Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: All Monsters Attack

In this classic episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss the 1969 Godzilla movie “All Monsters Attack,” which also centers around the friendship between Godzilla’s son Minilla and latchkey kid Ichiro. (originally published 2/17/23)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Rewind.

Speaker 1 (00:07):
This is Rob Lamb and Hey, we just had a
new Godzilla episode of Weird House Cinema, So why don't
we revisit one of our previous episodes of Weird House
Cinema about a Godzilla movie. This one concerns nineteen sixty
nine's All Monsters Attack It Originally published two seventeen, twenty
twenty three. Let's dive right in.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Hey you, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 4 (00:45):
And this is Joe McCormick. And today we are going
to be covering a film based on a listener recommendation.
So to all of you out there who would like
to write in with suggestions for us, this may give
you some hope. I wonder Rob, should we kick the
episode off by reading the message that suggested this movie?

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Sure? Yeah, go for it.

Speaker 4 (01:05):
Oh okay, I'll take it. This is from Jordan. Jordan
wrote in to say hello, Stuff to Blow Your Mind team.
I don't always watch every Weird House Cinema movie before
listening to the episodes, but my partner and I certainly
had a blast watching Robot Monster. Our streaming service then
recommended us an equally short and hilarious movie with its
own unrelated dinosaur fights, the nineteen sixty nine film All

(01:30):
Monsters Attack. If you haven't had the chance to see it,
I'll give you a short pitch. This Japanese bank heist
meets Home alone sci fi action mystery movie is filled
with giant monster fights that show kids how to overcome
their school bullies. Certainly qualifies as a weird house film,
to say the least. Don't think it's been covered yet,
and if not, I know my partner and I would

(01:50):
love to hear your take on it. Love the show, Jordan, Well, Jordan,
I hope you were excited for today's episode. We are
indeed covering All Monsters Attack.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Yeah, and listeners keep the recommendations coming, because sometimes listeners
let us know about a film that's not on our radar,
such as this one. Other times, like last week's episode,
I let Sleeping Corpses lie. That was a case where
a listener requested it and that kind of bumped it
back up on our list. It was on the list,
but it wasn't at the top. But yeah, so let

(02:19):
us know anytimes something catches your eye, if there's anything
near and dear to your heart that you think fits
the weird house cinema template.

Speaker 4 (02:26):
So I think All Monsters Attack is a very interesting film,
especially for its place in the history of the Godzilla
franchise and for its varied reception history. And I think
it's also a little bit it's interesting in the very
different notes it hits. This is a movie that is
both quite funny for schlock reasons, as alluded to in

(02:50):
the email, but also I think strangely sweet and even
a little bit moving.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
Yeah, it has a good heart. It is a monster
film about children. This is not It's pretty common to
see these various Kaiju films where there is a child involved,
and we all know that Gamera is a friend to
all children and so forth. But this movie especially, is
a film where the child is not just a character
like the childhood view of the world. It is kind

(03:17):
of the centerpiece of the whole picture. Like the film
doesn't make sense unless you realize that it is from.

Speaker 4 (03:23):
The viewpoint of a child and not just from the
viewpoint of a child. Is in it has a child protagonist,
but literally the monster drama in it is a dream
in the mind of a child.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
Yeah, this is a film in which none of the
monsters are real, Like, none of the monsters that we see,
none of these fights are actually taking place. They're all
in the child's head. They're all in his dreams. But
at the same time, it's not like those battles, it's
not that they don't matter. Like it's ultimately well presented.
We talked in our Robot Monster episode about films that

(03:58):
have the it was all a dream trope in them,
and this is certainly a film where a lot of
the action is taking place within the dream, but also
there is this it's not presented in kind of a
gut punchy, twisty way. We know from the get go
that this is a dream scape we're entering into, and
yet at the same time there's also there's also the
real world plot that is that is taking place as well,

(04:20):
and there are steaks in it as well, So it's
not like all the stakes are in the dream world
and nothing's going on in the real world.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
Right.

Speaker 4 (04:26):
It is a movie about a child who has dreams
about monsters, and those dreams about monsters teach him how
to solve problems in real life.

Speaker 1 (04:35):
Now, whether these are good lessons or not, yes, so
that's there may be some generational divide on that, and
this is all open for discussion.

Speaker 4 (04:46):
Yes, So I thought it might be useful here to
do a brief digression on the history of the Godzilla
franchise and the place all monsters attack has within it.
So the first Godzilla movie was released in nineteen fifty.
It was directed by Ishiro Honda, the same director as
today's movie, and it was about a giant, prehistoric reptilian

(05:08):
monster with radiation breath who appears from under the ocean
as a consequence of nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific.
Godzilla attacks Japan and is eventually defeated by the ingenuity
of human scientists. Now, I think it's really important to
note that if you have only seen later Godzilla movies,

(05:28):
you may be shocked if you go back and watch
the original, shocked to discover its much darker tone, the
heavy themes treated in a very solemn manner, and the
fact that there is no Kaiju meet Slam. The monsters
do not supplex each other. In fact, there's only one monster.
Godzilla is a pure antagonist. In the first movie. He

(05:50):
doesn't wrestle other monsters, and it is not light camp entertainment.
The original Godzilla is a bleak, doomy movie.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
Yeah, it's kind of grimy. It's use of black and white,
it's very stark.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
It is.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
A serious film about dread and horror in the modern world.

Speaker 4 (06:12):
However, in the film that would follow, which was called
Godzilla Raids Again in nineteen fifty five, Godzilla once again
emerges to threaten humankind, but this time there's another element.
Godzilla is fighting another monster, so fighting this ancient fire
breathing dinosaur enemy. He's sort of based on the design
of an ankylosaurus, and this would set off a kind

(06:34):
of pattern of monster on monster violence that would continue
into the following films, including movies like King Kong versus
Godzilla that's in nineteen sixty two, mathra versus Godzilla in
sixty four, Various battles with monsters from outer space and
with three heads, other things coming up from the deep,

(06:54):
and rob I wonder if you would disagree with anything
here or have anything to add to this, but I
would argue a few general trends in the Godzilla movies
as they go on. One is the trend of the
moral valance of Godzilla, who I think goes initially from
hard heel to kind of anti hero to full face.

(07:15):
Would you agree with that?

Speaker 1 (07:17):
Oh yeah, yeah, he's definitely a babyface. And then in
most of the films people are really familiar.

Speaker 4 (07:22):
With, Yeah, it's often like Godzilla has to show up
to fight a bad monster in order to protect humanity
from that monster, and he's kind of like a dangerous ally,
but ultimately it's he who is defending human civilization from
this really wicked creature.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:41):
Yeah, I think that that trajectory tends to hold true
occasionally with you'll see some some new Godzilla pictures that
come about in which they kind of go back to
basics and go for like the solo monster threat sort
of plot. And I guess one of the main examples
of that is is shin Godzilla from twenty sixteen.

Speaker 2 (07:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (08:00):
A lot of times when they do a reboot, it's
like that shin Godzilla is like that Godzilla, that horrible
American Godzilla from the nineties is like that, yeah, or
wait is it now? I'm trying to remember. I think
it is.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yeah, Yeah, I believe so.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
Though I think the more recent American Godzilla remake that
had some extra monsters in it, as I recall, so
it had.

Speaker 4 (08:19):
Bad ones that Godzilla had to fight. Yeah, let them fight.

Speaker 1 (08:22):
Yeah, some sort of radiation eating diosaur creatures.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (08:26):
Okay, so there's that trajectory. Another thing is the tone.
The tone changes. It goes from the bleak, just doom
layden horror of the first movie to a much lighter, campier,
sillier kind of entertainment, even when it sometimes still has commentary.
A lot of times, these sillier, campier Godzilla movies will

(08:48):
be satirical about say pollution or politics or the entertainment industry,
even like I think there's one where there's, like, you know,
somebody's trying to boost TV ratings by capturing King Kong
and then he gets out and has to fight Godzilla
and so forth. So they often satirize real elements in
the world, but they're not as dark as the first one.

(09:11):
I would also say, as it goes on, you know,
I think some people would be tempted to say that
the quality of production in the films goes down, but
I don't think that's exactly right. I would say the
quality of production becomes more variable. It's not like there's
a steady decline in the quality of Godzilla movies, but

(09:31):
instead we see a sort of all over the place
quality pattern. Would you agree with that?

Speaker 1 (09:37):
I think so, and I do wonder how much And
this would maybe something that Godzilla scholars may have thoughts on.
And indeed, it is worth pointing out that Godzilla movies
are definitely an area where there is a People have
written whole books on this, there have been academic papers
on this. This is this is a well explored region
of weird cinema. But I do wonder at times they

(09:58):
get into the sillier zone, kid friendly zone, and I
wonder what are the different forces involved. I mean, part
of it is clearly like the reception to Godzilla by
young viewers, But then also I wonder how much of
it is the filmmakers realizing like not only the limitations
of rubber suit monster effects, but also the potential for

(10:19):
humor with those suits. You know, like, if you're going
for just hard you know, sci fi or really serious
grim horror with it, it feels like you maybe you've
got to be a little a little more careful about
how you use the suit and how you show the
suit where if you open that up a little bit,
then there's all this potential for like the goofy er

(10:40):
stuff to take place.

Speaker 4 (10:41):
Yes, I fully agree with that, though there are some
films that have managed to do both. Actually, and that's
one thing I love about shin Godzilla. I think it
succeeds fully in real grim horror and funny camp in
the same movie.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:55):
Yeah, it's a careful tight rope to walk though.

Speaker 4 (10:58):
But anyway, back to the film we're going to talk
about today. It arrives in nineteen sixty nine, and it
has long been regarded as one of the worst Godzilla films.
It seems recently though, a lot of critics have kind
of softened on it. They've kind of started to come
around a little bit. And you can see the reasons
for both, both for the initial harsh reaction and the

(11:21):
softening and warming up to this movie. There are certainly
elements that are not as impressive as other films in
the franchise. The stakes are less all encompassing. I mean,
this is not a world world defining conflict to save
the planet from a three headed monster from outer space
or whatever. Instead, it is a child dealing with loneliness
and bullying, who has dreams about monsters that inspire him

(11:45):
to stand up for himself. It's hard for that to
feel as epic as the other Godzilla movies, either in
either an awe inspiring and scary way or in a
funny way. And I think one thing that has to
be acknowledged is that the original special effects and production
values in this film are very limited compared to some
other films in the franchise, and a lot of the

(12:06):
special effects sequences that do appear are recycled from previous movies.
We'll talk more about that as we go on. But
on the other hand, I think a lot of people
have kind of come around on this movie today as
simply a different kind of creature than most other films
in the Godzilla series. It is a sweeter, more modest,
more intimate meditation on what Godzilla had come to mean

(12:30):
for the children of Japan, end of the world.

Speaker 1 (12:33):
Having just watched this film this morning for the first time,
it's hard to imagine people hating it. I mean, it's
seventy minutes, it's sixty nine minutes long for crying out loud.
I mean, you don't spend too much time in this picture,
and it has a lot of monsters in it. I
have to come back to the sort of the Glenn
Danzig school of filmmaking. I believe he was asking an

(12:55):
interview what makes a great vampire film? And he said, well,
a lot of vampires, and so this film takes kind
of that part, like what makes a great monster film?
A lot of great kaiju film? Well, a lot of kaiju.
There are a lot of kaiju in this picture. I
don't know if all of them are present, as the
title would suggest, but a lot of them are present.
And Okay, once you've checked that box off, once you're

(13:17):
definitely giving the audience all the monsters, what else are
you going to give them? And what can you give
them this a little different? What can you do that
would maybe be a satisfying and different story while still
delivering all of the things that this picture has to
deliver for the audience that they're expecting.

Speaker 4 (13:36):
I think that's a great point, and I think you
could also argue that given the general trends in the
Godzilla series up to this point, increasingly kind of sillier
and campier type movies and increasing use of Godzilla as
a face rather than a heal. I think you could
argue it was inevitable that these movies would end up

(13:58):
including movies that were explicitly meant for kids, not just
movies that kids happened to love. So just before All
Monster's Attack came out, a couple of years before, in
nineteen sixty seven, we get Son of Godzilla, which, true
to title, introduced a new character to the Kaiju pantheon,
that is Manila, who is yes, Godzilla's son, and the

(14:21):
movie deals with parenting themes, showing Godzilla teaching his child
how to roar and how to blast out his atomic breath.
In fact, we see some scenes from that movie of
this type taken whole cloth and shown again in All
Monsters Attack. And I have read that the introduction of
Manila in this movie was the result of a desire
at the studio at Toho to introduce acute character and

(14:45):
acute relationship to create a movie that would not just
appeal to kids, but also to the young parents who
would be taking kids to see movies.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
It makes sense, yeah, I mean, if you want to
introduce your children to these monster movies that by this point,
you know, you've you've you've grown up on it helps
if there's some sort of cute element. I mean I've
I've encountered that myself with my own son. You know,
is there is there a baby Yoda in there, a
grogu that can you know get I mean Star Wars
has tons of stuff like that obviously, but you know,

(15:16):
is there some sort of like cute element that will
definitely catch their attention that they can latch onto, and
then perhaps they'll they'll latch onto the rest of a
even franchise as well.

Speaker 4 (15:27):
Oh yeah, I mean just watch the Turn like you know,
your your your harsh, cynical twenty somethings. Star Wars geeks
hate the e Walks until they have kids, and then
they watch Return with their kids and then they're like, oh,
they're actually kind of great.

Speaker 2 (15:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:40):
Yeah, And we'll describe Manila in a in a little
bit here. He is cute.

Speaker 4 (15:45):
He is, in fact, more than once we noticed Minila
in this movie doing specific sort of sounds and postures
reminiscent of our baby.

Speaker 1 (15:54):
Uh so the donkey sound that he keeps making.

Speaker 4 (15:58):
Oh yeah, of course, the donkey sound. But no, he
does at one point he does a kind of I
don't know, like a pose where he's like wiggling his
arms and legs and he just looks like a human baby.
But anyway, so a lot of footage from Son of
Godzilla would end up being reused in All Monsters Attack,
and in fact, not just footage from Sun but also

(16:18):
from recent Kaiju movies like Ebirah Horror of the Deep
that came out in nineteen sixty six. That's more of
your classic meat Slam that's where Godzilla battles a giant
shrimp crayfish type monster. But also it used footage from
King Kong Escapes from sixty seven and from Destroy All
Monsters from sixty eight.

Speaker 1 (16:39):
Yeah, Destroy All Monsters also has been a lot in it.

Speaker 4 (16:43):
So why so much recycled footage from other Toho movies? Well,
the answer appears to be extreme constraints on time and budget.
I've read that this was in part due to cost
overruns from other movies Tohoe is making in nineteen sixty nine,
as well as just general money problems at the studio.
These were hard times at Toho, but for whatever reason,

(17:04):
the edict came down that this movie had to be
made fast and cheap. And I think you can say
that when it comes to special effects sequences, it kind
of shows, especially to the original ones and how much
footage is reused. But at the same time, I don't
think this movie is hack work. All Monsters Attack was
directed by Ishiro Honda, the A list Toho director who

(17:28):
had made the original Godzilla as well as most of
the big movies in the series since then, and despite
all the limitations on the production, Honda apparently cited All
Monsters Attack as one of his personal favorites from the
entire series. I was wondering a bit why this was,
and so I was reading from Godzilla, The Official Guide
to the King of the Monsters. This was the official

(17:50):
Toho licensed book on the series, written by Graham Skipper
twenty twenty two, and Skipper writes quote All Monsters Attack
was truly a labor of love for Honda, a small
film that focused less on the big monster fights and
more on one young child learning how to stand up
for himself. While Honda loved the spectacle and undeniable artistry

(18:12):
of orchestrating giant monsters rampaging through cities, he also loved
the emotional core of the people at the heart of
these stories. Here he was mostly left to do as
he pleased within the constraints, and thus we get what
today feels like a small indie film rather than a
Kaiju blockbuster, and I think that's right on the money.
We're kind of left in the end with a cozy

(18:35):
little film about childhood struggles, bullying, courage and the inspiration
that we take from our myths. And it's also a
film in which all the monster slamming is relegated to
dream sequences. But there is something very charming about it.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:51):
Again, it checks off the box of all the monsters,
lots of monster stuff happening on screen, but then it
figures out something very interesting to do with the rest
of them picture, and in that it has a lot
in common I think with a rather different Kaiju movie,
a rather different Godzilla movie that we previously covered on
Weird House. That's nineteen seventy one's Godzilla versus Hetera, which

(19:14):
I would say is not as memorable from a character standpoint.
I think this movie has a has more heart, but
that one definitely had a lot of style, a lot
of like in a hit message at the core of it,
while also giving us monsters.

Speaker 4 (19:31):
Yes, Hetera is I think a better movie from the
point of view of just like weird imagery and having
lots of crazy visual flare and stuff that stands out
like that, but all monsters attack has it has a
soul and hetera. I don't know, maybe.

Speaker 2 (19:50):
All right.

Speaker 1 (19:51):
Well, when we were thinking about elevator pitches for this one,
I instantly thought The never Ending.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
Story but with Kaiju Oof.

Speaker 1 (19:59):
Yeah, And it really does remind me quite a bit
of the nineteen eighty four film adaptation of Michael Inda's
nineteen seventy nine novel The never Ending Story.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
I love both of these, by.

Speaker 1 (20:09):
The way, I know Michael Inda did not like the
film adaptation, but I have rum in my heart for
both of them. But in the film adaptation of The
Neverending Story, we have a kind of lonely child in
the city with a disrupted home life who finds courage
in the realm of fantasy, and in the film, at
any rate, he eventually unleashes a luck dragon on his bullies.

(20:31):
In this film, we have a lonely latch key kid
in late sixties Japan living in a heavily industrialized area,
and he finds courage through his dream jaunts to Monster Island.
Instead of actually summoning a kaiju to defeat his bullies
and bank robbers. He home alones them, as Lister Mail.

Speaker 4 (20:50):
Suggested, Yeah, he lays traps essentially and gets them to
fall through holes in the floor.

Speaker 1 (20:55):
Yeah, all right, Well, let's go ahead and listen to
the trailer audio on this one. This is the English
dub trailer, which I think works best for the podcast
format here, though this is not the cut of the
film I ended up watching. Usually, I'm all for the
English dub on a film like this lets me focus
more on the monsters, and you know, and the human
performances are generally less important in a picture like this.

(21:18):
But HBO Max only offered subtitles, so I watched it
as if I were viewing a Krosawa film.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
Where is the Armor Computer Golong? Yes?

Speaker 1 (21:47):
Yes, do you take a jet? Take a jet?

Speaker 2 (22:05):
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

Speaker 5 (22:07):
Welcome aboard Pan American Flight one Director Monster Island. We'll
be fine at thirty five thousand and eight and we'll
arrive on schedule.

Speaker 4 (22:14):
We hope you up a pleasant flight. Thank you?

Speaker 2 (22:30):
Are you Muster Island?

Speaker 1 (22:31):
Overland?

Speaker 2 (22:33):
We are ready to land?

Speaker 5 (22:38):
Oh godzilla, a comacara?

Speaker 2 (23:35):
All right? Sounds like a party, huh.

Speaker 4 (23:37):
I mean, if I hadn't already watched it, I would,
by the ways. Speaking of advertising for this film, I
haven't confirmed this, but the Internet alleges that the tagline
was see prehistoric monsters crawl out of the hidden depths
of the Earth and take revenge against the living. That's
not even close. Doesn't not even remotely describing this.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
Movie, not at all.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
All Right, if you're wondering where you can watch this picture, well,
as of this recording, you can watch it on HBO Max,
but all streaming is subject to change, especially HBO Max
as of late, so watch it while you can there,
I guess. But it's also available on Blu Ray from
the Criterion collection on there. Just absolutely worshipful Godzilla the
Shoa Era films nineteen fifty fourth through nineteen seventy five.

(24:31):
I've looked at the physical packaging for this at Atlanta's
own Video Drone. They have them for rent there, of course,
and the packaging is just splendid. It has all this
amazing new artwork in at these very flashy, colorful illustrations
of Godzilla and the monsters that he battles.

Speaker 4 (24:46):
I may have to pick that up one day.

Speaker 2 (24:48):
Oh, it's it's great. It's a nice package. All right.

Speaker 1 (24:52):
Well let's get into the people here involved in this film. So,
as we noted already, Ishirohanda is the director of nineteen
eleven through nineteen ninety three legendary Toho film director who,
of course helm fifty four's Godzilla in the movie that
started it all, and he directed forty four pictures in total,
eight of those Godzilla films, culminating in seventy five's Terror
of Mecca Godzilla. But he also directed rodin the Mysterians

(25:16):
the Human Vapor Matango, which, by the way, if you're
out there enjoying the current mushroom zombie horror series on television,
well you need to go back and watch Matango. I'm
not sure if they were the first mushroom zombie type picture,
but they have to be one of the first.

Speaker 4 (25:35):
Else maybe you should do Matango on the show.

Speaker 2 (25:38):
We probably should. Yeah, okay, but oh.

Speaker 1 (25:41):
Other films he did include Frankenstein Versus Beragon, The War
of the Garganshuas Space, Amiba, and Moore. He was a
friend of director Akira Corrasawa and served as director counselor
or chief assistant director on Carrisawa's nineteen eighty five epic Ryan.
His name continues to appear in the credits on god
Zilla movies and in other homages. He also directed nineteen

(26:04):
sixty three's Atragon, which we previously covered on Weird House,
and of course, as we mentioned, we also covered seventy
one's Godzilla versus Hetera, which he did not direct, but
still Godzilla picture.

Speaker 4 (26:15):
Hondo is a masterful director, and you can just feel
his storytelling confidence even when he's working with what appeared
to be extremely limiting constraints on like his budget and
what he could do with the movie. You just see
him like kind of just accepting it and plowing straight

(26:35):
through and making the best movie he could.

Speaker 1 (26:37):
Absolutely. Now getting into some of the other connections, I
guess it's one of the situations when you start looking
at the people involved in certainly Toho pictures, you see
like this, the Japanese studio system of the day in place,
So a lot of these, you know, were frequent Toho
actors or frequent Honda collaborators. So the screenplay here was

(27:01):
by Shinichi Sekazawa, who lived nineteen twenty through nineteen ninety two,
a frequent collaborator with Honda inscribe of many Godzilla movies,
beginning with nineteen sixty two's King Kong Versus Godzilla. And
he also wrote Azragon, which we covered or he was
one of the writers on it. I forget how that
shook out. But anyway, getting into the actors here, of

(27:23):
course we have to call out Haruo Nakajima, who plays Godzilla.
He is the man in the suit. He lived nineteen
twenty nine through twenty seventeen. He played Godzilla in twelve
consecutive films. He was also in Mathra in the War
of the garganshuas as well as a Kira kurosaw was
seven Samurai in a bit role and not as a
giant monster. He's generally considered a legend and the rubber

(27:46):
monster suit actor par excellence.

Speaker 4 (27:49):
Was he ever a pro wrestler?

Speaker 2 (27:51):
Like?

Speaker 4 (27:51):
How did he get all those moves down?

Speaker 1 (27:53):
I don't think he had a wrestling background. He just,
you know, I think like a lot of these, well,
the way these different monster actors end up in the
suits that often come in to find them, like sometimes
it's a case where they're like, you know, a studied
physical performer, other times they're like they're the willing person.
They're the person that was around that was like, yes,

(28:14):
I will do this, and it became their thing, and
certainly Nakajima became like one of the most legendary rubber
suit I mean certainly the most legendary Kaiju actor of
all time. Now when it comes to Manila, the Little
Godzilla creature Godzilla's Son, this performance is by little Man Machin,

(28:36):
whose real name was Masseo Fukuzawa, who the nineteen twenty
one through two thousand he played Manila in three films
Son of Godzilla Destroyed All Monsters and All Monsters Attack,
which we previously noted, and he followed this up with
a couple of Kaiju projects, Ultraman Story from eighty four
ultra Q the Movie from nineteen ninety. He also played

(28:58):
the juvenile version of the title Kaiju in the North
Korean kaiju movie Pulgasari from nineteen eighty five WOW. His
final film was the nineteen ninety one Tokasatsu film Micka
Droid Robo Kill Beneath Disco Club Leila. I haven't seen it,
but you may have seen the cover art He's got,

(29:20):
you know, like some dark soldier with red eyes on it.
This is not what I've seen, but it's I think
some people really dig it. But anyway, this was a
diminutive suit actor who according to Godzilla Wiki.

Speaker 2 (29:34):
I looked at Godzilla.

Speaker 1 (29:35):
Wiki in addition to the normal databases on this one,
because they generally just have excellent information about Godzilla pictures.
They say that he worked prior to this as a
mini wrestler, but I couldn't find out really anything about that,
like where he wrestled, who he wrestled for, or what
his name was. I'm guessing he was a little man
when he wrestled, But I mean, there were some Japanese

(29:56):
mini wrestlers, but I think even the that I'm aware of,
they worked outside of Japan frequently, so I don't know
how much of a scene there was for this in
Japanese wrestling during this time period. He played a couple
of dwarf roles in the early sixties, including the Toshira
Mafuni Sinbad movie or well, I'm not sure if it's
actually a Sinbad movie, but it was released in the

(30:17):
West as The Lost World of Sinbad.

Speaker 4 (30:19):
Oh, I've never seen that one.

Speaker 1 (30:21):
Now. A note on Manila here. He's not to be
confused with god Zuki, the juvenile flying kaiju from the
Hanna Barbara cartoon The Godzilla Power Hour from seventy eight.
I know a lot of you out there know exactly
what I'm talking about. Also, he's not to be confused
with Godzilla Junior, who debuted in Toho's nineteen ninety three
film Godzilla Versus Mecha Godzilla two and appeared in two

(30:45):
pictures after that. Both god Zuki and Godzilla Junior have
baby dragon vibes, while Manila here he's more I don't know,
how would you describe him. He's kind of like baby
turtle without a shell, right.

Speaker 4 (30:58):
Yeah, baby turtle, baby fraud. Kind of like tadpole, a
quadrupedal tadpole. I'm not sure.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (31:05):
Very reminiscent though, of a human toddler, not only in
his appearance but also in the way he moves around.

Speaker 4 (31:13):
Yes, I mean, I think they were really trying to
play up that baby angle to make Manila as cute
as possible. That was the directive.

Speaker 1 (31:22):
Yes, Now, we mentioned that there's a human child at
the center of this picture. The child is the character
Ichiro Miki or just Ichiro. I don't even know this
is a case where they really say his last name
in the picture, but was played by TOMINOI Yazaki. Dates unknown.
He was a Japanese child actor. This was his first film,

(31:45):
followed by mostly TV roles, some ultraman, some common Rider
through a Round seventy three or seventy four. His other
film is the nineteen seventy two monster flick digorro Versus Goliath.
I've read that there have been a to sort of
find this actor as an adult and you know, get
his his take on what filming this movie was like.

(32:06):
But I don't think any of those those searches wherever fruitful.
So I'm not sure you know what became of him.
But I lived a private life after his child acting
days were behind him.

Speaker 4 (32:17):
Leave Ichiro alone, let him live his life.

Speaker 1 (32:21):
Now there's another character of note in the picture. So again,
Ichiro is a latch key kid, so his parents work
a lot. He's left to go home and look after
himself and his We meet this friend of his, this
this man who lives in the same apartment complex that
is a toy maker or a toy designer, an inventor

(32:43):
of sorts.

Speaker 4 (32:44):
Right, yeah, he At one point, he's building something he
calls a quote kiddy computer in the subtitles on the
version I saw, But it's like a computer that shows
live footage of a moon landing.

Speaker 1 (32:56):
Yeah, in great quality, was really in color.

Speaker 4 (33:00):
Yeah, but yeah, so I don't know what's going on there.
But yeah, he's a toy maker and he is he's
essentially Ichiro's friend, like he's a friend, and he looks
after Ichiro sometimes when his parents are both working and
can't come home.

Speaker 2 (33:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
This character's name is Shinpei Innami, played by the actor
Hideo i'm Amoto who lived nineteen twenty six through two
thousand and three. And this is a sometimes these various
Toho actors are actors that you just kind of see
another Toho films, and there's kind of like, you know,
just an ensemble of Toho actors. But there's a very

(33:38):
good chance folks out there have seen i'm Amoto before
because he has very distinctive looks, tall, thin Japanese character
actor with kind of gaunt features that are maybe not
accentuated much in this picture because he's just playing a
normal human and nothing. You know, he's not an assassin
or anything, but he worked in a number of notable films.
His work includes kuros was Yojimbo from sixty one, Quite

(34:02):
On from sixty four, Sword of Doom, and The Tango
from sixty six. He was also in Message for Space
and Attragon, so two films that we previously covered, though
I think those were smaller roles in those pictures. He
was also in International Secret Police Key of Keys from
sixty five, which is known to many Western moviegoers as

(34:25):
the movie that What's Up Tiger Lily? The Woody Allen
picture was a dub off. That was a picture where
they took a Japanese film and dubbed over it with
like new comedic dialogue. I've never seen it, but that's
the basic pitch.

Speaker 4 (34:38):
I think I've never seen it either.

Speaker 2 (34:41):
Anyway.

Speaker 1 (34:41):
I'm Amoto was in a string of Godzilla and Kaiju movies,
as well as nineteen ninety six's Echo Echo Azarak two,
Birth of the Wizard and nineteen eighty seven's Mighty Jack.

Speaker 4 (34:53):
Was that featured on Mystery Science Theater?

Speaker 2 (34:56):
It was, Yes, Mighty Jack.

Speaker 4 (34:58):
Well, he's very good in this role on him to
be the kindly, understanding adult in an uncaring world.

Speaker 1 (35:06):
Yes, let's see, I'm going to skip a bit in
the cast. Here we do see Isiro's father a little bit.
He's played by Kenji Sahara, who was born in nineteen
thirty two and is presumably still alive. He's a Japanese
actor who has the distinction of being in the most
Godzilla films, or at least was at one point he
was in thirteen of them, which I think puts him

(35:28):
what won over the Man in the Suit, in addition
to numerous other Toho pictures. He was in the first
Godzilla movie as a newspaper reporter and a party guy
in a boat, and his last Godzilla film was two
thousand and four's Final Wars, and it looks like he
was last active around twenty eleven and then finally. The
music in this one is by Kunio mia Uchi, who

(35:51):
lived nineteen thirty two through two thousand and six, Japanese
Toho composer whose first big score was The Human Vapor
in nineteen sixty. He followed this up with such films
and TV shows as Mighty Jack, Ultraman, Godzilla Versus Geegan,
and his stock music was used in twenty twenty two's
Shin Ultraman, which I haven't seen yet, but apparently Joe

(36:12):
it gives Ultraman the Shin Godzilla treatment. Oh well, that's
what the title and the posters seem to imply.

Speaker 2 (36:21):
Oh.

Speaker 4 (36:21):
I've looked this up before, but I always forget what
it is that the title Shin Godzilla means. And I
think the deal is that Shin is a word that
has multiple meanings, like it could be interpreted to mean
the word god, or it could be interpreted to mean
something like original or pure m. Is that right?

Speaker 1 (36:40):
I believe that that sounds familiar. I haven't looked into
it recently, but I remember reading about it when Shin
Godzilla first came out, and it's kind of like taken
on its own meeting to me, like you put Shin
on the beginning of something, and I'm expecting it to
have like a lot of scenes of bureaucracy dealing with
an outrageous event. So like, I think you could apply

(37:01):
it to anything, Shin Godzilla, Shen king Kong, I don't know,
Shin Mettango. You could really go crazy.

Speaker 4 (37:07):
With it, Shin critters, Shien critters, Shen gremlins too.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
That's what we want to see, all right?

Speaker 4 (37:21):
You ready to look at some stuff about the plot.

Speaker 2 (37:25):
Let's do it well.

Speaker 4 (37:26):
Of course, we start with that beautiful Toho logo. I
know I've said this on the show before, but it
makes me feel so good every time I see the
Toho logo, Really, something in my chest just relaxes.

Speaker 1 (37:37):
There's something about how it looks like there's light shining
through glass on it that it feels like I am
in the waiting room at an office for a professional
that I trust, you know, like I don't know if
I'm going to a doctor in this scenario or what
I'm going to a Toho picture, and I trust that

(37:57):
I'm going to be taken care of.

Speaker 4 (37:59):
You're in good hands. Yeah, Now, how to describe the
score that plays with the opening credits. The music throughout
this movie is generally rather strange in a way that
I liked. It's got this opening jazz tune that makes
me think a little bit of the Pink Panther. But
after many cups of coffee and then once the singing starts,

(38:19):
it gets really weird.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:21):
I guess the vibe is kind of hip and fun,
at least until you start reading the subtitles. For me,
for the opening theme song.

Speaker 4 (38:29):
Oh we'll get to that in a second. But also
I love how the opening credits are full of monster
fight clips, and there was one I genuinely laughed out loud.
So it's showing Godzilla fighting with one of the spider monsters.
I think that's the monster they fight originally in Son
of Godzilla, and they show the fight again in this movie.
And so it's showing this big spider and then there
is just a freeze frame on the spider spraying spider

(38:53):
juice out of its mouth.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:56):
Again, this is the movie that knows the kids out
there want monsters. Know, people come to Godzola to sea monsters,
and they're gonna start delivering right away.

Speaker 4 (39:04):
And I enjoy how the spider has a Sam Elliott mustache.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
Yeah, it's very furry. It's a disturbingly furry spider.

Speaker 4 (39:11):
It's a bristly spider. It's got like pink crystals for
eyes and Sam Elliot upper lip.

Speaker 1 (39:16):
Just because they're using stock footage from old films though,
doesn't mean they're not gonna go ahead and use footage
from later on in the picture, which I always feel
like is a little cheap in a movie. You know,
I don't want to see the trailer is probably already
ruined enough. I don't need the film itself ruining itself,
because we do see like this really sick Judo throw

(39:37):
from Godzilla where he drops a monster right on its head.
And of course this is a scene from later on
in the film. It's essentially like the finishing move Godzilla uses.

Speaker 4 (39:45):
That's so good. It's a triple dip. It's from another
movie already, and then they show it to you twice
in this movie, so you could see they were trying
to pad out the run time. I think, well, then again,
I don't know they would have had a credit sequence anyway.
Maybe they just might as well, let's show that fight
again in the credits.

Speaker 2 (40:01):
Why not.

Speaker 4 (40:02):
I totally accept your criticism of that as a move.
But a lot of movies we have loved have done that.
The Really Bloody Sword showed you the entire movie during
the opening credits.

Speaker 1 (40:11):
They absolutely did. Yeah, sometimes you can you can pin
it on like Western distributors of movies from Europe or Asia,
and clearly it's just like, well, let's keep them interested
so they don't leave the theater or drive away from
the drive in. But yeah, this is the original vision
for the pictures, So you can't blame it on anybody else.

Speaker 4 (40:31):
Oh, but let's come back to it. So it's singing
the song through the opening credits and they play it
again later on. What is the deal with the lyrics here?
They are intriguing.

Speaker 1 (40:40):
An energetic female vocalist that, according to the subtitles, is
basically saying, don't be afraid of monsters, kids. Monsters are
actually themselves shocked by the real threat industrial pollution, a.

Speaker 4 (40:53):
Theme that would become central to the later film Godzilla
versus Hetero, which is the one we previously covered on
Weird House before. Hetera is just a wicked pollution monster
who like powers up by huffing smokestacks.

Speaker 1 (41:07):
Yeah, in that movie, it's like the central theme and
the threat at the center of the film is the
physical embodiment of that real world threat. In this movie,
I was thinking about this. I guess it kind of
helps to ground the film in a world where the
monsters have lost their power. Later much later in the picture,
the monsters the kaiju are compared to gods, and if

(41:29):
we're to take that and run with it, back to
the beginning of the picture. Here, this is like we're
living in the Twilight of the Gods. This is a
world that has lost its faith. The grown ups have
lost their faith anyway, and the only people who really
have faith in the gods aka big rubber monsters are
the children.

Speaker 4 (41:47):
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. But a theme of
this song, apart from the thing about the pollution, yeah,
is explicitly about the monsters being weakened somehow. Like one
part says says, the monsters are crying, why is earth
such a hard place to live?

Speaker 2 (42:04):
Oh, that's the leering.

Speaker 4 (42:06):
And then another part is I'm paraphrasing for this part,
but it's like wham bam, crash. You can smash everything,
but still it's not easy being a monster.

Speaker 2 (42:16):
See.

Speaker 1 (42:16):
This is again why they probably had to have a
whole bunch of monster footage at the beginning of the picture.
You can't have this be the first thing kids watch.
They're gonna lose all hope.

Speaker 4 (42:24):
But anyway, as the credits finish out, we see we
see some setting. It's the industrial I think it's supposed
to be Kawasaki, but it's an industrial area of Japan
with a lot of I don't know, oil refineries and
factories and just smokestacks pouring smog everywhere, a barren world
populated only by smoke and factories and trucks. But amidst

(42:48):
this unforgiving landscape, we see a couple of sweet kids.
ITCHI row our main kid. He's walking along holding hands
with his friends at Chico and they are there. I
guess they're trying to make their way home after school
through this infernal landscape of suet and asthma.

Speaker 1 (43:04):
It reminds me once again of last week's picture, Let's
Sleeping corpses Lie, where we start off in a very
industrial British city and we're supposed to be Manchester, I
think is Manchester. And the only thing that really calls
out like any kind of like spirit of fun or
rebellion or anything like that is the streaker in this film,
it's the children. Like everything is kind of gross and

(43:28):
grimy and busy, but these children are just a basket
of joy, you know, holding the hands against all the
grime behind them. And I have to say, I really
love these kids, especially each hero played by Yazaki here,
he's just so good. It's just a really solid kid's performance,

(43:49):
Like there's a lot of energy and authenticity to it.
That you don't always see in a child actor.

Speaker 4 (43:56):
Yeah, this is a cute kid. I was a little
confused as to why some reviewers had in the past
written stuff that they considered Ichiro annoying. But I think
maybe I knew I was reading something that made me
understand a little better. I think it's possible that part
of the reaction to this character was that some people

(44:19):
were hearing a particular dub of the film where his
lines were dubbed by an adult who did this really nasal,
whiny voice for all of his speaking parts. And I
can't be sure, but I think that dub exists, and
I think that is not the version I saw, So
I don't know if that is the reason for sure,
but that would partially explain it, because I thought eachio

(44:40):
is great.

Speaker 1 (44:41):
That is a great, great point, and that's probably the reason.
It reminds me of a film like say, House by
the Cemetery. It's Bob is Bob the kid and then.

Speaker 4 (44:50):
Bob, yes, Bob the demon child with an adult voice.

Speaker 2 (44:54):
Right.

Speaker 1 (44:54):
Yeah, he's clearly dubbed by a grown woman, and it
creates a weird energy in the film. You kind of
there's an uncanniness to him that, and there's a certain
amount of uncanny is that's supposed to be there, and
I mean there's this added layer of the uncanny and
in a picture like this, Yeah, Eachiro is not supposed
to be uncanny. He's not supposed to be weird. And
you get the wrong dub on there, and it's going

(45:14):
to totally change the feeling you get exactly.

Speaker 4 (45:16):
So I think that may very well be what's going on.
But so we follow Eachiro around and a lot of
the early parts of the movie are just sort of
establishing his daily life and his struggles, and uh, maybe
we could talk a little bit about elements from from
each of these these things that are established. So one
theme of the movie is bullying. Eachi Ro is consistently

(45:41):
bullied by a gang of bigger kids who are led
by this this sadist bully king named Gabara. So we
see them knock eachi Ro over on purpose as they
run by, and they taunt him and they call him
weak and they make him feel helpless, and you really
feel for eachi Row like there's a you know, these
moments where the camera just lingers on his face as

(46:02):
he looks frustrated and sad and knows that he can't
really fight back.

Speaker 2 (46:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:07):
Yeah, and you know, he's a good kick, and he
just doesn't want to make anything worse. He doesn't want
to escalate things.

Speaker 4 (46:14):
Then you've got another theme, So bullying is one. Another
theme is Ichiro's love of the Kaiju. I wonder what
you thought about this. Does the movie take place in
a world basically in the real world where monsters don't exist,
but the children are familiar with the existing Godzilla movies,
or does it take place in a world where the

(46:36):
events of the previous Godzilla movies are known of as
real events that have previously happened in the world. I
couldn't tell which, but I think maybe it's the former,
Like he's literally seen the films.

Speaker 1 (46:49):
I think, so if I had to choose one, I
would go in that direction, just because basically, I mean,
no particular thing leads me to think that they'll There
is a part where we see a Kaiju action figure
or doll, but I think we saw one in Hetera
as well, So that's that alone is not an indicator.

(47:11):
But I think overall, I get the feeling that, yeah,
this is a world in which the monsters are only
on TV and in the minds of children.

Speaker 4 (47:19):
So Itchiro is having monster paradolia, Like a car goes
by and he's like, Oh, that car, the screeching, it
sounds just like Manila. It goes key ki key.

Speaker 1 (47:30):
I don't think I ever heard Manila make a kiki
ki sound, unless that's supposed to be the donkey sound.
Maybe we're getting into that whole situation where we're not
sure what or not. It just it varies what sound
an animal makes based on the language in which you're
describing it. So maybe donkeys go kiki ki in Japanese.

Speaker 4 (47:49):
Yeah, maybe I couldn't say okay. So that's another theme.
Ichiro he get is bullied. He loves the monsters. But
also a theme of this movie is loneliness, and I
think it tackles that in a pretty head on way.
Ichiro's family here is working class, and both of his
parents work long hours to make ends meet, and he

(48:10):
is often home alone after school fending for himself. So
we see a scene where he's walking by the train
tracks in this old, busted industrial landscape and a train
starts going by, and the conductor in the front of
the train or the engineer, I guess whatever. The guy
in the front of the train is his dad, and
his dad calls out, oh, hey, Chio, I'm working tonight.
Be good till your mom gets home. And then actually,

(48:32):
after this, we stick with Echiro's father for a little bit.
We see him take a smoke break with his coworker,
and we learn that the father wants to save up
enough money that they can move away from the smog,
move out to the country or to a place where
the air is clean. So you see that he's working
long hours too, I guess, try to get his family
to this better place. But then also in the scene,

(48:54):
we learn from his coworker who's reading a newspaper that
there are a couple of bank robbers on the loose,
leeing police with a suitcase full of money, and these
are Chekhov's bank robbers. They will show up later, but
we learned that they took fifty million yen, and you
can just see Itchio's father dreaming about what he could
do with money like that. Now we come back to bullying.
There's another bullying scene where Ichiro and Sachiko are walking

(49:19):
around and Ichiro finds a vacuum tube in the grass.
I guess because this is an area that used to
be like an electronics factory, and he finds it, and
then the bullies come up on him and they take
away his vacuum tube and they call him a baby,
and they like mock him to his face. And for
some reason, I've found something very heart wrenching about the

(49:42):
theft of Ichiro's vacuum tube. I think it's because he
found it. And this kind of hit me in a
strong way because I have memories of being a little
kid and finding a treasure of some kind just lying
out on the ground somewhere. That's a powerfully nostalgic kind
of memory. And I have one specific memory of something

(50:03):
like this happening to me. And I was out at
some event, I think, and I found a loose spool
of tape from an audio cassette and I was like
holding it and letting it blow in the wind, and
then an older kid took it away from me and
threw it over the edge of a bridge, and that, yeah,
that really.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
Stuck with me.

Speaker 4 (50:22):
So so anyway, I felt the vacuum tube scene very hard.

Speaker 1 (50:26):
Yeah, this felt like a very authentic moment in this picture, Like,
because I think we can all we all have memories
like that where we find some sort of weird bit
of discarded technology or orgistrate garbage, but it's fascinating and
we want to want to keep it. And and then
also the childhood insult of him being a baby, Like
I definitely I don't have memories of this myself, but

(50:50):
I've seen that watching my son grow up, Like there
was a period where to call someone a baby was
the was the biggest insult, to the point where he
would call the cat a baby, you.

Speaker 4 (51:01):
Know, if he was mad at the cat sick burn.

Speaker 1 (51:05):
Yeah, Like it's it's clearly you know, it's clearly hurting Ichiro.
But to hear this, but then there's also this kind
of innocence to it, like these kids are so young,
even their their cruelty has a certain innocence to it.

Speaker 2 (51:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (51:21):
Yeah. But then one more element of Itchiro's daily life
we learn about is his friendship with Shinpey, the toymaker.
And so when when he's coming home, I think, I
guess Shinpey is like maybe his neighbor. And so he
comes home and sees him working on this this electronic device,
the kiddie computer that shows people landing on the moon,
and it's clear that you know, he's welcome hanging out

(51:43):
in this guy's shop and they're friendly, and Shinpey is
a good, you know, nurturing influence on this kid. But
it's also funny because he makes this computer. He expects
Ichio to be all impressed. But what Ichiro says is, Ah,
the Moon's okay, but there's somewhere else I'd rather go
Monster Island. And then he just starts listing all the monsters,
and I was like, oh, this also made me. This

(52:05):
seems authentic. Don't don't kids love to list all the
monsters or list all the whatevers?

Speaker 2 (52:11):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (52:12):
God, they do. And I'm not going to be a hypocrite.
I'm also gonna admit I love to list the monsters
and I've never grown out of that. But yeah, like,
my son will definitely list all the Pokemon, all the
dungeons and dragons, dragon varieties, and I think that's great.
I love it too.

Speaker 2 (52:28):
I love a good monster list.

Speaker 4 (52:30):
But I think we see one of the reasons that
Ichio is so infatuated with the monsters. He talks about
how they're all stronger than Gabberra, his bully, and He's like,
you know, they don't have to worry about bullies. They
can do what we what they want. They're free because
they're strong. And then eventually we see Ichiro go back

(52:50):
home and there's kind of a lonely snack scene where he,
you know, his mom left out a snack for him.
He has that. He watches some TV and he watches
like The New where he learns about the bank robbers
stealing the fifty million yen. He switches, I think, to
a soap opera where the people are like saying, oh,
I love you, and then he there's a really funny

(53:11):
moment where he I can't remember the phrase he says
in Japanese, but the translation is he just goes yuck.

Speaker 2 (53:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (53:19):
But then it segues to him playing around with this
like toy radio he's put together that he dreams like
of calling Monster Island, which segues into a dream of
him visiting Monster Island. And this is going to be
one of the major themes for the rest of the
movie is these recurring visits in dreams to Monster Island

(53:39):
where all the monsters live, where we're going to see
a lot of fights between monsters. So much of this
is going to be footage from other movies, but I
think some original stuff too. And this is where Ichiro
meets Manila, the son of Godzilla, and they become friends
because they have a lot in common. It turns out
Manila is also being bullied I a monster on Monster Island,

(54:02):
and that monster has the same name as Echio's bully.
They're both called Gabbara.

Speaker 2 (54:08):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (54:08):
By the way, he initially dream travels to Monster Island
via direct flight, which I thought was a marvelous dream sequence. Yes,
I love how in these scenes with Manila he's he's
also as He's like, hey, I hear you know Godzilla.
Do you think you could introduce me to him? Because
I'd love to climb on his back, And Manila's like, well,
you know, I see, I'll see what Manila talks in this.

(54:29):
By the way, yes, Manila says, well, I'll see what
I can do. But you know, Godzilla, he didn't like
me around all the time because he gets onto me
for not being strong enough, for not standing up for
myself enough. And of course that again mirrors the situation
with each hero.

Speaker 4 (54:46):
Oh yeah, that's right, because we actually do see a
scene where Ichio's father says, you know, he he feels
for his son, but he wishes he would stand up
for himself. So we're gonna get some some slams, some

(55:07):
smackdowns on the island. I think we see Godzilla fighting
Ebi Rah. I think the Ebrah Horror of the Deep,
the shrimp crayfish monster. We see various fights take place,
and in a way, Ichio kind of like watches and
learns from them. But he also learns from watching Son
of Godzilla like like morph up and try to fight

(55:29):
against Gabrah. He like he like grows and he and
they fight and Gabra always wins at first, but you
kind of like pick up some clues along the way
about how he might beat him later on.

Speaker 1 (55:42):
Now, Gabra is pretty interesting. He's he's again our our
main kaiju antagonist, and he is original of this picture.
So many of the other Kaiju we encounter are ourtest
clips from other scenes or maybe reused puppets even in
the films that they that they originally appeared in. But
Gabra exists for this picture. This is his first picture

(56:04):
where we see this costume, and I think he's pretty great.
I've read that he's supposed to resemble a mutated frog
or toad, but he winds up with more feline features
somehow kind of looks like a green panther.

Speaker 4 (56:18):
He's like a lizard cat.

Speaker 1 (56:21):
Yeah, and I think these feelings of like cat similarities
are also accentuated by he's green and scaly, but he
has this shock of orange hair on the top of
his head amid these various horns like this, this row
of horns down his head as well, and I feel
like the orange hair, the green skin, it kind of

(56:42):
gives him a cartoon leprechaun. Look, you know what I mean?

Speaker 4 (56:45):
Yep, yep.

Speaker 1 (56:46):
Though I've of course that's not what they were going
for here. I've read that what they were originally aiming
for with this design was more of a something that
alluded to the Japanese only, you know, kind of an
ogre figure. And if you go to the wiki Zilla
page for this monster, you can actually see some of
the preliminary sketches the way they envision this creature. And yeah,

(57:08):
I can definitely see a sense of the one here
before it's realized in the suit.

Speaker 4 (57:13):
Oh, that almost kind of makes sense with so Gabra
being like this bully who just waylays each hero while
he's on the way home from school, like sits by
the roadside and attacks him as he goes past. He's
kind of like a bandit in a way, and that
I think there's classically a little bit of overlap between

(57:34):
the concepts of some ony and like banditry ideas.

Speaker 1 (57:38):
Yeah, yeah, And I think also there are often ideas
of lightning with the ony, and indeed Gabra here has
an electricity attack that he uses, but he doesn't have
a breath weapon. I thought that was interesting. He doesn't
seem to have a projectile weapon, which I think is
an interesting choice because a lot of times in these
movies you see some sort of like a ranged specialist kaiju,

(58:00):
and that's generally the that's a weak point for Godzilla
or for Gamera, whoever's facing such a Kaiju, even though
Godzilla of course has an amazing breath weapon that he
can use a range.

Speaker 4 (58:12):
Now, for all of the kind of like sweet elements
of this movie, there are also some things that ring
kind of weird. One of them is when we're seeing
Godzilla training son of Godzilla here training Manila how to
use his radiation breath. He's he does it by like
stomping on his tail. He's like, oh yeah, I step
on your tail. That makes you really shoot the radiation.

(58:34):
And until then he can only kind of like blow
these like rings of radiation that don't really do anything.

Speaker 1 (58:40):
Yeah, so I get like Godzilla's lesson here is that
you must feel pain and and give in to your anger,
Like he's basically giving him the dark side of the
force spiel.

Speaker 4 (58:53):
You strike me down with all of your journey towards
Monster Island will be complete.

Speaker 1 (59:01):
So again, there may be a generational divide on the
message here, the parenting message of Godzilla. But I mean
it's a music.

Speaker 4 (59:10):
In the picture, yes, I mean there are several things.
There's also a real world thing where you know, there's
a very nice message about giving eachiero confidence to stand
up to his bullies. But I don't know if the
exact way that he does that in the end is
the best. But I think he kind of like fights them,

(59:30):
but then he also at their goating, like pulls a
mean pryank on a guy who's just trying to paint
a sign and gets him covered in paint. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (59:39):
Oh yeah, and this was what the bullies were trying
to get him to do earlier in the picture. They're like, hey,
see that guy painting the sign on the top of
the ladder, you should go blow the horn on his motorcycle.
So he falls off the ladder and he's like, of course,
I'm not going to do that. I'm a good kid,
and they make fun of him, and then later he's like,
I'm a brave kid. Now watching me go make that
man fall off the ladder, and he does so.

Speaker 4 (59:59):
I think that's a little confused there. But there's another
major plot line I don't think I'm going to go
into great detail on unless there's anything about it you
wanted to hit rob But a major part of the
real world plot, apart from what's happening in the Dreams
of Monster Island, is the developing story about the bank
robbers with the fifty million yen who are hiding out

(01:00:19):
in a nearby factory. I think it's near the place
where Ichiro found the vacuum tube, and ultimately he is
kidnapped by these bank robbers because we know Itchiro loves
to like find and pick up treasures, and one of
the treasures he finds and picks up is a driver's
license dropped by one of the robbers, and uh, now
he knows who they are, so they have to kidnap him,

(01:00:41):
and then ultimately he has to outsmart them with tricks
and traps, and after the robbers are caught, there's this
very interesting scene where it's almost like the movie is
telling us the moral of the story and like the
press hail little Ichiro is a hero, and Ichiro gives
credit for his heroism too, Manila to the monster from

(01:01:02):
the Godzilla movies and uh and there. So there's this
exchange where the toy maker his friend Shinpey, is hanging
out there near all of the reporters and he explains
to them. He says, he means Manila the monster. I
think I understand. He's like a higher power. And one
of the reporters asks for clarification. He says a higher power,

(01:01:23):
and Shinpey says, that's right. Adults believe in gods, so
why can't children have their own gods too, like Manila?
And it's kind of a funny line, but oh, something
stirred in me there.

Speaker 1 (01:01:36):
I absolutely agree. Yeah, this is this is one of
my favorite parts of the picture really because I think
it's it's rather insightful and accurate, and I think it's
a thing that we've maybe touched on to some degree
in our discussion of Godzilla on Weird House before, but
here it's directly brought up in the picture. This idea
that toy monsters an ultimately monster media in general, that

(01:01:59):
these are icons that connect children in the natural world
to the powerful realm of super beings. In this film
localized on Monster Island, which one can easily compare to
the various sacred mountains of various cultures around the world.
So the monsters are strength and courage, they are the
absolute personification or expression of emotion, and they have considerable

(01:02:21):
power over the grown up human world while not being
a part of that world. And of course we see
a sequence in this where the humans come in jet
planes to conquer Monster Island and Godzilla has to fight
them off and destroy some some jet fighters. That sort
of thing. I think that was maybe a scene from
a previous picture. I'm not sure. It could kind of
feel like filler and again checking off the boxes of

(01:02:43):
what a monster movie should give you, but it also
I think works in this sort of vision of what
is what is the energy of the kaiju, and why
is it so attractive to children. It's like it is
big body energy incarnate, you know, and it is the
expression of these emotions that there may be only beginning
to understand at certain ages.

Speaker 4 (01:03:04):
I think that's all correct. And there was another angle
in which I was thinking about this. Maybe this is
too much of a reach, but it made me think
about this is almost kind of painting a picture of
a world highlighting the difference between like the gods of
children and the gods of adults, which is where many
adults might literally believe that the gods exist but don't

(01:03:29):
take their lessons and their meaning to heart. Meanwhile, you
can have children who can treat known fictional entities like
the monsters of Godzilla like gods, and even though they
don't literally believe they exist, they do take their meaning
to heart. And so it's almost like a question of

(01:03:51):
like adults taking their gods literally but not seriously, and
children taking their gods seriously but not literally.

Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
Yeah, I mean it brings me back to another thing
I think we've discussed in the show before, like this
this space for mythology in our modern viewpoint, Like I
don't think the world needs to be just truth and fiction.
That it needs to be just the real and the unreal,
you know, the difference between skeptical and fundamentalist viewpoints, Like

(01:04:23):
I feel like there needs to be a room for mythology,
and under that like a very loose version of mythology
in which you have room for actual myths that have
cultural resonance, but also fictional things, things like Godzilla, things
like Star Wars, or any bit of media or imagination
that ends up becoming meaningful to somebody.

Speaker 4 (01:04:45):
Yes, I think we should take Eachiro's attitude to heart
right because he can find absolutely a raw core meaningfulness
in his in his mythology without it being in fact
true that Manila is a physical monster that exists in
the world. Yeah, though, coming back to my question from earlier,
I still don't know for sure whether the film is

(01:05:06):
saying that he's just a character in a movie in
the world of the film, or whether he was real.
Not quite clear, but assuming it's the former, that it's
a character in a.

Speaker 1 (01:05:15):
Movie, Yeah, Yeah, I like the ambiguity though in a
way it works well with this kind of children's viewpoint
of the world, a world in which yeah, I mean,
maybe they are real. Maybe they are, it doesn't matter
at the end because they're real to him. So this
was a really fun one. I'm glad we did this one.
I always have a certain amount of hesitation with Kaiju movies,

(01:05:35):
just because you don't want to spend a lot of
time on one that is just a monster suit film,
Like there's so many. There are a lot of great
monster suit films, so they've got to have something else
going on in them to really be to really be
worth talking about. And this film definitely had other things
going for it besides some awesome monster battles. Well, I

(01:05:57):
take that back. I wouldn't say the monster battles are
awesome in this picture. Don't want this one just for
the monster battles, but it provides a nice balance of things.

Speaker 4 (01:06:05):
Well, I agree, But I don't know. I might feel different.
Maybe I'm just more gung ho about any any great
big monster beat down.

Speaker 1 (01:06:13):
I didn't feel like Godzilla was ever in real danger
in this one. I always knew he had this one handled.
But it wasn't just Godzilla's battle. It was also Godzilla's
son's battle. So there's a different, different dynamic going on here.
All right, Well, we're going to go ahead and close
this one out, but we'd love to hear from everyone
out there, if you have thoughts on all Monsters Attack,

(01:06:35):
if you have other favorite Kaiju movies that you would
like to suggest for the future on Weird House Cinema,
or just discuss in general. You know, we read listener
mail usually on our listener Mail episodes on Mondays in
the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed, so we're
happy to discuss all of that. There a reminder that
we're primarily a science podcast with Core episodes on Tuesdays

(01:06:56):
and Thursdays, Monster Factor Artifact episode on win and then
on Friday, we set aside most serious concerns to just
talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. And
if you want to see a list of all the
films we've done before, we can go to a couple
of places. I blog about all these movies. At s
Immuta music dot com. It's just a personal blog that
I maintain that is mostly weird house stuff these days.

(01:07:17):
And then if you go to letterbox dot com, it's
l E T T e r box d dot com.
That's a cool website where you can chronicle your own
cinematic explorations and make lists and so forth. At ad Reviews,
we have an account there. Our account is weird House,
and we have a list there that has all the
movies that we've discussed in order, and occasionally you'll get

(01:07:38):
a glimpse ahead at what is about to come up
for us.

Speaker 4 (01:07:42):
Huge thanks to our audio producer Jjposway. If you would
like to get in touch with us with feedback on
this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
the future, or just to say hello, you can email
us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:08:02):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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