BONUS BLOG -- 1974: GODZILLA VS. MECHAGODZILLA

What’s it about?

Hoo boy, let’s see. As near as I can make out, an archaeologist discovers a cave on Okinawa which contains ancient artifacts, including prophetic murals and a small statuette of a dog-like monster. While transporting the statuette back to mainland Japan, the prophecies begin to come true (purportedly signaling the arrival of a terrible monster) and mysterious agents try to steal the statuette.

Meanwhile, earthquakes with “moving epicenters” rumble across the country, and it’s really no surprise when Godzilla emerges from one of them. But wait! This Godzilla doesn’t move or look quite right, and soon a second Godzilla has appeared to fight it. The first one is soon revealed to be a giant robot that defeats the real Godzilla, and the only hope now is to use the statuette to awaken the traditional defender of Okinawa, King Caesar.




Is it any good?

I haven’t seen that many Godzilla movies, or even really that many Japanese giant monster movies of any type. Obviously I watched the original GOJIRA (1954), which I liked a lot. And I did check in with MOTHRA VS. GODZILLA (1964), but I saw it too late to write about it in the blog. That’s a shame, since that movie is also quite good. GODZILLA VS. MECHAGODZILLA, on the other hand, is slipshod and disappointing.

With all the Godzilla movies to choose from, why did I pick this particular one? I had wanted to watch MOTHRA (1961) and DESTROY ALL MONSTERS (1968) -- both of which are pretty highly regarded by fans -- but couldn’t find a convenient copy of either. So looking down the list of other possibilities, I was mostly confronted by match-ups with other monsters I knew nothing about: Ghidorah, Hedora, Gigan, Megalon, and so on. I remembered seeing a bit of GODZILLA VS. MECHAGODZILLA as a kid, and I’ve always liked the idea of characters confronting different versions of themselves. So that was about all there was to it.

One problem, of course, is that Godzilla is not really much of a character. He’s a force of nature -- a destructive event to be endured, like a hurricane or earthquake, until he passes away again. From the three movies I’ve seen so far, Godzilla has hardly any personality or even awareness at all, so a robot version of him is really just exactly the same thing (with different weapons).




In GOJIRA, the human characters have clear precedence over the monster. The conflict is about whether a scientist is willing to share knowledge of a new destructive weapon to stop the attacks. In MOTHRA VS. GODZILLA, the focus is largely on Mothra. And despite being a giant moth puppet, Mothra has considerably more personality than Godzilla -- partly because she can communicate through a pair of pixie twins who live in a box, but also because she actually has objectives and makes decisions.

In GODZILLA VS. MECHAGODZILLA, there isn’t really any worthwhile human conflict. The aliens who control Mechagodzilla are cartoonish villains who seem to be invading the Earth for no particular reason. At one point, one of the human characters is forced to help repair Mechagodzilla, which is intended to create some kind of moral crisis. But even that is executed stupidly and perfunctorily, like so much else in the movie.

In fact, the biggest problem of GODZILLA VS. MECHAGODZILLA is that the script-writers just don’t seem to have been trying very hard. The beginning of the movie is both incredibly complicated and incredibly linear. Besides the events I outlined in the synopsis, there’s also a young girl who has a vision of destruction and a reporter who discovers a radioactive metallic scale from Mechagodzilla. There’s so much going on that’s it hard to keep the characters and events straight, but it all just points towards the same thing: the arrival of Mechagodzilla, which the ancient Okinawans apparently predicted. Nothing is introduced that doesn’t relate directly to the main story, and its almost always immediately obvious how each piece fits into the big, dumb puzzle.




I will admit that King Caesar is a pretty neat monster. There’s a nice bit where a young girl must go and sing to him to awaken him -- it’s both eerie and suspenseful, since other monsters are fast approaching. His appearance is apparently based on a mythical animal called the shisa, which is a cross between a dog and a lion. There’s no doubt that he looks pretty goofy fighting, but while sleeping and waking up, he’s one of the cooler Japanese movie monsters I’ve seen.

Mechagodzilla, on the other hand, is always ridiculous. I’m not sure who exactly thought that Godzilla would be more awesome if he was made out of grey plastic and shot missiles out of his fingers and toes, but that’s more or less what Mechagodzilla is. He looks silly no matter what he’s doing -- flying, fighting, standing around. Another disappointment is that almost none of the monster scenes feature any miniature buildings or military units. To the extent that I find Godzilla’s rampages interesting at all, it’s almost all due to the nifty miniatures he destroys. So the fights in this movie are (as far as I’m concerned) pretty dull. There’s one scene early in the movie where Mechagodzilla does some rampaging through miniature city. But the scene is nothing special, and after that the monster action is restricted to guys in suits shooting colored beams at each other or grappling impotently.

I can’t talk about the Godzilla series in general, so I don’t know if this particular movie is a dud or if it’s indicative of the direction the series has followed in the decades since GOJIRA. I can imagine that the movies would have been pretty exciting for fans at the time, since they are essentially title-card fights between some well-known creatures. (Though I’m not sure exactly how many had an existence before taking on Godzilla or other monsters -- besides King Kong, Mothra, and Rodan.) The series seems similar to Universal’s “monster rally” movies where Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula, and the Wolf Man met each other again and again. No doubt a person better acquainted with the history of Japanese movie monsters would get a lot more enjoyment out of watching them fight and defeat each other. For the most part, I’m not even sure who to root for, so a lot of that is completely lost on me.

BONUS BLOG -- 1966: THE FACE OF ANOTHER

What’s it about?

After an industrial accident burns his face, a factory technician spends his days moping about with bandages covering his head. Convinced that his disfigurement makes him unfit for human contact, the man resigns himself to a life of seclusion with the wife he believes will never be anything but disgusted by him. But his psychiatrist suggests the use of an experimental mask that will perfectly mimic the look and feel of human skin.

Once the mask is in place, the man tests its effectiveness in a variety of interactions. He is soon convinced that not only is it convincing enough to pass for the real thing, but that his new face makes him unrecognizable to even his closest friends. But when he decides to use the mask to anonymously seduce his own wife, he starts to get in over his head.




Is it any good?

I have usually been the kind of guy who complains when movies and books simply brush on deeper themes instead of really trying to develop them. But as time goes by, I am starting to wonder why. THE FACE OF ANOTHER, for example, spends a great deal of time dissecting all the possible psychological and symbolic ramifications first of the condition of having no face, and then later of the use of a lifelike mask used to correct that condition. And yet through most of those conversations I found myself impatiently tapping my foot, waiting for the plot to resume.

The story is something of a continuation of EYES WITHOUT A FACE (1960), but with a couple very important differences. The first is that there is nothing obviously morally wrong about the facial replacement experiments in this movie -- the creation of the mask doesn’t require kidnapping, murder, or even any overt deceit. The second difference is that the experiments succeed and the patient ends up with a perfectly serviceable (though temporary) face. These are pretty important distinctions since it means that THE FACE OF ANOTHER isn’t about science ghoulishly trampling innocent victims for the sake of progress. Instead, it takes a subtler position that questions whether humans are really prepared to deal with all of the potential fallout from scientific advancements.




I don’t think that THE FACE OF ANOTHER is entirely convincing about the dangers of the specific technology it’s talking about. The doctor seems concerned that cheap, convincing masks would result in the total breakdown of society as everybody assumed anonymous and ever-changing identities. The most interesting part of this discussion is how closely it mirrors a lot of the hand-wringing about the anonymous culture of the Internet (some of which continues even today). But even if we take as a given that some people will always abuse the ability to change or mask their identity, I think the Internet itself has proven pretty conclusively that the majority of folks actually want to be recognized and to recognize others (most of the time anyway). So even though the ability to easily shed identity could plausibly lead to social anarchy, there seem to be fundamental human needs that make it unlikely on a wide scale.

But even though I’m not really convinced by the movie’s hypothesis, it is one of the few that I’ve watched so far that makes a specific comment about technology that is still relevant today -- even if it’s relevant in ways that the film makers probably never imagined. I do wish that they had stuck more with the story and spent less time spinning out complicated theories. Too much of the dialogue felt like a speculative essay, and the tendency of the main character to be overly melodramatic about everything didn’t help much either.




The movie also has a few surrealistic touches that I am not really sure what to make of. The neatest is probably the doctor’s office, which appears to have been furnished by somebody with a German expressionist sense of humor. It’s full of glass walls covered with arcane diagrams and furniture that’s cast from body parts. There’s another nifty bit at the end where the main character and doctor walk through a crowd of people who all have blanks for faces -- an attempt, I assume, to illustrate what it would be like if everyone were anonymous. It’s a cool image, but probably not as effective as it could be, considering that crowds are already pretty anonymous.

Finally, there’s also a parallel story about a pretty young woman with a bad burn on her face who lives a lonely life with her brother. It’s hard to tell whether her story is meant to be a contrast or a companion to the main action, but even though she leaves her scars unmodified she doesn’t end up with a happy ending either. In the end, I think I’d say that there is almost too much going on in THE FACE OF ANOTHER. Assuming that all of it has a meaning, it’s certainly too much to figure out in a single viewing. The relationship between the main character and his wife (both before and after the mask) is the best part of the movie, and the bits with the doctor are a close second. Distilled down to just those elements, I think this would have been a great flick. But with everything else in there, it’s a bit harder to enjoy as a story.

BONUS BLOG -- 1963: MATANGO

What’s it about?

Seven hard-partying jet-setters run into trouble when their yacht is disabled in a storm. After floating aimlessly for days, they wash up on a deserted island far south of Japan. While looking for food and water, they discover the rotting shell of a derelict ship on the beach. It’s covered in a weird mold and is missing all its mirrors, but they do find some food inside and after scrubbing down the decks the castaways decide to move in.

The supplies from the ship doesn’t last long and food is scarce on the island, forcing the castaways to spend most of their time foraging for wild potatoes and digging for clams and turtle eggs. Strangely, the island seems bereft of all non-aquatic animal life and even the birds won’t land there. Before long, the castaways start seeing strange things moving in the jungle, and then eventually on the ship itself. Ultimately they learn that the ship’s missing crew have not exactly left the island yet -- and that unless they find a way off the island they are likely to share their fate as well.




Is it any good?

MATANGO is a surprisingly slow movie -- it’s twenty minutes until the castaways even land on the island, and a good forty-five until anything seemingly out of the ordinary happens. Even once the science fiction elements start asserting themselves, MATANGO still doggedly sticks with the human side of the story -- leaving the monsters mostly (but thankfully not entirely) in the shadows. Though not exactly dull, the movie consequently feels pretty draggy in places. But, on the other hand, the restraint of the first eighty-five minutes makes it all the more trippy when it finally pulls out all the stops at the very end.

For the most part, the cast and the script are not really good enough to make the human focus as riveting as it otherwise might be. But the characters do make the situation at least somewhat interesting. They’re selfish and petty people, and most are perfectly will to steal food for themselves, extort a profit from the situation, or use violence to get what they want. Another interesting element is that the island does abound in one particular kind of food: mushrooms. But log books from the derelict ship seem to indicate that the mushrooms are toxic in a peculiar (but non-fatal) way, and as starving characters resort one-by-one to eating the mushrooms they are ostracized from the group as though they have become toxic themselves.




Like a lot of other sci-fi and horror movies about island castaways, MATANGO is not really interested in what it takes to survive on an uninhabited island. The island is simply an excuse to strand the characters alone someplace where weird things can happen in a way that may or may not double as commentary on contemporary society. Some of the weird things -- like the moldy abandoned ship -- are really pretty neat. The long sequence where the castaways explore the derelict and search it for useful items is probably the best part of the movie. (Except, perhaps, the wild and crazy final five minutes.) There are also two neat bookend segments at the very beginning and very end where one of the survivors recalls the story in a Tokyo that looks as weird as any alien city.

It’s also very easy to read the mushrooms as a societal metaphor. The obvious parallel would be something to do with drugs, but there are a couple of scenes where they are pretty clearly linked with sex instead. The conclusions are not exactly the same ones that most horror movies seemingly arrive at, but when all is said and done MATANGO still doesn’t leave you with too much to think about it. Any metaphorical level is strictly a slight added bonus, rather than a major theme.