Tag: Rodan

Bad, Bad Bird Movies

Most of us have had our worlds turned upside down in the past months. No, no, the birds had nothing to do with it; just some crummy virus – and not the bird flu either.

Sadly, birds have given many of us stomach aches at some of the truly bad movies in which they have appeared.

There are bad movies that are actually fun to watch because they are so awful they make you laugh. The best of those awful bird movies are Rodan, The Giant Claw, and Q which stood for the Aztec deity Quetzalcoatl. I hope the Aztecs weren’t bored with their god as I was bored by that god’s movie.

In 1954, Japan’s Toho Studios came out with Godzilla, a radioactive monster brought back to life by the atomic bomb to destroy everything in his path. That movie stunk, although the monster was a great idea, a borrowing from a fun 1953 American film The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.

Following up on Godzilla came Toho’s attempt to create a bird/reptile in the film Rodan. This movie was even worse than Godzilla, although Rodan was a great idea for a monster. Rodan actually looks great in the enjoyable American movie Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019).

The first problem we have with Japanese movies dubbed into English is the fact that the actors’ lips are not saying anything close to looking as if they are speaking English. In movies that are based on Romance languages (Latin-derived), the lips and the English words are often close approximations. Not so with Japanese movies.

In the Toho’s movies the actor’s lips will move and then a sentence or two comes out in English. There seems to be little correlation between lips moving and sound coming out of them.

Here’s how it goes: Actor points up to the sky and his lips move. Then we hear, after those lips have basically finished moving, “Look, it’s Rodan! Help! Help!”

The story of Rodan could have been a 10-minute short subject but Toho needed to make it an hour and a half. That means they had to stretch this thing out of all proportion. And that’s what you will watch; a movie that looks like a bad face-lift. Make some popcorn and enjoy.

Actors will take embarrassing roles in terrible movies in order to get paid because The Giant Claw is so awful – even “awfuller” than Rodan – that you feel sad for these professional actors in a movie where the special effects are so bad that my six-year old grandson said to me, “Grandpa Scobe, can we watch the news?”

Finally, we come to Q, a totally overacted movie by accomplished actors who should have known better than to lend their talents to this horrible project. Not only is the monster ridiculous in terms of special effects but the actors are all doing their Marlon Brando impersonations. At certain points in the movie you will shout out to an actor, “Please shut up! You’re not a contender!”

Visit Frank’s web site at www.frankscoblete.com. Frank’s books are available at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, kindle, e-books and at bookstores.  

Awesome Monsters in Awful Movies

 

I make no bones about it; I love monster movies. Yes, indeed, I do.

Still many monster movies that are awful have terrific monsters in them. These monsters have become somewhat legendary even though the movie or movies in which they appear are terrible. Here are a few awesome monsters in awful movies:

The Blob: This 1958 movie is the pits. It has a bunch of annoying 1950s teenagers that you want to see killed immediately. Yes, it does star a young Steve McQueen but other than that, the only thing it has going for it is the Blob. And what a great creature the Blob is!

Coming down in a cheesy meteor, the Blob was a small, gelatinous mass (akin to red jello) that attached itself to some dull, old, drunken guy who lived in a old, ramshackle house deep in the old woods. The Blob attaches itself to the old guy’s arm and starts eating him slowly. When he dies, it is no loss.

When the Blob has finished devouring the old guy and it has grown proportionally, it eats a doctor and then begins to eat dogs and other townspeople. Finally, the monstrous Blob gets into a movie theater and all hell breaks loose. How can they kill the beast? Don’t worry the annoying teenagers have figured out a way!

Yeah, they freeze the damn thing and the movie ends with the question of whether the Blob will return. (It does…in more awful movies.)

But this monster is a great idea. If it keeps eating it can devour almost all living things on the entire earth. Wow! A wonderful concept; the entire earth consumed by a look-alike to the dessert you get in a hospital. The movie is awful but the Blob is awesome.

The Creature from the Black Lagoon: A 1954 movie about a creature from—where else?—the Black Lagoon. It was originally presented in 3D and I saw it way back when, but the only thing I can remember from that viewing was some hand stuck in a rock of a mountain range of some type. I have seen it several times now in 2D as an adult. The movie rots in either format.

Even as a kid, I had to stifle the yawns until the creature actually appeared. It was the gill man, partly a water creature but with a human physique.

The creature fell in love with one of those pretty 1950s women who enjoyed swimming in a dark, murky lagoon somewhere in the Amazon jungle. Okay, so women back then were portrayed as idiots but I really didn’t care. They were pretty and that was enough for me. It was also enough for the creature who took to her immediately. In the Black Lagoon there was a dearth pretty gill girls.

Needless to say, he tries to kidnap her and make her his bride (or whatever such horny creatures made women in the Amazon) but he is stopped and then brought to civilization and, like King Kong, things did not go well for him.

This is one great monster and he appears in two more films, each worse than the one before. The creature is 0 for 3 in movies but he is a memorable guy.

Christopher Lee as Dracula in a host of movies: Christopher Lee played Dracula in a host of movies beginning with the quite good Horror of Dracula (1958), a Hammer films production. Then he made sequel after sequel, each one suckier than the one before it.

Lee was a magnificent Dracula; tall, sexy, masculine, who commanded every scene in which he appeared, even in movies that should have been eaten by the Blob.

I will still occasionally watch the Horror of Dracula, a movie that pits Lee’s consummate Dracula against Peter Cushing’s intense Dr. Van Helsing. These two were great in one movie that was worth watching until Hammer’s Dracula vehicle went steadily and speedily downhill. But Lee was awesome and I think of him as the best Dracula of all time.

Godzilla: A 1954 film that mimicked the terrific American movie The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953). Admittedly, the movie has a great monster that is 300 to 400 feet tall; a fierce creature that can spew fire, but the movie itself goes up in smoke. The American producers dumped Raymond Burr into the film as a narrating American journalist for American audiences and based on his performance, Burr deserved what the teenagers in The Blob deserved. Until recent Godzilla movies, the entire series of Japanese films starring Godzilla as well as movies featuring other truly awesome monsters (Rodan among them) unfortunately need to be dumped into the radioactive part of the ocean from whence Godzilla obviously came. The awesome monsters cannot overcome a terrible screenplay, bad directing and lousy acting.

May modern filmmakers hear my prayer and give awesome monsters the films they deserve!

Frank’s web site is www.frankscoblete.com. His books are available from smile.Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, kindle, e-books and at bookstores.

 

 

 

The Incredible Fading Man

 

This Sunday my wife the Beautiful AP and I went on a bird walk at Hempstead Plains, a venue near Hofstra University and Nassau Community College on Long Island.

I didn’t like the place. You had to walk through small thickets, in and out of powerful vines that would catch your ankles and not let go, and the occasional really thorny thorny plants. The grass was wet; the walking was dirty. I was miserable.

We saw a bird here or there but I had to keep my head down to see where I was going so I wouldn’t fall on my face. Thus, I didn’t look up too much.

The place has a combination of rare local plants—something called Gerardi something or other which seems to be impossible to transplant elsewhere and is therefore on the endangered list and an invasive species called “those yellow flowers” which they have tried to kill by cutting, mowing and burning but the damn plant is taking over the Hempstead Plains.

The volunteer at the place told us to look out for ticks. How the hell do you do that, short of bringing a microscope and constantly checking the ground, the plants, your body and maybe everyone else’s body that might be swarming with these vile creatures?

Thankfully, when the walk was finished I stood by the administration building (a bunch of recycled shipping containers made to look like a building) and I stated emphatically out to the world at large that “I will never come here again” (unless, of course, my wife says I have to).

There were four people standing near me. What I took for a mother (or teacher or both) and three kids, two girls and a boy, maybe ages 15 to 20. They were about to go on their walk. I thought I’d have some fun with them. I mean what the heck! I’m a funny guy and maybe I could get a laugh out of them. One of our South Shore Audubon Society members, Bill, was near us as well.

I said to them as a group, “I saw the most amazing bird today.” I paused to make sure that they were hanging on my words and then I hit them with the punchline, “Rodan!” Bada-bing, folks! “Rodan!”

All four of them looked quizzically at me.

“What is that?” asked one of the girls.

“Rodan,” I nodded. “Rodan. You know, Rodan.”

“Never heard of that bird,” said the mother.

The boy shook his head. “What kind of bird is that?”

“Come on, man, Rodan,” I said.

“Never heard of it,” said the other girl. “What’s its Latin name?”

“You folks don’t know Rodan?”

They shook their heads.

“Rodan destroyed Tokyo,” I said. They just looked at me.

“When did that happen?” asked the first girl.

“I wasn’t aware that Tokyo was ever destroyed,” said the mother.

Bill stepped in to save me. “He’s talking about a science fiction film from Japan in the 1950s. Rodan was a giant bird.”

The four of them looked at me. I think they were wondering if this crazy man really thought he had seen this giant bird during his walk through Hempstead Plains.

I smiled wanly and turned my attention to something else—actually I pretended to turn my attention to something else. I was actually wondering if I am that far behind culturally? I thought every kid knew the great Japanese monsters that destroyed Tokyo. How could these four be so ignorant?

It wasn’t them. It was me. My reference points are my own life’s events and memories. I actually don’t know most of the current modern singers or songs or movie stars. I am out of sync with modern times.

Yes, more fool me, I’m fading: Rodan, for crying out loud, Rodan!

Frank’s latest books are Confessions of a Wayward Catholic!; I Am a Dice Controller and I Am a Card Counter. All of Frank’s books are available from Amazon.com, Kindle, Barnes and Noble, e-books and at bookstores.