy as hell.

Do you really want THIS guy to recognize you?

None of the supervisors at the hospital believes any of the kids, of course. That's part of what makes it a true Elm Street film, when the adults are essentially obstacles to the kids rather than helpers. After a few deaths Kristen ends up sedated and Nancy leads the survivors into Kristen's dreams to try and save her and another kid, Joey. At the same time, Dr. Gordon forces Nancy's father (Saxon) to lead him to where Freddy's bones are buried in a bid to lay Freddy to rest for good.

It proves more difficult than expected.

I'm always a little bothered when the rules of a series are broken, and the Elm Street rules - Freddy can kill you for real in your dreams, but only your dreams - are broken constantly here. Jennifer ends up head first in a TV set with no visible way for her to have gotten there by sleep walking (without a trampoline that is), another character being controlled by Freddy by his veins (like puppet strings) simply walks through a set of locked doors. Most egregiously, Freddy's bones rise up like he was in a Harryhausen movie and kills Nancy's dad. There's always been a little bit of that - Nancy dragging Freddy's hat out of her dream in the first movie comes to mind - but it's the blurring of a line that makes the stakes seem less important somehow. If he can get you in the real world, what's the point of trying to stay awake in the first place?

Avoiding this. Right. Forgot.

This is picky, though, and asking a lot of what's essentially a jumped up slasher series. And to be fair - some of that real world crossover is pretty cool (all the cars going berserk in the junkyard, for instance).

This could have been a nice end to the series, with heroic sacrifices, last minute defeats and resurrections, and the feeling like more than one spirit has been laid to rest. Alas, box office returns and studio bottom lines dictated otherwise.

Shoulda taken the blue pill is all I'm sayin'

The Bottom Line

Dream Warriors a fun movie overall, with great set pieces, decent characters, fun Freddy bits and it even manages some occasional scary moments. Something that would get harder to come by in later installments.

31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: Godzilla and The Return of Godzilla

There's always a bit of a hesitation when I think about watching a kaiju film for 31 Days. On the face of it, giant monsters should obviously be horrifying and therefore count as a horror movie. However, in practice that's not always the case. Is Pacific Rim a horror movie? I'd say no - it's a science-fiction/kaiju action movie. What about Megapython vs Gataroid? I still don't know as I haven't seen it, despite it being on the recommended list. I think Bigass Spider counts as horror/comedy because it makes heavy use of horror tropes - and come on, it's a bigass spider! Cloverfield is also very much a horror movie.

And then we have Godzilla, the grandfather of all kaiju films. I'd argue that most films starring Godzilla aren't horror movies, really. They're fun monster wrasslin' movies, in which most of the enjoyment comes from watching giant monsters beating the tar out of intricately constructed model cities - and each other.

But mostly the buildings - I think I can hear a model maker crying somewhere.

There are exceptions, however. The original film was much darker and more serious than most - if not all - of the rest of the Showa era pictures. The same can be said of The Return of Godzilla in relation to the other Heisei era pictures - though I think there's a bit of a darker tone to those in general than the previous period. The Millennium era, on the other hand, stays pretty steadily in the science/action genre from Godzilla 2000 on.  If we include American adaptations, then the Legendary Pictures Godzilla film - whatever its faults - was much more in the horror line than the 1998 TriStar film.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, other than to say that giant monster pictures are a struggle to classify as horror films for me and I tend to set them apart from the genre. With some specific exceptions, which are the ones I'm writing about today.

I always liked Godzilla, but was never what you would call a fan. I didn't watch every film nor did I ever pick up a copy of the G-Fan magazine. I couldn't tell you the names of each monster. I saw a few Godzilla films when I was a kid - probably on TBS, a channel that also used to show Japanese tokusatso shows I loved, like Ultraman. For most of my life my clearest memories and fondness for Godzilla was actually tied to the Hanna-Barbera cartoon and it's annoying but catchy theme song (and Godzoooki!).

That song's in your head now too, isn't it?

I liked Godzilla because he was a huge lizard that stomped on stuff and then set it on fire and occasionally fought other monsters. Beyond that, I didn't really pay much attention to Godzilla and didn't watch many of his films until the early 90's.

At that point I was working for a comic book shop and as a result had interacted with quite a few Godzilla fans. Over time their enthusiasm got me interested, and I started to watch some of the newer (Heisei) films and found them fun and enjoyable. When I finally got around to watching King of the Monsters I was surprised at the seriousness and level of quality in the film and ran out to pick up a DVD for my collection. It wasn't until the Criterion release that I was actually able to view the original Japanese release.

The Medium

I have both of these films on blu-ray. The Criterion version of Gojira is everything you would expect from that fine institution, with an excellent restoration and exceptional picture quality. The packaging and extras are also top-notch. The disk also includes Godzilla, King of the Monsters - the American version with inserts starring Raymond Burr. I've always liked that version of the movie and still think it's a worthwhile watch.

The Kraken Releasing disk of Return of Godzilla just isn't as good. It's decent enough, it just pales in both production and quality to the Criterion film. It also doesn't include the American version, Godzilla 1985, which I would have loved to see. It's acceptable - but then, it has to be.

The Movies

Gojira/Godzilla (1954)

When the fishing vessel Eiko-maru is destroyed another boat, the Bingo-maru is dispatched to find out what happened. The Bingo-maru disappears as well and a fishing vessel is destroyed trying to rescue survivors. Later, the only survivor of the fishing boat arrives on a remote island, unable to explain what has happened to him. Reporters descend on the island and the elder villagers blame the disappearances - and the recent vanishing of fish in the area - on an old legend of a sea monster named Godzilla. That night a storm arrives - and something else comes with it, bringing destruction and loss of life.

There's a sense of dread to early scenes in Godzilla, before we find out what's causing all the problems. The monster himself is only glimpsed and then only in the middle of a terrible storm. The connection - Godzilla as force of nature - is one later films abandoned in favor of monster fighting spectacle. It's nicely done as is the depiction of the immediate aftermath. All the destruction could easily be from the storm - except for the giant, radioactive footprints.

Godzilla himself, when he first appears over the top of a hill, is a bit of a disappointment. Oh, I'm sure he was terrifying when the movie first came out, but this first appearance - a shaky matte over the top of the hill - isn't exactly inspiring. A roar and those footprints/tail sweep on the sand, leading back into the sea, might have been more effective.

It actually looks kinda cool when it's not moving.

That being said, other appearances of Godzilla in the movie ARE terrifying - especially at night, lit from below by spotlights and fire, breathing atomic fire on a city and a country completely unprepared to deal with its rampage.

"Line item in the budget - Godzilla reconstruction. All in favor?"

It's impossible not to see the echoes of the atomic bomb in Godzilla. A horrific, destructive force that cannot be stopped, cannot be reasoned with and that leaves absolute destruction, chaos and misery in its wake. After an attempt to destroy the creature with depth charges, Godzilla makes landfall. Some of the most effective scenes take place in a hospital full of victims of the destruction. In 1954 this must have brought back recent and raw memories of similar scenes in Hiroshima and  Nagasaki.

No jokes. This is legit horrifying.

In the end it's up to Daisaku Serizawa, the first of many science heroes to appear in Godzilla films, to use his own terrible discovery to put a stop to Godzilla's attacks. The third wheel in a love triangle that forms the human backbone to the story, the good Doctor is terrified of what his discovery could be used for, but acquiesces when it becomes clear that it's the only way to prevent more horrific destruction.

"If only I'd called it something other than Oxygen Destroyer. Something like Oxy-Clean..."

The Bottom Line

Despite the aging effects sequences, Godzilla remains an effective and affecting film. It's moody and elegiac in tone and at times can be quite horrifying. It's a giant monster movie from 1954 - and it's still the best.

The Return of Godzilla

After decades of an increasingly light tone, lots of action and oodles of monsters, Godzilla had retired. He'd been forced into it, after declining ticket sales, and he was never really comfortable with the whole thing. There had been rumors for years of his return - including in an American version - but Godzilla's 25th anniversary came and went with nary a roar.

Finally, for his 30th anniversary, Toho decided to pull out all the stops and bring back Godzilla in a big budget feature which would be a return to his roots. Gone would be the more heroic Godzilla of the Showa films - instead, The Return of Godzilla would be a direct sequel to the original, 1954 film and it would have a more serious, darker tone.

And lasers. Lots of lasers.

Return has a great opening that puts the film firmly in horror movie territory for me. After a volcanic eruption, contact is lost with the fishing vessel Yahata-maru - a neat callback to the opening moments of the first film. A reporter, Maki, manages to find the vessel adrift and apparently deserted. Exploring the vessel he finds some of the crew, dead, killed by a monstrous sea louse that attempts to do the same to him. He's rescued by the only survivor, Okumura. It's all really well done, with a creepy crawl through the ship and some gory shots of dead crewmen.

Gilligan?

Okumura tells a tale of a massive creature wrecking the ship and, having seen pictures, realizes that it's a new Godzilla. Faced with the possibility of public panic, the government restricts this information - essentially killing Maki's story about it.

Meanwhile, Godzilla destroys a Soviet submarine on patrol in the pacific. In the elevated hostile atmosphere of the time the Soviets blame the Americans and both countries go to high alert. The possibility of nuclear war seems very real, until the Japanese finally reveal that it's Godzilla behind the sinking of the sub.

Godzilla is definitely the main menace of the film, but the tensions between the nuclear powers and with Japan caught in the middle is a strong subplot - including the accidental launch of a space-based nuclear weapon! It's a nice touch of contemporary world politics.

Godzilla is confronted by technological wizardry - including a high-tech aircraft called the Super-X. Given what the scientists know about Godzilla's physiology - his dependence on nuclear fuel is what leads him to attack the mainland, consuming the fuel of a nuclear power plant as a result - they arm the Super-X with cadmium shells. These manage - if only temporarily - to quell the raging nuclear fire within the monster and Godzilla collapses.

There are this many people left in Tokyo? I'd be, like, in Kagoshima.

Which is when the nuclear missile explodes over Tokyo, re-awakening Godzilla.

Lots of good stuff in this movie. I generally don't like the 'tech vehicle to defeat Godzilla' trope (unless it's Mecha Godzilla), but the Super-X is actually used pretty well here. I also like the way Godzilla is defeated, even if it makes no damn sense (they trick him with a homing signal, like migrating birds). Unfortunately the pace can be pretty plodding at times, and the mood is more depressing than elegiac. The cinematography is also pretty flat and uninspiring, with little in the way of dramatic camera angles or movement.

The Bottom Line

A decent film and a return to a more somber and monstrous Godzilla, The Return of Godzilla paved the way for a resurgence in interest in Godzilla (and a number of fun Godzilla films, including my favorite, Godzilla vs Biollante). It's a little too heavy-handed for my taste, but I'm glad to be able to see it after a long absence from US video.