Slash And Burn

Fantastipo

Director: Shogo Yabuchi 
Actors: Tsuyoshi Domoto, Taichi Kokubun, Kimika Yoshino
Year Released: 2005
Genre: "Comedy"
See Also: Survive Style 5+, Taste of Tea
Availability Note: Import only.

Fantastipoop.

When Yokai Attack: Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare and The Great Yokai War

Title: Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare
Japanese Title: Yokai daisenso
AKA: Big Ghost War, Big Monster War, Ghosts on Parade
Director: Yoshiyuki Kuroda
Actors: Yoshihiko Aoyama, Hideki Hanamura, Akane Kawasaki
Year Released: 1968
Genre: Samurai, Horror
See Also: Yokai Monsters: 100 Monsters, Yokai Monsters: Along With Ghosts
Otaku Alert: Director Yoshiyuki Kuroda went on to helm the last entry in the Lone Wolf and Cub series, White Heaven in Hell.

Title: The Great Yokai War
Japanese Title: Yokai Daisenso
AKA: The Great Hobgoblin War
Director: Takashi Miike
Actors: Chiaki Kuriyama, Ryunosuke Kamiki, Etsushi Toyokawa
Year Released: 2005
Genre: Adventure
See Also: Kibakichi, Kibakichi 2
Otaku Alert: The Great Yokai War is based on a novel by Hiroshi Aramata, the same writer who brought us the source material for Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis.

I recently picked up Yokai Attack! The Japanese Monster Survival Guide, a great book that catalogs many of Japan's best known yokai. Yokai, for lack of a better word, are goblins, although their sheer variety in size, shape and temperament belies something as plain a word as "goblin." As a kid I marveled at the amazing variety of monsters on shows like Ultraman, creatures with mouths and hands in all sorts of odd places, and this is reflected in the yokai as well. From the giant foot that appears in your home, to the walking wall, to the angry Buddhist priest who turned into a giant rat, yokai truly are like no monsters we have in the West.

The best way to see yokai in action (bar walking alone on a dark forest path at night in Japan) is in the movies. In 1968, Daiei followed up its spooky samurai kids movie Yokai hyaku monogatari (aka Yokai Monsters: 100 Monsters) with Yokai daisenso, a film that saw some of Japan's most famous yokai doing battle with a Sumerian god. Released in the US on DVD under the name Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare, the film is a great introduction to the world of the yokai.

The god Daimon, trapped in a tomb in the ancient Babylonian city of Ur, is set free by a pair of grave robbing white guys in Abe Lincoln beards dressed up like Arabs. Daimon kills them and immediately makes a bee-line for Edo-era Japan, because, apparently, life is good there. He sucks the blood of a few samurai higher-ups, takes over their bodies, and soon has his vassals destroying the family altar and doing various other unholy things.

A kappa (part-turtle yokai with a plate on his head) is the first to see Daimon and rallies the yokai troops, who take him on in a fit of nationalism. Can't let some foreigner god come waltzing into Japan and start pushing the locals around.

Highlights: kappa getting his plate rubbed raw against a wooden support column; wacky antics with Karakasa, the umbrella yokai, and a pair of manzai-like samurai; and a fat kid who runs around in a NSFW thong. The effects are pleasantly cheesy, the monster performances respectably hammy and, it being a Daei production, the film looks great.

In 2005, Takashi Miike took it upon himself to do a remake of Yoaki daisenso. (Although it had the same name in Japan, Miike's version was released in the US as The Great Yokai War, which is essentially a direct translation of the title.) Aside from the title, and the fact that both movies have yokai in them, Miike kept little else from the original.

It's present day, and Tadashi, a middle school-age transplant from Tokyo, is busy getting pushed around by the local country bumpkin bullies. Pretty soon Tadashi has more to worry about than bad kid actors, as he gets caught up in the titular yokai war. This time it's not an invading foreign beastie but a former human-turned-demon, out to destroy all the yokai in Japan. Helping him in his cause is Agi, played by Chiaki Kuriyama in a series of skin-tight costumes and the best beehive wig the B-52s never wore.

The Great Yokai War, like its predecessor, is decidedly a kids' movie, but it's also a Miike film, which means there's a nasty undercurrent running throughout. Yokai are transformed into half-mechanical monsters, screaming as their bodies are mutated into metal. There's also a great scene where the requisite cute sidekick gets the crap kicked out of it by Agi. Priceless.

I saw The Great Yokai War at a packed screening in San Francisco, and the audience—with nary a child in attendance—was hooting and hollering the entire time. Miike knows how to make a fun movie, whether underground or, as of late, for a mass audience. Let's just hope he never loses his sense of humor.

The Race We've Already Lost: Matango and Goke

Title: Matango
AKA: Attack of the Mushroom People
Director: Ishiro Honda
Actors: Akira Kubo, Miki Yashiro, Kumi Mizuno
Year Released: 1963
Genre: Horror
See Also: Gojira, Dogora
Otaku Alert: Apparently, the mushrooms that everyone eats were custom-made rice confections.

Title: Goke the Body Snatcher From Hell
Japanese Title: Kyuketsuki Gokemidoro
Director: Hajime Sato
Actors: Teruo Yoshida, Tomomi Sato, Eizo Kitamura
Year Released: 1968
Genre: Horror
See Also: Terror Beneath the Sea, Snake Woman's Curse
Otaku Alert: Comely stewardess Kuzumi, played by Tomomi Sato, would next appear in Kinji Fukasaku's Blackmail Is My Life. Talk about trading up.
Availability Note: Import only.

Western DVD stores are full of sci-fi films that mine our fear of loss of identity. From Invasion of the Body Snatchers to the Borg in Star Trek, themes of being subsumed into a group are more common than pedophiles at a Little League game. But what if you come from a country that values the group over the individual? Where do you go with your paranoia sci-fi situations then? In this pair of delightful '60s films, Matango and Goke The Body Snatcher From Hell, you go where everyone else goes when the group loses its senses: over the cliff of depravity.

Matango (1963), another fine Toho film from Ishiro Honda, is a kind of Gilligan's Island on hallucinogenics, a three-hour tour that turns into an extended bad trip. A group of Tokyo socialites gets caught in a storm while sailing and ends up shipwrecked on an uninhabited island. They find a ship that suffered a similar fate, but where are the crew? If they're dead, where are the corpses? And don't these mushrooms growing everywhere look yummy?

Soon, as it is wont to due, humanity is breaking down, with people selfishly pilfering from the food rations, selling bird eggs at extortion-level prices, and being generally nasty to each other. Keeping their heads above the waters of de-evolution are a stalwart man and woman, a pair of innocents who hold out against the groups' head-long march towards barbarism. Precipitating this transformation are the wild, addictive mushrooms of the island. Once you start eating, you can't stop, even when you realize that they're turning you into a mushroom too.

Part diatribe about modern, hedonistic behavior (during a mushroom trip we're treated to images of night time Tokyo and dancing cabaret girls), part warning about where society is headed, and part pre-counter culture drug trip, Matango is a smart, entertaining, and uncharacteristically kid-unfriendly film from Honda.

Five years later, when Goke The Body Snatcher From Hell was released in 1968, a hell of a lot had changed. The backslide of humanity that Matango hinted at was apparently complete, with the Vietnam War raging not far from Japan, and the US using Japan as a jumping-off point for its "peace-keeping" activities. Hajime Sato, who previously entertained us with Terror Beneath the Sea, had apparently had it up to here with the whole human race. His solution? An unstoppable invasion of outer space vampires. However, in this dark vision of humanity, the vampires needn't even bother—humanity is too busy killing itself to care.

An airplane full of reprobates (assassin, mad bomber, politician, arms dealer, scientist who enjoys testing peoples' limits, etc.) crashes into a mountainside after a UFO strafes it. Turns out the UFO is piloted by a puddle of spilled Prell shampoo, which wastes no time in taking over the assassin by (get this) psychically making his forehead split open into a vagina-like slit, and then slithering inside. Dude runs around for the rest of the movie with this vagina on his face. I can't help wonder if Sato had some unresolved fear of women. Anyway, assassin catches a few survivors and sucks their blood but the real danger here is from (cue heavy music) each other.

There's lots of back-stabbing and double-dealing, a blue print for every season of Survivor to come, but the best is between the arms dealer and politician. The two obviously know each other, and it is later revealed that the politician took bribes and even the dealer's wife(!) to push favorable legislation through the Diet. However, there's some bad blood running between them, with the dealer pushing whiskey on the dehydrated politician and delighting in his hoarse-throated cries for water.

By the time the invasion lands, most of our plane-crash survivors are already dead, save for a virginal pair, a captain and cabin attendant who both look smashing in uniform and could probably do a good job of repopulating the world. If it weren't for that whole invasion thing, natch. I can't recall another alien invasion movie that placed the actual invasion on the backburner while giving bickering, disgusting people the limelight. When the end comes, you're almost relieved to be rid of such reprobates.

Oh, and that whole Vietnam War thing? Yeah, we sure learned a lot from that, didn't we?

King Kong Escapes

Japanese Title: Kingu Kongu no gyakushu
AKA: King Kong's Counterattack, The Revenge of King Kong
Director: Ishiro Honda
Actors: Rhodes Reason (no, seriously), Mie Hama, Linda Miller
Year Released: 1967
Genre: Kaiju
See Also: Godzilla Vs. King Kong, Godzilla Vs. Hedorah
Otaku Alert: Mie Hama, who plays the perfectly named Madame Piranha, was the first Asian to pose for Playboy.

Note: the following was recovered from a discarded Post-it Note.

King Kong Escapes

Attractive white girl (model)

Take over world w/ Kong robot

Guy in a cape with nasty teeth

@ North Pole in frogged Chinese shirts and pants suits—what gives?

Element X is bullshit

Nappiest Kong ever

Kong's eyelids flap back like he's deranged

Weird, poop-like lips

Looks kinda like Homer Simpson

Robot breaks getting element X so they steal real Kong

Mie Hama—cute hats

Kong understands English?

Battle w/ Gorosaurus best part—jump kick

Still better than Jackson's King Kong

Out of beer, must get more before I can watch any more of this movie

Snake Woman's Curse

Japanese Title: Kaidan hebi onna
AKA: Ghost Story of the Snake Woman
Director: Nobuo Nakagawa
Actors: Sachiko Kuwahara, Ko Nishimura, Chiaki Tsukioka
Year Released: 1968
Genre: Horror
See Also: Jigoku, Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan, Blind Woman's Curse
Otaku Alert: Pinky violence regular Yukie Kagawa makes her debut in Snake Woman's Curse.

Nobuo Nakagawa was the Kiyoshi Kurosawa of his day, a master of the horror genre with a unique style that pretty much set the stage for the way horror films would be made well into the '60s. Starting at Shintoho in the '50s, he put his indelible stamp on the genre with classics like Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan and Jigoku, both films that married unique camera work and color palettes to a genre better known as a utilitarian way to fight the summer heat (they were supposed to give you chills, literally).

With Snake Woman's Curse, made for Toei in 1968—a time when matinee audiences were more concerned with yokai and daikaiju than traditional horror—Nakagawa brought back both his liquid camera work and eye for effects, and, as screen writer, all the hallmarks of the traditional Japanese horror film.

Traditional kaidan (ghost stories), many based on folktales, generally concern a woman who, wronged in life, returns from the dead to haunt the man who wronged her. Many of these were set in the Edo era, a time when women were largely oppressed in Japanese society. In these stories, women—pushed to the margins of society in terms of rights and presence—become the "other," and become associated with the uncanny and horrible, another kind of "other." Snake Woman's Curse takes place during the Meiji era, a time when Japan was rapidly modernizing and emerging from its feudal past. However, women were still treated shabbily, the traditions of the Edo era codified into law.

After Yasuke, a sharecropper farmer, dies, his debts are passed on to his wife, Sue, and comely adult daughter, Asa, who are forced to move into the main house and work for the landlord. Sue soon finds herself the object of the landlord's affections, much to the dismay of both her and the landlord's wife, who treats her ruthlessly. Asa is then targeted by the son of the landlord, who sees in her a quick and consequence-free lay. Soon Sue, sick with the same ailment that killed her husband, dies, and Asa, unable to contain her grief at the death of her parents and being repeatedly raped by the landlord's son, kills herself.

To the wealthy of the film, these farmers are little more than pests, or beats to exploit. Whether for the work they produce or for their bodies, they exist to service the landlords, or so they would like to believe. However, pushed to the margins, the poor—particularly the women—are transformed into obake, ghosts, and begin to haunt the landlord and his son.

The landlord's son marries soon after Asa's suicide, and his guilt is transferred to his own wife, whom he hallucinates as having huge snake scales instead of skin. Although higher in society than the farmers, the new wife is still female, and thus also an "other" in the eyes of the son.

Snake Woman's Curse was the (snake's) tail-end of the kaidan genre, and would soon be replaced by American-style slasher films. However, it was a wronged woman named Sadako who would bring this traditional element back to Japanese horror in the form of Ringu, the popularity of which suggests that Japan may still have some issues of sexual equality left to address.

Audition

Audition Director: Takashi Miike
Actors: Ryo Ishibashi, Eihi Shiina, Jun Kunimura
Year Released: 1999
Genre: Horror
See Also: Ichi the Killer, Visitor Q
Otaku Alert: Eihi Shiina's latest, Tokyo Gore Police, looks to be a real treat.

In 2001 I moved to Los Angeles and promptly experienced the worst date of my life. It was the beginning of internet dating, and I was more than ready to put technology to good use to meet interesting women in Los Angeles. We flirted online, flirted over the phone, and then agreed to meet. I drove the two hours down to Irvine, a wealthy suburb at the extreme southern end of Orange County to meet her, a college student currently enrolled in Phoenix but home for the weekend.

I was instantly disappointed. Her face did not match her picture. This being my first internet date, I had yet to learn the wily ways that people disguise their, shall we say, shortcomings in photographs. But I try to not be too shallow, so instead of running back to my car and not looking back, as I should have done, I soldiered on. After saying hello, she asked me to lie to her mother about how we met. I don't lie. Don't ask me to lie. So when her mother asked how we met, I was honest. My date shot me daggers. It only got worse from there.

At the club, my date and her friend did nothing but cattily make fun of the people there while I sipped a drink. Then my date turned to me, grabbed my sideburns, and said, "What the hell are these? Are they supposed to look good?" I said, "What does it matter?" to which she said, "Well, I have to look at them." No you don't, I thought, and almost got up and left then, willing to strand them at the club instead of put up with this abuse. But I am nothing if not a gentleman, and stuck it out until the end.

A few months later, I saw Audition for the first time, and realized it could have been worse. A lot worse.

Audition, an unusually restrained film for Takashi Miike, is about a lonely middle-aged filmmaker's bad dating choice gone horribly wrong. It builds upon the fear of making yourself vulnerable to someone you don't really know and explodes in an infamous climax that had me covering my eyes the first time I saw it.

Stalwart character actor Ryo Ishibashi is Shigeharu Aoyama, a documentary filmmaker who lets his producer colleague talk him into holding an audition to find his next wife. The audition is supposedly for a film but really the women—all young and attractive—are trying out for the opportunity to date Shigeharu. It should be noted that Shigeharu is not some braying chauvinist, he's just a lonely guy whose wife died seven years ago and now hasn't a clue how to go about meeting women.

At first the audition ruse seems to have worked—Shigeharu chooses the fragile and beautiful Asami (Eihi Shiina, Eureka) and soon they're dating, the film role long since forgotten. She reveals some bad past experiences but this only draws Shigeharu to her more, attracted by her vulnerability and strength in overcoming hardships. However, all is not well in the world of Asami, and our vulnerable waif turns out to be something quite terrifying.

Miike, known for excess and flights of directorial fancy, is here uncharacteristically restrained, and the film excels because of it. I've always felt that Miike was a great filmmaker sabotaged by his own boredom. He can't just let a film play straight—he has to throw in some lame shit like stop-motion chickens or fireballs or something. But Audition he leaves as is, and it works perfectly. By the time the end of the film is upon you, you have no idea what's happening. Like I said, I covered my eyes, and it was all I could do to not walk out with the other people at the screening.

Hmm, seems like there's a trend here. I couldn't walk out on a bad date, nor a terrifying sequence in a film. I'm not sure if that says more about my tenacity, or my terrible survival skills. If I end up feetless in a laundry bag someday, we'll have our answer.

In the Realm of the Senses

Japanese Title: Ai no corrida
AKA: Empire of the Senses
Director: Nagisa Oshima
Actors: Tatsuya Fuji, Eiko Matsuda, Aoi Nakajima
Year Released: 1976
Genre: Drama
See Also: Gohatto (Taboo), Cruel Story of Youth
Otaku Alert: Lead actor Tatsuya Fuji has done everything from Gamera movies to the recent Midnight Eagle.
Availability Note: Out of print.

Is it or isn't it? It's almost not even worth having this argument anymore. Nagisa Oshima's controversial 1976 In the Realm of the Senses has sparked plenty of debate in its 32 years of existence—so much so that it's almost old hat by now to pontificate over its pornness. Yeah, that's what we're talking about here: is it pornography because it shows actual sex, or is it just arty sex?

The shouts of "it's porn!" tend to come from the conservative side of the debate, as one would expect. The argument goes that: any filmic depiction of sex—be it penetration, fellatio, ejaculation (all of which occur in the film)—automatically defines the event as pornography, and is thus worth banning, or censoring, or feeling ashamed for liking it.

The other side, on which I stand, says that just because there's sex doesn't mean it's pornography. Sex isn't all that icky, really, so what's the big deal about telling an honest story about consenting adults who happen to have an amorous love life? Just because this film is more honest than most, does that automatically assign it to the status of prurience? For really, isn't that what defines pornography? Pornography exists to masturbate to. You'd have a difficult time saddling In the Realm of the Senses with that definition.

Based on a true story, Senses centers around the couple of Sada Abe, a former prostitute who's gone to work as a servant for a wealthy man, and Kichizo Ishida, said wealthy man who finds in Sada an equal in amorousness. The two progress from quick dalliances around the house to a full-blown sexual obsession, squirreled away in an inn and taken to choking each other in coitus to heighten the pleasure. Anyone familiar with the famous, Showa-era source material will already know how it ends; the story thus builds to this climax and provides reasons for how something so outlandish could actually happen. (If you don't know the story, think of a pre-war, Japanese John Wayne Bobbitt.)

As difficult as In the Realm of the Senses is to pigeonhole as pornography, it comes pretty damn close, and not just for the fact that it graphically depicts sex. As with "real" porn, Senses suffers from becoming boring. Really, how much sex can you watch in one sitting? Also, Sada Abe is a doctor-certified nymphomaniac, a common porn plot device (common back when porn had plots, at least). I find this unfortunate, as it defines her sexuality as a pathology, while Kichizo Ishida's is merely manly. (Also, Eiko Matsuda, the actress who played Sada, quickly disappeared into the world of softcore while Tatsuya Fuji, a longtime character actor with kids' movies under his belt, continues working today.)

I consider Oshima a director with a mission. Like with Gohatto, his film about homosexuality among the samurai of the Shinsengumi, Oshima is here making a point as much as he is telling a story. Oshima had to go to France to make the movie he wanted to, and was greeted with an obscenity charge in his native Japan upon his return (acquitted). The movie has still never been shown uncensored in Japan, which proves his point rather nicely, I think. That it also tells a rather interesting story is testament to his abilities as a director. If only it had managed to avoid the same pitfalls as—in the words of Troy McClure— "the finest R-rated movies Europe has to offer."

Monster In Translation: Godzilla and Gamera Come To America

Title: Godzilla, King of the Monsters
Japanese Title: Gojira
AKA: Godzilla
Directors: Ishiro Honda, Terry O. Morse
Actors: Raymond Burr, Takashi Shimura, Akira Takarada
Year Released: 1956
Genre: Kaiju
See Also: Gojira
Otaku Alert: US helmsman Terry O. Morse was a more prolific editor than director and his resume includes the great Robinson Crusoe on Mars.
Availability Note: Available as part of a double-disc set with the original Gojira.

Title: Gammera The Invincible
Japanese Title: Daikaiju Gamera
AKA: Gamera
Directors: Noriaki Yuasa, Sandy Howard
Actors: Albert Dekker, Brian Donlevy, Eiji Funakoshi
Year Released: 1966
Genre: Kaiju
See Also: Gamera
Otaku Alert: US director Sandy Howard went on to produce tons of genre pictures in the '70s and '80s, including the first two Angel movies and The Devil's Rain. Classy stuff.

It's the mid-1950s. You've just a great but depressing little subtitled Japanese movie called Gojira down at the Toho Theater in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo. As a producer, you know you can do something with it, but what? The monster stuff is great but the connection to the atom bomb is way too obvious. Also, there's nary a white face to be seen.

Solution: Godzilla, King of the Monsters.

A drastic re-cut of the original film, King of the Monsters is nothing short of bizarre. Rather than just dub the whole thing, cutting scenes as necessary, the US distributor decided to shoot an entirely new subplot featuring actor Raymond Burr, of Perry Mason and boxy suits fame. A journalist, Steve Martin (snicker), lands in Tokyo just in time for a newly awakened Godzilla to start his antics. Martin survives Godzilla's attack, sees the monster destroyed, and makes some pithy comments about the world being safe again. But it's the way in which the film was re-purposed that's just so weird, it bears exploring.

Rather than just insert scenes of Burr in different locations, parallel to the action of the original film, every effort is made to include him in the action. We go with Burr as he tags along with whatever the actors of the original film are doing. They act, the films cuts to Burr, who reacts, then we cut back to the original. However, the original is in Japanese. So we get people speaking Japanese (with no subtitles), a Japanese person explaining to Burr what they said, and then Burr commenting. This round robin style is thankfully not consistent and sometimes the Japanese actors are dubbed in English. Why this isn't maintained all the way through is a mystery. But when they are speaking in Japanese, we have to wait for Burr to get the translation. Thus, we wait with him. We are made to identify with him, which makes things all the more creepy.

Burr comes across as some kind of weird voyeur, smugly watching the goings-on, smoking his pipe and waiting for translation. He treats his translators in an odd way too. Remember, this is just a few years after the US occupation of Japan ended. His attitude is subtly patronizing and "father knows best." Often, the Japanese actors are made to appear as if they're asking Burr for advice, rather than any of the more qualified scientists or government officials in the film. Perhaps that's the way the American audiences wanted it to be.

Oddly enough, Toho released the American version in Japan. How odd would that be, watching Japanese conversations being translated into English, and then subtitled back into Japanese.

It's the mid-1960s. You've just seen a Japanese film about a giant, fire-breathing turtle called Gamera that's extremely reminiscent of Godzilla. Although lots of Japanese giant monster movies have been released in the US with few changes save dubbing, you decide that what your films really needs to captivate American teenage audiences is a bunch of old, white guys sitting around and arguing.

Witness Gammera The Invincible.

A trio of Soviet jets stray into US airspace over the arctic and are shot down. The nuclear bomb one of the jets is carrying explodes, releasing the giant turtle Gammera, who makes a bee-line for Japan, eats fire, almost kills and then inexplicably saves an annoying kid in short-shorts with a turtle fixation, and is then shot into space, from which he returns for another 10 or so sequels.

Pretty standard kids' kaiju fare by the mid-'60s. Daei did the best with what they had, which wasn't much compared to Toho and its genius special effects wizard, Eiji Tsubaraya. But really, was it worth the American distributor the trouble and money to shoot a bunch of new scenes and stick them into an already full-length Japanese movie? Apparently so.

I like to think the lunch meeting at the Brown Derby went like this:

Suit #1: I don't know, this Gamera thing looks like a piece of crap. How can we liven it up?
Suit #2: How the hell should I know? What are the kids into these days anyway, surfing and go-go dancing? Can't we just put some go-go girls over the opening credits like everyone else and be done with it?
Suit #1: Sure, we could, but what I think the kids really, REALLY want to see in a giant monster movie is third-tier actors arguing. You know, the kinds with too much Brylcreem and jowls that hang over their stiffly starched white-collar shirts.
Suit #2: That's funny, Bob. But really, what should we do?
Suit #1: I wasn't joking, Randal. It's my wife Brenda with the dough to release this POS, so I say what goes.
Suit #2: Jeez, Bob, OK. Ease off. Here, let me order you another martini. Waiter!

You notice that the producers left the rest of the films well enough alone.

Hmm, I feel like having a martini now.

Son of Godzilla

Japanese Title: Kaijuto no kessen: Gojira no musuko
Director: Jun Fukuda
Actors: Tadao Takashima, Akira Kubo, Bibari "Beverly" Maeda
Year Released: 1967
Genre: Kaiju
See Also: Destroy All Monsters, Godzilla's Revenge aka All Monsters Attack
Otaku Alert: Akira Kubo, who plays parachuting freelance journalist Goro, has a long and distinguished career that includes appearances in such films as Chushingura, Kill!, and, um, School of Sex.

I've been sick. Never fails. Semester ends, I stress out for finals and get sick. The only saving grace of being sick is renting bad movies from the local video place, and this I did with glee. Lo and behold, they had a few Godzilla movies I hadn't seen lately so I plunked down the $4.32 for Son of Godzilla, the 1967 entry in the series and the episode in which Godzilla jumps the shark.

Godzilla movies were my favorite when I was a kid. I especially liked his signature moves. In each film, Godzilla does some cute little move that humanizes him. In Hedorah he wipes his snout like a cat, and in Invasion of Astro-Monster he does that hilarious low-gravity jig. The move I've been looking for is like clapping, or flapping arms. After besting a foe, Godzilla flaps his arms like he's excited. Actually, I could be mis-remembering this move with another kaiju thing, like Ultra-Man. I've been through all of the Showa series save Megalon, and that one's hard to find. So anyway, I pop in ol' Son of Godzilla, grab the tissues and Tylenol, and am roundly and summarily disappointed.

Some scientists have set up a lab on a South Seas tropical island to conduct experiments on freezing the local atmosphere. Something about wanting to find new ways to farm frozen landscapes. In that case, doesn't it make more sense to just go farm in Siberia rather than freeze a tropical island and then farm it? The experiment goes wrong and the island is irradiated and super-heated, causing the already horse-sized praying mantis monsters on the island to become super giant size, which are named Kamakuras by a gonzo freelance journalist who parachutes into the island for a scoop. I was waiting for some kind of eco-disaster subplot to emerge but no, giant insects are just par for the course. Turns out there's already a massive spider named Kumonga hanging around. Pretty soon, Godzilla shows up, his son hatches from an egg, and…

OK, there are two things lame about Son of Godzilla. First, the giant insects—although admittedly pretty cool looking—are basically marionettes, not guys in suits. This drops their Godzilla battle potential to almost nil. If Godzilla tried to wrestle one he'd get tangled up in the (visible) wires. So he stands there while they fly by or spray him with silly string. The other lame thing is Minira. I mean, he looks like a tadpole, brays like a donkey, and single-handedly infantilizes the series. Take a look at 1969's Godzilla's Revenge aka All Monsters Attack for more of the same. Actually there are three lame things, the third being when hot, semi-naked island girl Saeko discovers pants.

A lot of the film is devoted to the "touching" relationship between father (mother?) and son, but it's kinda weird. I guess it's supposed to be funny, but Godzilla is really just a dead-beat dad. He accidentally knocks baby over with his tail before the kid can even walk right. During the part where he teaches his kid to breathe fire, Godzilla repeatedly brandishes his fist in a cowering Minira's face, threatening him with physical violence if he doesn't perform to his father's expectations. When Minira comes up short, Godzilla stamps on his tail. Finally, Godzilla spends a lot of the movie napping, no doubt sleeping off some kind of monster drunk, leaving the kid to wander around an island known to be populated with giant insects and spiders. It's all well and good when Godzilla wakes up long enough to save his kid, but if he had just been paying attention in the first place…

Even as a kid I never liked Minira all that much. There's something weird about his face. Oh, speaking of, what's up with Godzilla's face in this movie? He looks like an idiot. No wonder Gamera got so popular. At least he never spawned.

Lastly, shouldn't the son of Godzilla be named Jesuszilla? Just a thought.

Sukebandeka The Movie 2: Counter-Attack of the Kazama Sisters

Japanese Title: Sukeban Deka: Kazama san-shimai no gyakushu
Director: Hideo Tanaka
Actors: Yui Asaka, Yuka Onishi, Yuma Nakamura
Year Released: 1988
Genre: Action
See Also: Sukebandeka The Movie, Battle Royale
Otaku Alert: Hiroyuki Nagato, who plays Dark Director Kurayami, starred as Kinta in Imamura Shohei's great Pigs and Battleships.

I've recently discovered that I love the Japanese '80s, and for completely different reasons than I love my own '80s, which is based largely on nostalgia. From where I'm standing, on the outside looking in, the '80s in Japan were the last days of innocence before the bubble burst and teenage girls began selling themselves to salarymen for cell phones. Before the loss of childhood and Love & Pop, before all of today's weird, alienated murders and shut-ins, there was the '80s, a squeaky-clean time of flared hair and good intentions, earnestness and bubbliness.

The difference in idol presentation is telling. The video diary that accompanies the DVD for Sukebandeka The Movie 2: Counter-Attack of the Kazama Sisters follows star Yui Asaka as she does her best on set, does her best in press conferences, and does her best in concert. The clothes are priceless but so is her attitude, all fresh-faced smiles and "gee whiz" pluck. I don't for a minute believe that the idol industry in the '80s was any less corrupt and soul-crushing than it is today, but what is different is that then people wanted to believe that it was somehow innocent. The projected image becomes reality, or at least the desired reality.

What better way to highlight that innocence than in contrast to fascist youth thugs? Yui (the character's name is the same as its star), the third Sukeban Deka, or girl gang cop, has been recruited into a leather-headband-wearing government group of teens who dispense justice with spiked yo-yos and Aqua-Net'd bangs, shutting down discos like pre-college exam Nazis. Yui leaves the group, but is called back into action by her two sisters, Yuka and Yuma (the actresses who play them also having identical first names) when the Sukeban Deka program director is kidnapped and a floppy disc containing the youth group's nefarious plans is obtained.

Unlike the first Sukebandeka movie, which often played like a toned-down '70s exploitation film, number 2 is light all the way. With its "kids in trouble" side story and cheap lighting, it looks more like an American TV show like The A-Team than a Toei movie. But hey, that was the '80s for you. The Japanese film industry was in dire straights—not every film can be a Tanpopo. That being said, Counter-Attack does have its moments. The series' trend of making school-girl accessories into weapons continues with knitting needles and a boomerang metal origami crane. And Yui Asaka, it has to be said, is pretty damn cute.

Kenta Fukasaku recently added to the series with his Yo-yo Girl Cop, a terrible movie whose only saving grace is an overacting Riki Takeuchi.