Gappa (1967)

GAPPA: THE TRIPHIBIAN MONSTER (1967) ***
Sixty-two albums when he was alive and 54 more since his 1994 death, wanker guitar solos, frequently obscure and sophomoric lyrics, jazz and orchestral or hippie and doo-wop and other stylistic detours on the regular, and political and social satire that probably applies to all us members of the general audience somewhere down the line of a long and storied musical and recording career.

No, sorry, we’re not here to discuss the outstanding 2020 documentary Zappa directed by Alex Winter or Bill S. Preston, Esq., from the Bill & Ted films.

Nor are we here to discuss Gamera the giant flying turtle monster loved by children everywhere or Godzilla the ‘King of the Monsters’ or Gorgo and his sea monster mother Ogra (neither should necessarily be confused with Gorgo, Queen of Sparta) or Gordo the monster Spanish insult.

Nope, we’re here for Gappa: The Triphibian Monster from 1967, which if you like Gamera, Godzilla, Gorgo, etc., you might also find Gappa to your liking if you give it the good old college try. Why are there so many monsters that start with ‘G’? It’s a great big alphabet, for crying out loud.

The film’s also called Gappa the Triphibian Monsters and American-International dubbed the American version Monster from a Prehistoric Planet. It can be found in multiple places on the ‘Net.

Statement of fact: I’m a big fan of the old school monster movie aesthetic — rubber monsters, men-in-suits, miniatures, hapless government and military men, pro forma human interest though I usually wish monster films to go lighter on the human interest, etc. I like a lot of the Showa Era Godzilla moving pictures, like most of the Gamera films, and like Gorgo a good deal. Yeah, call them goofy or silly or ridiculous or preposterous or whatever denigrating pejorative haters desire but they’re mostly a good deal of fun.

By the way, what the hell is a Gappa? A triphibian monster, of course. What the heck’s a triphibian? A monster who’s adept at war on land, at sea, and in the air. A triple-threat, for a sports analogy. That also sounds like the potential for tons of mass destruction and busloads of extras running for their lives. Damn straight, Skippy.

The plot of Gappa has been called a virtual duplication of Gorgo — stupid fucking humans find a tropical island, take a monster back with them against the warnings of the islanders, and the monster’s parents come smashing Tokyo looking for their pride and monster joy — and one might be tempted to group them together with Son of Godzilla and All Monsters Attack as family values kaiju. The Family Values Kaiju Tour literally could have taken the world by storm, in spite of the fact that Son of Godzilla and All Monsters Attack both suck and rank among the worst Godzilla films.

Anyway, we’re not here for Godzilla and I’ll go on the permanent record right now to say that I bawl like a big ole blubbering baby at the end of Gappa. In the words of Weird Al, I was just overwhelmed by its sheer immensity, I had to pop myself a beer.

Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)

GODZILLA VS. KONG (2021) ****
Adam Wingard’s Godzilla vs. Kong got it (mostly) right, especially compared with its immediate predecessor Godzilla: King of the Monsters, and that’s because the film wisely spends more time with protagonist Kong and antagonist Godzilla than its banal human characters and their petty dramas and squabbles and simply functional dialogue.

Also, unlike both Godzilla 2014 and King of the Monsters, we get monster fights shot in broad daylight or neon light. All the monsters and their incredible mayhem are clearly visible, and it makes a huge difference from the disappointing King of the Monsters. Thus, it seems that Wingard and Warner Brothers must have caught wind of the complaints about King of the Monsters, that we didn’t see Godzilla and King Ghidorah and Mothra enough and instead we had to squirm our way through too many family drama scenes involving father Kyle Chandler, mother Vera Farmiga, and daughter Millie Bobby Brown just to get to the monsters. Chandler and Brown return for Godzilla vs. Kong, Farmiga does not for an obvious reason from the end of King of the Monsters, and they’re sidelined for Godzilla and Kong, the nominal stars of the movie, just like they should. We have plenty of new human characters in Godzilla vs. Kong, as well, and they’re not all that important, not as important as Mechagodzilla anyway. Monsters rule Godzilla vs. Kong.

In other words, Godzilla vs. Kong gave me a damn good time at the movies.

I’ve read and heard complaints that Godzilla vs. Kong features too many ridiculous and just plain inexplicable plot elements and developments. What? No way! That’s what I wanted more from Godzilla ’14 and King of the Monsters, to just be silly and ridiculous occasionally and display a lighter touch, esp. King of the Monsters.

The best Godzilla movies work for different reasons: The original 1954 classic has a darker, somber tone unlike any other Godzilla and introduces one of the great movie monsters; Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971) and Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991) are off-the-wall and so far off-the-wall they could be in another house; Godzilla ’14 gave us a serious Godzilla movie with legitimate actors and it took many of us by surprise, especially with memories of the previous American Godzilla picture.

I’ve watched most all of the 36 Godzilla films — 32 from Japan’s Toho Studios, four from America — and I currently recommend 28 of them, except for Godzilla vs. Gigan (a close miss), All Monsters Attack and Son of Godzilla, and the 1998 Godzilla, the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel cinematic dregs from Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin that should have been fed to the Smog Monster.

We’ve had many fewer Kong movies over the years, but I’ve loved most of them. The 1933 original remains one of my touchstone movie experiences and it’s something that I am compelled to put on every once in a while just to be dazzled and amazed all over again. I’ll enthusiastically or vehemently defend the 1976 and 2005 remakes, the 1933 sequel could have been so much greater had it not been rushed into release during the same calendar year as the original film, I’ve not seen King Kong Lives from 1986, and I enjoyed Kong: Skull Island more than King of the Monsters, though go figure I gave them both the same three-star rating. Okay, okay, Skull Island edges closer to three-and-a-half and King of the Monsters two-and-a-half, but who needs all that nuance. Apparently, there’s 12 films overall in the King Kong franchise, including the Toho productions King Kong vs. Godzilla and King Kong Escapes. I love King Kong Escapes for most of the reasons I love Godzilla vs. Hedorah and Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, and they’re all gloriously ridiculous and preposterous. Quite frankly, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

What better space than here and better time than now to put in a word for Marv Newland’s 1969 classic animated short Bambi Meets Godzilla and King Kong knockoff films King Kung Fu and the Shaw Brothers’ The Mighty Peking Man, the former the only monster movie filmed in Wichita, Kansas, and the latter comes to us from dudes known for The One-Armed Swordsman and Five Fingers of Death though they also brought us The Super Inframan and Hammer co-production The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires. We’re still giving the middle finger to A*P*E and I would be remiss to not mention The Most Dangerous Game from 1932 that was filmed on some of the same sets as King Kong and includes King Kong stars Fay Wray and Robert Armstrong in a dangerous adventure saga on an island and Mighty Joe Young from 1949 with the same creative team as King Kong — Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack — as well as Armstrong, splendid work from The Lost World and King Kong special effects pioneer Willis O’Brien (assisted by Ray Harryhausen), and a surprisingly touching and involving friendship at the heart of the picture.

The original King Kong vs. Godzilla needed upgraded because, let’s face it, its success or failure hinges on whether or not viewers embrace or reject the cheesy special effects, the preposterous plot, the horrific dubbing (at least in the American version). On first viewing, I rejected King Kong vs. Godzilla yet I’ve warmed to it just a little bit more every time on subsequent viewings. I watched it as the start of a mini-marathon the night before seeing Godzilla vs. Kong in theaters and it remained good, solid fun. Still, though, it’s not some masterpiece that should never be remade and remodeled, like, for example, Psycho (oops, Gus Van Sant didn’t get that memo) and 2001.

I appreciate the nods that Godzilla vs. Kong makes to King Kong vs. Godzilla and King Kong Escapes (I hope a future installment makes room for Mechani-Kong), as well as other elements seen before during Pacific Rim and Tron. Guess what? I have enjoyed Pacific Rim and Tron, films which their critics have dismissed for being cheesy, as well and Godzilla vs. Kong joins their ranks.

— BONUS: I read three reviews of Godzilla vs. Kong before seeing the movie. Two of them reminded me that Emmerich and Devlin inserted characters based on Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel in their Godzilla, but they didn’t have the guts or the nuts to have Mayor Ebert and Gene stomped out by their bad CGI monster.

You don’t even have to read the full review by Armond White to feel like saying Lighten up, Francis. On Apr. 2, White proclaimed Godzilla vs. Kong to be the Shiny Dud of the Week, because it (in White’s words) cheapens the moviegoing habit thru mindless spectacle and shameless formula. Several hours later, White shared his review again and hyped it, If you have a mind, Godzilla vs. Kong is not the movie for you. Ah, it’s mindless entertainment, I see, but, hey wait, my prefrontal and limbic regions of the neocortex, particularly the orbitofrontal region of the prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, and the insular cortex, especially object to White’s review.

Web-based film critic James Berardinelli finished his review, I wonder how my eight-year-old self would have reacted to Godzilla vs. Kong. There was a time when I gobbled up anything with monsters, irrespective of the quality of special effects. I didn’t care about the level of destruction and took it as a necessity that the movie would sometimes become bogged down by focusing on underdeveloped humans and their silly concerns. I suspect I might have loved this film in all its overproduced glory. But what works for an eight-year-old doesn’t always work for someone who has evolved to expect more.

Personally, the 42-year-old me is ecstatic the 38-year-old director Wingard and the screenwriting team of 41-year-old Eric Pearson and presumably-40ish-year-old Max Borenstein decided to focus more on Kong and Godzilla and less on inane humans. They could have gone even further. I’d love a Jurassic Park movie, for example, to feature only dinosaurs and prehistoric life — no banal or venal human beings to muddle and bungle it all up — and this ideal dinosaur movie would be made in the style of Luis Bunuel’s The Phantom of Liberty and Richard Linklater’s Slacker.

I find myself closer to Matt Zoller Seitz’s rave on RogerEbert.com, which had me at Godzilla vs. Kong is a crowd-pleasing, smash-’em-up monster flick and a straight-up action picture par excellence. It is a fairy tale and a science-fiction exploration film, a Western, a pro wrestling extravaganza, a conspiracy thriller, a Frankenstein movie, a heartwarming drama about animals and their human pals, and, in spots, a voluptuously wacky spectacle that plays as if the creation sequence in The Tree of Life had been subcontracted to the makers of Yellow Submarine.

Yeah, Godzilla vs. Kong got it about 90 percent right.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)

GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS (2019) ***
The latest Godzilla: King of the Monsters inspires mixed feelings.

On the one hand, Warner Bros. pumped an estimated $170-200 million into King of the Monsters (likely more spent on this one Godzilla picture than all the Toho Studios productions combined) and cast a diverse, multinational group of actors and actresses, Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Millie Bobby Brown, Bradley Whitford, Sally Hawkins, Charles Dance, Thomas Middleditch, Aisha Hinds, O’Shea Jackson Jr., David Straithaim, Ken Watanabe, and Zhang Ziyi. Perhaps, most importantly for them, they are not dubbed, badly dubbed.

On the other, King of the Monsters spends way too much time in banter and disputes between scientists, military men, etc., and it’s still cliché dialogue no matter what if read by an Oscar winner or not. When the monsters Godzilla, King Ghidorah, Mothra, and Rodan do fight, it’s somehow not enough and I wanted King of the Monsters to give us a good old Royal Monster Mash Rumble right out in the middle of the streets in broad daylight, for crying out loud. Watching King of the Monsters for a second time, I felt tempted to begin chanting “No rain! No rain! No rain!” but I doubted there were any Woodstock or Live Rust fans aside from me in the house, so I restrained myself and thought better to save it for this review.

Honestly, I definitely miss all the bizarre little touches Toho sprinkled throughout their Godzilla films, especially the 1954-75 Showa Era. For example, it took a little time to wrap my warped little mind around seeing Mothra without her representatives from Infant Island, two tiny twin fairies who speak for and accompany Mothra and sing “Mothra’s Song,” “Mothra oh Mothra / If we were to call for help / Over time, over sea, like a wave / You’d come / Like a guardian angel / Mothra oh Mothra.” To be fair, King of the Monsters references the twins through twin scientist characters Ilene and Ling Chen (played by Ziyi) and we do get an instrumental version of “Mothra’s Song” late in the picture.

King of the Monsters could have used a lighter touch.

I liked the first Warner Bros. Godzilla more than King of the Monsters and I have no doubt Godzilla 2014 benefited more from the novelty of being a serious Godzilla film, which took so many of us by surprise because that’s not what we expected from an American Godzilla film after the disastrous 1998 production brought to us kind folks by TriStar Pictures and the creative partnership — writer and director Roland Emmerich and writer and producer Dean Devlin — who previously dumped Stargate and Independence Day on humanity.

Regardless, I am looking forward to Godzilla vs. Kong whenever that moment will come.

Son of Godzilla (1967)

SON OF GODZILLA (1967) **
I made a terrible mistake.

Not in watching Son of Godzilla, the eighth film in the Godzilla series, per se, but watching it through the most available version online.

Characters begin speaking in dubbed English, of course only the best for us American monster movie aficionados, for a few seconds before a foreign language (presumably Russian) overlays the English. We get two bad dub jobs for the price of one, sure yeah whatever never mind.

I was desperate, though, and needed to watch Son of Godzilla to complete the entire 15-film Godzilla series Japan’s hallowed Toho Studios produced from 1954 to 1975. I sucked it up, buttercup, who cares about the bloody dialogue in a Godzilla movie anyway for crying out loud, and mission accomplished. Yes, I always save the worst for last.

Son of Godzilla marks the beginning of a period of several pictures when Toho made Godzilla a kinder, gentler monster. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger, as Godzilla became a bigger star, a monster if you will, the big guy preferred not playing a villain and so Son of Godzilla and 1969’s All Monsters Attack (a.k.a. Godzilla’s Revenge) are the equivalent of later Schwarzenegger pictures like Kindergarten Cop and Jingle All the Way. Not sure that Schwarzenegger ever made his Godzilla vs. Hedorah (a.k.a. Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster) and that’s a bummer.

The suits at Toho have made Godzilla and the men inside the suit do some awkward bull over a nearly 70-year period, but seeing the big guy try and relate to his adopted son Minilla during Son of Godzilla and All Monsters Attack just might take the cake. Godzilla rescues Minilla from a trio of Kamacuras or a mutated mantis species found on Sollgel Island, and is it in poor taste to say that I wish Minilla had been eaten by the mantis. Minilla’s just so darn cute that it took a great deal of restraint to not puke all over my relatively new laptop.

W.C. Fields died eight years before Godzilla’s screen birth, but we can be sure the famously curmudgeonly performer would have found some choice words for Son of Godzilla and All Monsters Attack, easily the worst of the 15 Showa Era films.

I believe Fields said, “I like children, if they’re properly cooked.”

The Mighty Peking Man (1977)

THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN

THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN (1977) ***

The Shaw Brothers (Runme 1901-85 and Run Run 1907-2014) have rarely ever let me down and they provided some of the greatest entertainments of all-time, like THE ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN, FIVE FINGERS OF DEATH, INFRA-MAN, THE 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN, and CLAN OF THE WHITE LOTUS.

The Shaw Brothers did not (and still do not, in death) cheat us.

For example, in THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN, their 1977 spin on King Kong, Mighty Joe Young, and Tarzan (not to mention Godzilla) that’s not quite peak but still good Shaw Brothers, we don’t have to wait very long whatsoever to see the title character. No, life is short, time is precious, so director Ho Meng-hua gives us our first monster encounter in the first minute of screen time. Okay, to be exact, it’s 1:45 into the movie, but that still beats most every other entry in this distinguished genre.

That establishes a tone for a very generous entertainment package. Find a copy and buy it for somebody, and it’s the gift that keeps on giving.

THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN not only provides a sympathetic monster in the grand tradition, but also (in no particular order) a plucky explorer hero (Danny Lee) who’s been betrayed by his lover with his playboy brother so he’s drowning his sorrows in booze when he’s recruited for a jungle mission, a scantily-clad leading lady (Evelyne Kraft, a regular Swedish Fay Wray) who’s grown up with the animals in the jungle after her parents died in a plane crash (she’s been raised by the Mighty Peking Man, in fact), an earthquake, elephants, tigers and leopards (oh my!), a fight between a leopard and a snake, quicksand, vine swinging, flashbacks to key moments in both the hero’s and the leading lady’s life, callous and shady businessmen, heartless authority figures, mucho destruction of miniatures galore, and a grand finale that boggles the mind even after everything that came before.

My favorite scene, however, begins around the 33-minute mark.

It involves the Semi-Obligatory Lyrical Interlude, a term made famous by the late Roger Ebert. Here’s the definition from Ebert: “Scene in which soft focus and slow motion are used while a would-be hit song is performed on the sound track and the lovers run through a pastoral setting. Common from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s; replaced in 1980s with the Semi-Obligatory Music Video.”

The Simon and Garfunkel songs in THE GRADUATE epitomize the Semi-OLI.

The one in THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN rates below Louis Armstrong singing “We Have All the Time in the World” over George Lazenby and Diane Rigg in ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE and the foreboding use of Roberta Flack’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” in Clint Eastwood’s PLAY MISTY FOR ME. Ebert himself said Eastwood filmed the first Semi-OLI that works.

In THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN, our hero and leading lady embrace and lock lips for the first time (watch her eyes after this first kiss) and they unleash the awesomely banal love song “Could It Be I’m in Love, Maybe.”

This is one helluva old-fashioned love song and one helluva Semi-OLI.

I mean, I believe it’s the only Semi-OLI in the history of motion pictures to incorporate a leopard.

Not only that, but the leading lady seems more interested in the leopard than our poor, poor hero. You really sympathize for this guy even more after this scene.

Let’s get back to those lyrics for a second here.

“The love you gave me then showed me a thing or two / I guess I saw it in your eyes / And the look of love upon your face is too hard to disguise / Maybe just a smile will say [cannot make out, even after watching this scene 500 times] / Could it be I’m in love (Maybe? Baby?)” (To hell with it, I already chose “Maybe.” Why does life have to be so difficult?)

“I can’t begin to say what makes me feel like this / I never knew what love could do / But if this is love, it’s here to stay / [Don’t want to make this part out] / So all I have to hear is I’ll give it all to you.”

There’s more lyrics, but we all catch the drift and there’s not any need to drown in banality.

It all totals about 3:30 of pure junk food cinema bliss.

I definitely love it because it’s so utterly ridiculous.

Then again, utterly ridiculous describes THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN.

I should end this review with a consideration of the ending of THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN. Just imagine the ending of KING KONG times 10 times 10.

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978)

ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES

ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES (1978) Three stars

“In 1963, Alfred Hitchcock made a motion picture entitled THE BIRDS, a film which depicted a savage attack upon human beings by flocks of the winged creatures.

“People laughed.

“In the fall of 1975, 7 million black birds invaded the town of Hopkinsville, Kentucky, resisting the best efforts of mankind to dislodge them.

“No one is laughing now.”

— Introduction to ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES

Watching ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES in full for the first time in possibly 30 years, it brought to mind KING KUNG FU.

Both are extremely low-budget labor-of-love parodies and tributes to both older and contemporaneous movies. Both have their dead spots and their high points. Both try many, many, many jokes. Both are filed under cult movies and “so bad they’re good.” Both love their filming locations, Wichita in KING KUNG FU and San Diego in KILLER TOMATOES. Both show people having a darn good time making a silly little movie. Both are so endearingly goofy that I end up forgiving all their various sins and transgressions and enjoying them.

Unlike KING KUNG FU, though, KILLER TOMATOES inspired three sequels — RETURN OF THE KILLER TOMATOES! (1988), KILLER TOMATOES STRIKE BACK! (1990), and KILLER TOMATOES EAT FRANCE! (1991) — plus an animated series and two video games.

Let me highlight what I liked (or loved) about KILLER TOMATOES.

— The songs are great. We have “Theme from Attack of the Killer Tomatoes,” “Puberty Love,” “The Mindmaker Song,” “Tomato Stomp,” and “Love Theme from Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.” I am sure that millions and millions proclaim GREASE the best musical from the film year 1978. No way! I say it’s KILLER TOMATOES all the way. I mean, both the opening and closing musical numbers are fantastic. “Theme” should have been a hit a la “The Blob” by The Five Blobs in 1958. “Love Theme” gives us better opera than YES, GIORGIO, Pavarotti’s feature film debut and farewell. I should have selected it to play at my wedding. “Puberty Love” kills the tomatoes. It’s that bad. Even badder. Just the sheet music for “Puberty Love” alone kills tomatoes smack dead in their tracks. Future Soundgarden and Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron sang “Puberty Love” around the tender age of 15. Maybe one day Pearl Jam will cover “Puberty Love.” It couldn’t be any worse than “Last Kiss.” By the way, you can’t throw tomatoes at the performers during “Puberty Love,” because all the tomatoes will be dead.

— KING KUNG FU combined King Kong and kung fu, according to a report from man on the spot Captain Obvious. KILLER TOMATOES affectionately kids monster movies, for example. Notice how the Japanese military always struggles against Godzilla. Well, in KILLER TOMATOES, the American military cannot lick our title characters. Rather, it takes playing a horrible little song named “Puberty Love” throughout San Diego Stadium. Tim Burton must have been taking notes before he made MARS ATTACKS!

— Fans of imported monster movies should have a great time with the character Dr. Nokitofa (credited to Paul Oya). KILLER TOMATOES purposely gave Dr. Nokitofa a bad dub, you know, one of those wildly inappropriate voices that just does not fit the character. I love it and I wish they gave his character more scenes with more lines. I busted a gut at his scene. When Dr. Nokitofa corrects somebody for calling tomatoes “vegetables,” he says “Technically sir, tomatoes are fags” … then his colleague Dr. Morrison says, “He means fruits.” Yes, there’s some bad taste humor in KILLER TOMATOES. Some of it works and some of it does not. Nature of the humor, so they say.

— There’s something absolutely brilliant about a character being chased by a “killer” tomato, relentlessly down the street, up the stairs, and through the hallway.

— I must admit to feeling grateful none of my newspaper bosses ever said that I have a great ass, like the editor (Ron Shapiro) tells Lois Fairchild (Sharon Taylor) in their first scene together.

— With a reporter named Lois, of course that affords KILLER TOMATOES an opportunity to kid SUPERMAN. KILLER TOMATOES came out a good two months before SUPERMAN, one of the most wildly anticipated releases in 1978.

— KILLER TOMATOES kids JAWS much more affectionately and successfully than GIANT SPIDER INVASION, A*P*E, THE HILLS HAVE EYES, and ORCA: THE KILLER WHALE, all of which took pot shots at Steven Spielberg’s game-changing summer blockbuster.

— I cannot have much of any ill will toward a film that works in a cameo for the San Diego Chicken (Ted Giannoulas) and thanks “Every Screwball in San Diego County,” that’s including Mr. Chicken, for the great crowd scene near the end of the picture.

— In conclusion, I thank director and co-writer John DeBello and fellow writers Costa Dillon and J. Stephen Peace (all three each took on even more roles) for their efforts in making a fun little movie.

Trog (1970)

TROG

TROG (1970) ***

Joan Crawford began her long cinematic career in 1925 as the double for Norma Shearer in LADY OF THE NIGHT.

She appeared in small roles in Erich von Stroheim’s THE MERRY WIDOW, King Vidor’s THE BIG PARADE, and Fred Niblo’s BEN-HUR: A TALE OF THE CHRIST and first made her fame in Tod Browning’s THE UNKNOWN, her 20th screen credit already by 1927.

Crawford survived the transition from silent to sound and she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the 1945 film noir MILDRED PIERCE.

That brings us to her final screen appearance, TROG.

To the best of all knowledge, Crawford (1906-77) is the only Academy Award winner to star in a caveman movie and speak lines “Please, Trog, let me have the girl!” and “Music hath charms that soothes the savage beast.” Aben Kandel wrote the screenplay and Peter Bryan and John Gilling received credit for original story.

Granted, she’s also the only Academy Award winner to star in a Blue Öyster Cult song, a ditty inspired by the book and the film MOMMIE DEAREST written by Crawford’s far beyond estranged daughter Christina. The boys turned Joan Crawford into more of a monster than Godzilla. That part in the song where Mommie Dearest is calling for bad little Christina, it just doesn’t get much better than that in this oh so cruel bitch of a world. “Joan Crawford has risen from the grave,” indeed.

Back on point: I enjoyed TROG a good deal, and it’s one of those films that inspires the very best stories.

Film critic Pauline Kael (1919-2001) wrote, “Joan Crawford plays Stella Dallas with an ape instead of a baby girl. Some actors will do anything to be in movies: she probably would have played the ape.”

Herman Cohen (1925-2002), a producer whose credits include BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA and I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF, said that Crawford’s alcoholism raged during TROG and she had 100-proof vodka in her frosted Pepsi Cola glass. He added that Crawford brought four cases of the juice with her to England, because of its unavailability in Merrie Olde. (Speaking of Pepsi, Crawford, once married to the chairman of the board and CEO of Pepsi and then herself a board of the directors member, works in one brief moment of product placement during an early scene.)

Freddie Francis (1917-2007), a two-time Academy Award winner for Best Cinematography for SONS AND LOVERS and GLORY, said that he regretted directing TROG (which he called terrible) and that Crawford had so much trouble remembering her lines they had to resort to using “idiot cards” to get through her scenes.

Former English professional wrestler Joe Cornelius played the title character in TROG and he defended Crawford against those accusations in a 2015 interview with cult film director and fan John Waters after the British Film Institute retrospective of the film.

In the ring, they called Cornelius “The Dazzler.” From the Online World of Wrestling, “What a presence ‘The Dazzler’ made when he entered the ring, the wavy jet black hair, the dazzling smile, the eyebrows! Damn! He had it all, a personality as big as the Royal Albert Hall and ring savvy second to none, he was like a puppet master with strings fastened to the hearts of every member of the audience.”

Guess at this point we should discuss exactly what’s a Trog.

Trog is short for “troglodyte” or a person who lived in a cave, especially in prehistoric times. He’s proclaimed, in promotion of the film, as having the strength of 20 demons, so it makes perfect sense to have Cornelius play the role.

Crawford stars as Dr. Brockton, who of course represents science against those who just want to destroy the “monster.” She wants to reach and teach Mr. Trog. She wants to domesticate “The Missing Link,” half-man and half-ape with a costume borrowed from 2001. These domestication scenes are worth their weight in gold, especially the one when Trog learns how to play catch. “Good boy, Trog!”

Thankfully, for the sake of the movie and its cult following, Crawford does not condescend to her role. She plays it absolutely 100 percent straight and resolutely serious. In other words, Crawford plays it just like she did in MILDRED PIERCE. That makes TROG even funnier than if she just played it winking at the audience the entire time.

Michael Gough (1916-2011) opposes Brockton and Trog from his very first appearance. I doubt Gough used TROG in his audition for Tim Burton’s BATMAN, because his bad manners here as Sam Murdock do not mesh with Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce Wayne’s dedicated butler. We await the fate that waits for Mr. Murdock and it is well worth the wait.

During his attempted domestication, Trog freaks out both at the color red and more upbeat music.

That got me thinking: What if they played Trog the Troggs’ “Love is All Around” from 1967? Just forget about “Wild Thing.” Yes, the Troggs, an English rock band originally called the Troglodytes before the name was shortened, had a huge impact on future noise with their songs covered by Jimi Hendrix, the Buzzcocks, and Hüsker Dü.

House (1977)

HOUSE

HOUSE (1977) Four stars

The year 1977 produced four of the definitive WTF movies in the history of cinema: ERASERHEAD, SUSPIRIA, EXORCIST II, and HOUSE, an item from the Japanese studio (Toho) responsible for Akira Kurosawa, Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, and the H-Man.

Toho really outdid itself with HOUSE, which even surpasses GODZILLA VS. THE SMOG MONSTER in nonstop funky weirdness. Janus Films describes HOUSE as an episode of “Scooby Doo” directed by Dario Argento.

Bottom line: HOUSE just might be even weirder than ERASERHEAD, more colorful than SUSPIRIA, and more whacked out bat shit crazy than EXORCIST II. You have been warned.

First-time director Nobuhiko Obayashi pulls out all the stops in realizing a rather simple tale on the surface: teenage girl Gorgeous (Kimiko Ikegami) and her six friends Prof (Ai Matsubara), Melody (Eriko Tanaka), Mac (Mieko Sato), Kung Fu (Miki Jinbo), Sweet (Masayo Miyako), and Fantasy (Kumiko Oba) pay Gorgeous’ aunt (Yoko Minamida) in the country a visit. It just so happens that the aunt died in this house many years ago waiting on her fiancee to return from World War II and her spirit remains and feasts on unmarried girls. This is a haunted house movie where the house is hungry, very hungry indeed.

Obayashi’s at-the-time pre-teen daughter Chigumi Obayashi contributed ideas to her father. She came up with several childhood fears, her father relayed the fears to screenwriter Chiho Katsura, and they incorporated her ideas into the finished product. You’ll be able to recognize her contributions almost instantly and they contribute to the uniqueness.

Just as a fun exercise, I looked up the plot keywords for HOUSE on IMDb: “refrigerator,” “banana,” “watermelon,” “bloody spray,” “dismemberment,” “decapitation,” “full frontal nudity,” and “severed head” are some of the more interesting 75 keywords and they only scratch at the surface of the overall bizarre nature of the entire enterprise.

More than 30 years after its original release, HOUSE seemingly came from out of nowhere to develop a cult following in the United States, playing first as a midnight movie in Nashville and then at a film festival in Austin in 2009 before heading to DVD.

I first encountered HOUSE through its cover image for the Criterion Collection release on October 26, 2010. Maybe you remember seeing that artwork, as well. Nashville graphic designer and Ben Folds drummer Sam Smith came up with the distinctive image: “I used the first idea that came to me after watching a screener of the film — Blanche the cat’s psycho-screaming mug — and adapted it to stand alone as a symbol of the uncanny and over-the-top assault that our midnight-movie audience was in for,” Smith said. The poster first appeared for the film at the Belcourt Theatre in Smith’s hometown.

Then, I read the reviews for HOUSE and they’re nearly as over-the-top as the film itself.

Online reviewer Dennis Schwartz wrapped up his mixed review, “The director uses freeze-frames, jump-cuts, video effects to change dimensions, spiral effects, color tints, and assorted other techie tricks to play the scary pic card more for laughs than to be gruesome. It’s an experimental visual pic that becomes overwhelmed with low-brow slapstick comedy, a ridiculous killer house and garish visuals. But it’s a one-of-a-kind film that has its admirers, who just can’t resist such weird childish nonsense.”

Michael Atkinson opined in the Village Voice, “But though it plays like a retarded hybrid of ROCKY HORROR and WHISPERING CORRIDORS, it is, moment to moment, its own kind of movie hijinks. It even won a directorial-debut critics’ prize back in the day. Gigglers and cultists, pony up.”

I watched James Rolfe’s review for Monster Madness X from 2016. Rolfe started his review with a pause and a WOW! Of course, Rolfe picked HOUSE for one of the “WTF Wednesday” reviews.

I finally caught up with HOUSE in late summer 2019 and it lived up to expectations. It calls to mind a few pictures: EVIL DEAD II, THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE, THE 5,000 FINGERS OF DR. T, DAISIES, SUSPIRIA, and MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO. Like those films, though, HOUSE ultimately stands alone as an unique work because it creates its own world. I find that I respond more forcefully to fictional works that do that, rather than just rehash more of the same old already damaged goods. I want to be challenged, inspired, etc. I’ve never seen a haunted house movie quite like HOUSE.

HOUSE haunts one’s thoughts and gains in strength upon deeper reflection. At this moment of typing, I am thinking about Gorgeous’ aunt and how much time she spent waiting alone in that house for the love of her life to return from World War II. He never did, and they both died, she in that darn house and she’s cursed to haunt it for eternity because of her bitterness about the war. Then, I start thinking about the sheer enormity of the loss endured by the human race from Sept. 1, 1939 through Sept. 2, 1945: An estimated 70-85 million people died or three percent of the world’s population in 1940; 50-55 million civilians and 21-25 million soldiers no longer lived on this planet from a variety of causes, death on a mass scale that doubled World War I; the atomic bomb and the Holocaust two of humanity’s depressing advancements in death.

Obayashi was born in Hiroshima in 1938 and he lost all his childhood friends when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as post-WWII nuclear testing, inform many Japanese films of the last almost 75 years.

King Kong vs. Godzilla (1963)

KING KONG VS. GODZILLA

KING KONG VS. GODZILLA (1963) Three stars

The Japanese champion Godzilla had last appeared in GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN in 1955 or in the American version GIGANTIS, THE FIRE MONSTER in 1959.

The American champion King Kong (guess we claim the big lug, though we kidnapped him from Skull Island and brought him to the Big Apple) had last appeared in SON OF KONG in 1933. Yes, they rushed out a sequel nine months after the seminal KING KONG.

With a title like KING KONG VS. GODZILLA, maybe we can take a guess at the content of the third GODZILLA and third KING KONG film. Three is the magic number, right? At least it was in Japan, where its success at the box office inspired Toho to continue the Godzilla series.

Both monsters appear in color for the first time.

Like a lot of Jackie Chan films, the Godzilla films appeared in radically different forms when they invaded America after their original release.

It started with the very first GODZILLA in 1954, released two years later in America as GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS. This new version excised 16 minutes of footage from the original, mainly the political, social, and anti-nuclear themes so vital to the Japanese version. Remember that GODZILLA came out less than a decade after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The American producers sponsored new footage and inserted American journalist Steve Martin (Raymond Burr), used mostly in flashbacks and voice-over narration. Japanese-American actors and look-alikes had to be used to attempt to make it seem like Martin had been in the original film. Martin speaks into a tape recorder, “George, here in Tokyo, time has been turned back two million years. This is my report as it happens. The prehistoric monster the Japanese call ‘Godzilla’ has just walked out of Tokyo Bay. He’s as tall as a 30-story building.”

In America, KING KONG VS. GODZILLA follows that KING OF THE MONSTERS format, as we get a series of talking head scenes before we finally get down to the heavy-duty monster battle royal in the let’s say last half. Several years ago, I wrote a negative review of KING KONG VS. GODZILLA because I wanted to yell at United Nations reporter Eric Carter to shut his big fat trap and just let the title characters fight. On the latest watch or two, after purchasing a VHS copy (GoodTimes big box, no less, with a blurb from Leonard Maltin, “Above average special effects”) recently, I enjoyed the film a lot more than I had before.

Now, I think of the Eric Carter and the blah, blah, blah gang as the wrestling commentators on a big pay-per-view hyping up Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant, for example. King Kong vs. Godzilla and Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant have equal stature in my estimation.

I just love monsters fighting and the Godzilla films delivered that for nearly a 15-year period beginning with KING KONG VS. GODZILLA and continuing through Ghidorah, Mothra, Rodan, Ebirah, the Smog Monster, Gigan, Megalon, and Mechagodzilla. Technically, it started with GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN when Godzilla fought Anguirus … or when Kong battled a T-Rex in the original KONG.

What was the genesis of KING KONG VS. GODZILLA?

Stop motion animator pioneer Willis O’Brien (1886-1962), who did the work for both KONG films, created a story outline where Kong battled Frankenstein’s Monster. O’Brien gave the outline to producer John Beck to develop a project, but Beck took the project instead to Toho behind O’Brien’s back. The rest is history, including Frankenstein’s Monster.

Some of us are probably thinking right about now that it does not seem like a fair fight between Kong and Godzilla. Over the years, Godzilla’s size has varied greatly from 164 feet tall in 1954 to 492 feet tall 60 years later. Kong, meanwhile, stands at 24 feet at his highest height in 1933. KING KONG VS. GODZILLA makes Kong 147 feet tall.

Machine gun fire topples Kong from the Empire State Building, while Godzilla seems virtually indestructible despite the best efforts of the military. Well, let’s just say that lightning gives Kong incredible powers; later in the Godzilla series, lightning would have the same effect on Godzilla. Maybe one day we’ll have a film combining Frankenstein’s Monster, Godzilla, King Kong, and Jason Voorhees, and we’ll call it LIGHTNING STRIKES.

A legend grew up around KING KONG VS. GODZILLA that Kong won in the American version and Godzilla won in the Japanese version. That’s not true. I mean, for crying out loud, Kong gets top billing in the title.