FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP CRYING! Pulgasari

Part of the fun of My Year of Monsters is tracking down really obscure kaiju films. And they really don't come much more obscure than North Korea's single entry in the genre, Pulgasari. This movie is more famous than it is watched, mostly because of the behind the scenes shenanigans. Which, admittedly put most other films to shame.



Kim Jong-il, future Dear Leader of North Korea, was known as a film buff. He loved Elvis, Rambo, Friday the Thirteenth, and Godzilla. But North Korea's film industry, despite adhering faithfully to his 1987 The cinema and directing, was unsatisfactory. It did not reach the international political acclaim that Kim Jong-il wished it to, so he had South Korean director Shin Sang-ok kidnapped in 1978. Shin Sang-ok made serveral films while in North Korea, the most famous being Pulgasari. In order to make sure that the spectacle looked good, the miniatures team, including Kenpachiro Satsuma, the suit man in The Return of Godzilla. Got that?

When the theme begins to play, obviously flutes on a synthesizer, the viewer understands that they are in for the most 80's experience that was ever put to film. The plot is just about bog-standard, until the kaiju comes along. The countryside is being repressed by an evil monarch and his evil governors. The poor but virtuous Inde and Ami love each other, but he is determined to fight the corrupt government.



All schools of acting have their tropes. They only become a problem when they are repetitive or do not communicate the intended emotion to the audience. I'm not Korean, so I am not the intended audience. but for the love of God, all the women do is cry. Less that seven minutes into the film, Ami is crying because Inde wants to go join the rebels. And she never seems to stop. She's crying about the arrival of the Governor's men less than a minute later. Someone else is crying because the government men are taking all the metal farming impliments in minute ten. A minute later, she's crying over her mother who has been kicked by the soldier. AND THE WEEPING NEVER STOPS. Women cry as they deliver their terrible news, which is the only way anyone finds out what is happening in other locations. Anytine anyone is hurt, there's a woman there to weep over it. I get that it's supposed to be a note to indicate the emotional tenor of the scene, but it's so overused. We cannot constantly feel sorry for the weeping everyone in the film, because we get no rest from it.



Pulgasari himself is interesting. He starts off as a tiny doll made of mud, rice, and tears (of course) as a starving blacksmith makes a little protector for the people. The doll only comes to life when his daughter pricks her finger and bleeds on it.



Initially, Pulgasari looks like a metallic bear. The snout, the vestigial horns that look like a bears high-perched ears. And it snarls like a bear. Only minutes after its animation, Pulgasari begins to consume metal, primarily iron and steel. Once it reaches full size, the horns give the head a more bullish appearance. I wonder if this is intentional, satirizing the American stock market, with its bulls and bears.



As this is happens in Goryeo dynasty, the military has no tanks to throw at gigantic Pulgasari. They do come up with some interesting alternatives, though. Realizing that Pulgasari obeys the commands of Ami, they capture her, order Pulgasari into a giant wooden cage. And then they burn the cage.





This results in a burning hot Pulgasari, or at least a Pulgasari with a strong red light on it. Pulgasari routs the army, then stumbles into a river and steams the heat off. Pulgasari is weakened, but not defeated.



With Pulgasari at their head, the rebels decide to march on the capital. The government forces dig a giant pit similar to the one from King Kong vs Godzilla, while simultaneously exorcising him. This immobilizes him under tons of rock. The army then stomps on the rebels (cue Ami weeping as she learns about Inde's capture, and that he is hanged. Her little brother weeps on her wondering what they are to do. OH MY GOD THE WEEPING!). Ami decides to shed some more of her blood where Pulgasari is buried, and cue Pulgasari exploding from the ground.



The general tells the King of his defeat, and we get a magnificent view of their hats. Look at those hats!



But the king has another plan up his sleeve. Giant cannon.



Pulgasari swallows the cannonballs and spews them back at the cannons. And then he goes to town on the palace in the first real spot of city-destroying in the film. The palace model is excellent, and Satsuma looks like he's having a great time trashing it.



Unfortunately, overthrowing the king doesn't sate Pulgasari's hunger. The victors now must find more and more iron to feed him. Although they are grateful to the creature that made their victory possible, even Ami quickly turns against it, now that it's not producing anything for her. Ami smuggles herself into a temple gong and allows herself to be consumed. Like the The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Pulgasari dies like an opera tenor.



Pulgasari has a lot more in common with the Daimajin trilogy than they do with Godzilla. The beast is beholden to humanty and has a sense of justice, where Godzilla is an indiscriminate force of nature. In the end, Pulgasari crumbles like the Daimajin statue, rather than retreating to the sea, or going underground. The last shot of the film is Ami's corpse, and the single single tear that streaks down her cheek. Even in death, SHE CAN'T STOP FUCKING CRYING.



I often like films that have a deeper social message. The original Godzilla's anti-nuclear testing message makes the film a richer expereince. Here, the subtext is confused, at best. However, observing the irony in which Kim Jong-il creates a story about peasants rebelling against their authoritarian government is about as eye-rollingly ironic as Disney making films supporting piracy.

Overall, Pulgasari's monster effects overshadow the stilted acting and the corny script. It's not a great kaiju film, but it has some fairly interesting moments.

In two weeks, it's Godzilla vs Bioengineering.

The Big Guy's Back: The Return of Godzilla

Although it's only been several posts since I wrote about Godzilla, the franchise had been asleep since 1975's Terror of Mechagodzilla. There had been a Hannah-Barbara cartoon, which I'm just not interested in watching. Also, in 1977, Luigi Cozzi recut the American cut of Godzilla, King of the Monsters, adding footage from Godzilla Raids Again, The Day the Earth Caught Fire, and most disturbing, newsreel footage of the devastation from World War II. It's also colored with gels, giving the film a sort of meltingly psychadelic look. This version has finally found its way onto youtube. It's worth a look, if you're into strange seventies cinema.



But Toho wasn't making new Godzilla films. This wasn't an offcial hiatus, just that no proposal seemed able to get off the ground. The interruption does make a difference in flavor of the Godzilla films, and divides the franchise into three rather neat eras. Films had gotten more grim, and from a 2014 perspective, more realistic. John Carpenter's 1982 masterpiece The Thing is extraordinarily different from the 1951 Howard Hawks film it remade. But after eight years, Godzilla came back to the screen with the Return of Godzilla.

If you live in a kaju-infested universe and want to meet a kaiju, become a fisherman. Because of the Daigo Fukuryū Maru incdent, which influenced the original Godzilla. And The Return of Godzilla wants very much to be seen as similar to, comparable to, the first film. All continuity after the first film was discarded. Godzilla had come to Japan in 1954, and had never been seen again. So it establishes itself the same way the original does, with luckless fishmermen.



The abandoned ship is investigated by a pleasure-yachter, who discovers that the ship is infested with giant sea-lice, called Shokilas. The idea of the giant parasite is carried forward both Cloverfield and Pacific Rim. One fishermantrmains alive, and is able handed pictures of the original Godzilla which he identifies as the monster he saw before the mutated sea louse killed everyone.



As in the most recent Godzilla, a Soviet submarine is involved. Godzilla consumes radioactive material, it seems, and the nuclear-powered submarine is a necessary snack. However, the Soviet Union believes the desruction of the sub is an act of American aggression, which the Americans deny. The tensions escalate quickly. It's a frightening piece of theater that the revelation that Godzilla may have returned is an act intended to defuse tensions between the Nuclear Superpowers.



For the first time, Japan establishes a Godzilla Emergency Counter-Measure Headquarters. In many subsequent films, a military, and even a civilian response team will form a sort of support network for protagonists.

Further demonstrating that Godzilla is consuming nuclear fuel for energy, the Big Guy shows up at the Ihama nuclear power plant in Shizuoka prefecture. He doesn't eat the power, rather holding it to himself and letting to charge him. His back fins light up so the viewer can tell it's working. But as he is finshing a flock of birds flies past, and Godzilla follows them. This becomes the science answer, Godzilla can be led with bird calls.



Although conventional weapons are useless against Godzilla, Japane's native invension, the Super X, has been developed in secret. This is a combination of using fantasy science to confront the monster, along with a growing feeling in the series that the military isn't quite to useless after all. Super X has weapons specifically designed cadmium ordinance to counter Godzilla.



In an interesting twist, especially for someone who has soaked in Hollywood films in whch politicians are portrayed as corrupt or weak, Prime Minister Mitamura is sympathetic. Although he stomps on our truth-seeking reporter's story concerning Godzilla, he reveals the story to reduce tensions between the US and the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union and the United States both declare that they have to use nuclear weapons to destroy Godzilla, he very calmly refuses, citing Japan's "Three principles": non production, non-posession, non-introduction of nuclear weapons into Japan. In the face of some very ardent arguments, Mitamura remains adamant, and both the camera and script praise him for doing so. This is the heart of The Return of Godzilla, the protest against nuclear weapons and the mounting fear that was the Cold War.



Like a moth to a flame, Godzilla is drawn to Tokyo. The military sends everything they have against him, but with a single sweep of his atomic heat rat, Godzilla destroys the Defense Forces. Godzilla is larger than he was previously, eighty meters tall, and he's lost his heroic side. Godzilla is in Tokyo to destroy, and spends a lot of time doing so.



Although this takes place outside of the post 1954 Showa continuity, there are small nods to it. As Tokyo awaits the arrival of the Super X, laser, or perhaps maser tanks engage Godzilla. These look like updates of the tanks which first appeared in Mothra and War of the Gargantuas. These are weak, however. They don't even irritate Godzilla.



Of course, saying no to nuclear weapons isn't as easy as just sayng no. The Soviets have a back-up nuke ready, and Godzilla's destructive wake causes a launch. Oops. The Americans agree intercept the missile, which makes his a high-altitude airburst rather than a ground burst. Still, this causes lightning which is attracted to Godzilla, and wakes him up again, in a callback to Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla. This energizes Godzilla enough to recover from the cadmium shells.



The Super X is in essence a flying tank. It's heavily armored, hovers and flies by use of directional jets. It's blocky and unaerodynamic. But it is as effective a response as Japan will get before building Mechagodzilla. Three cadmium shells fires into Godzilla's mouth knock the Big Guy down. Of course, this effective defense, like high-voltage wires, is never used again. Godzilla then drops a building on trhe Super X.



Fortunately, science is there to take up the military's slack. Godzilla is lured to Mt. Mihara, an active volcano. There, the cliffside he's shanding on is detonated, and Godzilla plunges into the laval below. And although he's trashed Tokyo and a nuclear power plant, the music is sad, and Prime Minster Mitamura looks sad as he watches Godzilla falling into the crater.



While the Godzilla work on The Return of Godzilla is good, the majority of the human drama is weak. The characters are pretty thin, and they are there mostly to witness the plot, rather than contribute to it. They do little to interact with Godzilla. The most powerful scenes involve the confrontation between the American and Soviet Special Emissaries, with the Prime Minister caught in between. But these scenes are sadly brief. But the film was enough to restart and energize the franchise, bringing Godzilla into a modern idiom.

Next up, the Godzilla team goes to North Korea to make a film according to Kim Jong-il's cnematic principles. Yes really.

A God In the Heart of the Big Apple: Q the Winged Serpent

The year is 1982. Godzilla has been hibernating for seven years, since Terror of Mechagodzilla. Kong's 1976 outing, although commercially successful, was a critical flop. So the giant monster film remained on television, through Ultraman and its imitators, but did not make many stops at the big screen.



Larry Cohen's Q the Winged Serpent isn't strictly a kaiju film. No buildings are destroyed in this film. It's more of a regular-sized monster film, although I include it because it demonstrates a number of changes in movie-making in the eighties that would later affect kaiju films. But it has just about everything you could want from an eighties horror film: A decapitated window-washer



A flayed man:



How he got that way:



Female nudity:



More than most monster films, Q is about place, in this case New York City. Director Larry Cohen opens with an establishing shot of New York, and constantly has the actors in the middle of New York city life. As such it is a snapshot of the city in the eighties, the fashions, the filth, the cars.



The human aspect of the story is different from the standard Godzilla triad of scientist, reporter, and love interest. Michael Moriarity plays Jimmy, a two-time loser who ends up on the wrong side of some jewel thieves. David Carradine and Richard Roundtree play a pair of NYC cops assigned to find out who's killing New Yorkers. The two intersect when Jimmy discovers the nest of the creature, and tries to parlay this into a million dollars and his way out of his small-time crime life. The movie goes out of its way to show that Jimmy is a jerk. He yells at his on again/off again girlfriend, she talks about how he hits her, he's been to jail, and he's been on drugs. We hate him. But he's the character we spend the most time with.



Quetzlcoatl has a nest in the crown of the Chrysler Building. A moderate amount of the film takes place there. And there are several shots of the exterior, which show how neglected it was at the time.



Quetzlcoatl is of course, an Aztec god, and it is being summoned by human sacrifice in the city. Quetzlcoatl was a feathered serpent, and this is some sort of naked six-limbed dragon without the firey breath, and apparently female, since it's layng eggs, where the Aztec god was male.



Q the Winged Serpent is a good transitional kaiju film. It encompasses a lot of eighties trends in film making, with the increased gore, nudity, the heavy use of guns, frequent use of fuck, and a monster more sympathetic than the human protagonists.



In the end, the cops gather at the top of the Chrysler Building and when Q comes back to roost, they riddle it with bullets. It flies to the Bankers Trust Company Building, which has a pyramid-style roof. Weakened, it roars at the sky, and, like King Kong, falls.





Although that's the end of the monster, that's not the end of the film. The Aztec priest who performed sacrifice to return Quetzlcoatl finds Jimmy, intending to sacrifice him. But he waits too long, and the cops shoot him in the head (the priest, not Jimmy).



But the film still isn't done! There's a second egg, and as we pan across, it begins to hatch! 1998 Godzilla used this, too.



Q the Winged Serpent's influence can be seen in a number of films, most specifically, the the 1998 Godzilla. The whole 'the monster is unexpectedly female and laying eggs, the setting in New York (although Q does this much more convincingly than Godzilla), the landmark Chrysler Building, and the complete inabilty of anyone to find a giant monster somewhere in New York. This last item was a touch more plausible in Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, partially because the rhedasaurus was land-based but also because there were a lot fewer phones in 1952. And, as with many American kaiju films, firepower provides the humans with their plot solution. Not cleverness, not science, firepower.

Cohen did an excellent job with the recurring bird and temple motif that crops up in the film. He used New York well, the film feels like it takes place in the real New York, partally because he did a lot of filming on the fly, setting up on street corners and shooting. The integration of the giant monster into the human action is fair. The animators, William Randall Cook, who went on to win Oscars for the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and David Allen Cook, perhaps most notable for his King Kong Volkswagen commercial. Their work here is less detailed and engaging than that of Willis O'Brien or Ray Harryhausen. But it's not terrible.

Next week, the Big Guy returns.

That Other Island God: Atragon (But the Monster is Manda)

Toho wasn't just making monster movies in the sixties. They created a series of war films that were quite popular, such as developing several different types of film in the sixties. In 1961, the released Storm Over the Pacific, about the Battle of Midway, as well as The Last War, concerning the outbreak of World War Three. Both were popular. Perennial Godzilla scribe Shin'ichi Sekizawa decided to adapt another novel (as he had with Mothra), this one a fantasy about an undersea kingdom, inspired by the work of HG Wells.



This isn't really a monster movie. The majority is a mystery, in which agents of Mu move among the Japanese people, abducting them. This is a strange foreshadowing of the North Korean abductions of Japanese citizens, which wouldn't happen for a decade, but the Modus Operandi is eerily similar. The film's chief items of interest are Manda, the dragon-god of Mu, which shows up in Destroy All Monsters as well as Godzilla: Final Wars. But this isn't really about Manda, he shows up late and doesn't do much. The focus of the film, is the flying submarine Goten, which received an anime follow up, Super Atragon, and also shows up in Finals Wars. The ship's name was changed to Atragon for the foreign market.

The first half ot the film is abductions and implications, spies, deception, and delving into the past. It's interesting as drama, but has absolutely nothing to do with Manda. The famous ship doesn't even show up until forth-six minutes into the film. The model is pretty well integrated into the live-action with the actors. The film also gets some very well-shot beauty passes. These are a bit more interesting than the usual giant robot deployment scenes.



The overall plot is that Captain Jinguji has been hiding out on an island since the end of World War II, building Atragon so that he can continue the fight against Japan's enemies. The people of Mu have just declared that they will be takng over the surface world, and Atragon seems to be the only thing that can stop them. Atragon is an interesting supersubmarine, with a front drill to supplant the spur on Welles' Nautulus. More than that, though, it can fly. And it has an absolute zero gun, a weapon that freezes its opponents. This shows up on the third iteration of Mechagodzilla in 2002's Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla.

Once Atragion has been shown to the audience, the protagonists are kidnapped and taken to Mu. There, they will be sacrificed to Manda, the god and guardian of the Muvians. The Muvians have submarines with images of Manda on them, and these are the super-weapons that destroy ships. Ironically, Manda has no such breath weapon. Manda is clearly a mationette, surprisingly like Reptilicus, which came out two years previous, in 1961.



If there was any doubt that Atragon was inspired by 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas, it's dispelled when Manda wraps itself around the submarine. Like Nemo, Captain Jinguji electrifies the hull, throwing the dragon off the ship.



The solution to Manda is as simple as using the referred-to but never seen Absolute Zero Gun. Manda freezes, and Atragon can go about the business of destroying the Muvian culture.





As monster movies go, Atragon is unsatisfying. I wouldn't have bothered, but Manda shows up in a couple of films later, and Atragon herself is central of Godzilla: Final Wars. The movie is one of the more popular non-Godzilla films Toho put out. The origin of the Absolute Zero gun was a happy discovery.

Next week, the flashback is over. It's back to New York, in a 1982 American production.

You've Been Lying To Us: Godzilla 2014 (FULL OF SPOILERS)

Short version: Godzilla 2014 is eminently worth seeing. It's a fitting tribute that respects the Godzilla franchise, and at the same time, is not bogged down by the weight of the franchise's sixty-year history.



Long version: Godzilla 2014 has a light sprinkling of nods and tributes to previous films, both inside and outside of the franchise. It is very much informed by the late Showa films such as Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla, or Invasion ogf Astro-Monster, in which Godzilla is more the hero than the antagonist. Gareth Edwards has made an entertaining film, which may not have the strongest protagonists, but I found their story worth watching. The MUTOs are very different from anything Godzilla has previously faced. It'll be interesting to see what the Big G goes up against next.



Dr. Serizawa, a character named for the 1954 original, is played by Ken Watanabe. He's one of the most fascinating characters in the film. In the original, he invents the oxygen destroyer, which ultimately kills Godzilla. However, there is a lot more of Dr. Kyohei Yamane in the 2014 iteration of Serizawa. Dr. Yamane wanted to study the creature, but is eventually forced to concede that saving Tokyo is a greater priority. In Godzilla 2014, Dr. Serizawa has been studying the monster for a very long time. And according to the comic prequel, so has his father. It gives me a little warm feeling to note that in some way, someone has finally gotten time to study Godzilla.



There is a nice nod to 2002's Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah. Godzilla's finishing move on the male MUTO is to smash it with its tail, in a very similar fashion to Godzilla smashing Mothra.

For some of Godzilla's history, Godzilla's dorsal plates have glowed when he breathes his terrifying atomic fire. Only in the Milennium series did the directors begin to play with that. In Godzilla 2000, the sizzling of the dorsal pllates indicates when Godzilla is about to use his breath, to the detriment of the creature that has stuck Godzilla's head in its mouth. In Godzilla vs MechaGodzilla and Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S., Godzilla's fins sputter with light and make a thumping noise when he's about to blast something. This is an innovative way to increases the dramatic tension. In Godzilla 2014, after a long battle without using th atomic breath, there's a shot of Godzilla's tail, and a very subtle glow climbs up the spines from the tail, then rushed up to the head just before Godzilla disgorges hot atomic death. It was one of the most fantastic and satisfying nods to a fandom I have ever experienced.





For those who have been following my blog, the 'military is useless" meme is something that's very prevalent in the Showa Godzilla films. This wavers a bit in the Heisei series, when humans build Mechagodzilla, and actually come very close to killing Godzilla. But tanks, rockets, jets, and helicopters all serve little purpose other than to make pretty explosions as they demonstrate how tough the monster is. And this is right. In Godzilla 1998, Godzilla was a military problem. With no giant monster to fight, the conflict was between Godzilla and the military. If the solution to the giant monster problem is enough ordinance, or the special ordinance, then the solution to the plot is waiting for that ordinance to be delivered. And that's dull. It's much of what made Godzilla 1998 so improbable. In order to keep the military from destroying Godzilla in the first reel, the 50 meter tall lizard somehow avoided detection. Whoops! We sort of lost this 18-story building. Small wonder the film had credibility problems.

Godzilla is the hero of the film, and the plot manages this without making it silly. The relationship is perhaps a little too cozy, the aircraft carrier group traveling a bit close to Godzilla in the approach to San Francisco.

Kim Newman is correct in that the inspiration for the plot could have come from the unexpectedly magnificent 1995 Gamera, Guardian of the Universe. Godzilla is an apex predator from the past, come to destroy the giant monsters, not because he's an ancient guardian, but because he's hungry, and MUTOs are what he hunts.

That said, the teasers and trailers have been deceptive, and I find that interesting. For example, the initial Comic-Con teaser shows the body of a creature that is not in the film.



This awesome speech? Not in the film.



And a lot was made of Bryan Cranston, who doesn't make it into the second third of the film. Still, I enjoyed the film, will be happy to buy it and watch it in the years to come. As I write this, a sequel has been confirmed, so here's to a long, healthy franchise to the King of the Monsters.