So I only got started at about 17:30, but this is alright because I'm gonna be watching some awesome things today, and my itinerary includes staying up all night drinking and watching Godzilla movies, probably until the sun comes up, so it wouldn't make much sense to start today early anwyas.
So in addition to the three 80's movies, I'm also going to watch the two episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 which featured Godzilla movies, both from the second season in 1991. Joel's hosting, so these are good ones. This will serve as a nice buffer area after watching Biollante again, giving me time to cool down and just get wasted and forget about all those big ideas and powerful images that makes the 80's movies so incredible. In the end, this day, the 13th, is the true focal point of the week, just as it was exactly one year ago. This is the climax, and from here on out we'll be entering the third act, falling action and an eventual resolution of some kind. But if you only read one of these posts from this year - or any year - Day 5 is the one that's important.
16. 1984 - ゴジラ • The Return of Godzilla
1 Drink - In case any chemical, geological, meteorological, or psychical, other than physical, sign of G's action is confirmed
2 Drinks - In case any physical sign of G's action such as voice and motion is confirmed
3 Drinks - In case G appears
4 Drinks - In case G's landing on any specific coast of Japan is positive
1 Drink - Godzilla uses his Atomic Ray
1 Drink - When the Godzilla Theme plays
1 Drink - During a conference scene
1 Drink - When direct casualties of monster attacks are shown
1 Drink - Appearance or arrival onto a mysterious or monster inhabited island
1 Drink - If Godzilla can't be located or reappears in a totally different place
1 Drink - When a Kenji Sahara character appears
1 Drink - Hiroshi Koizumi plays a scientist
1 Drink - Whenever Kumi Mizuno is being awesome
1 Drink - If a fight ends with either the losers running away or the monsters falling off a cliff into the water
1 Drink - When Godzilla wins
1 Drink - Gratuitous English
1 Drink - A wild Kenny appears!
1 Drink - Mechagodzilla falls over
1 Drink - When a scene from the first movie is recreated or referenced
1 Drink - Every time the Americans or Russians do something stupid
1 Drink - Any time G-Center or a G-Center equivalent is able to watch the movie on their viewscreen
2 Drinks - Cy-Bot!
1 Drink - If the Mothra fairies sing her theme song
2 Drinks - If the Mothra fairies sing a different song
I didn't start drinking until the next movie, so I don't have anywhere near as many notes for this movie and they're noticeably more legible. That said, I'm still not covering all the things I jotted down here as I'll need to blaze through this as fast as possible, since I'm just now starting this section at 16:24 on May 14th.
Last year I remember being pretty harsh on the way Japan comes out as seeming like the only sensible person in the room while the inferior warring nations bicker like children. I still don't like it, but I think I recognize it now as being more about the way the Prime Minister acts rather than his actual words. But there's one thing that bothered me a lot more: the Super-X's origin story. If this movie was made even five years earlier, there would be a whole subplot about the best scientists of both Nato and the Warsaw Pact coming together in their shared humanity after the reappearance of Godzilla to create a weapon that could actually harm Godzilla. This is so simple and so obvious, but instead we're told it was built in secret to "protect the capital." Protect it from what? I've heard that there was a perception that Japan, being right between the two major aggressors in the war, felt like they were in the cross fire. I don't understand this logic, though, since the proxy wars only occurred in regions where the communism/capitalism issue was in the middle of a regime change and the real scary threat was from weapons that would fire on their target and only their target. WWIII was a totally different kind of war, there was no "cross-fire," and going out of their way to build a futuristic super weapon is shamefully nationalistic and paranoid, it represents the absolute worst in people during the war when the rest of the movie is supposed to be all about why war is bad and people shouldn't nuke each other. I don't get it, and I don't like it.
This film, Godzilla's great revival and 30th anniversary, is the first time I think it really started to sink in how important and necessary Godzilla is. You can see it on their faces when Godzilla enters Mt. Mihara, Godzilla will always be with us now, and we need to learn from him and learn to accept him and remember why he exists in the first place. Even today Godzilla's wrath continues to thrive, whether or not anyone notices or pays attention. It's amazing how much can change in just 30 years, as the "enlightened" modern age of scientific and social advancement has basically fallen apart into a nightmare of big brother surveillance and ignorance. Godzilla used to be important, he used to be bigger than all of us, now he's just a tentpole used to program people to buy more useless shit.
16. 1985 - Godzilla 1985 • ゴジラ 1985
1 Drink - In case any chemical, geological, meteorological, or psychical, other than physical, sign of G's action is confirmed
2 Drinks - In case any physical sign of G's action such as voice and motion is confirmed
3 Drinks - In case G appears
4 Drinks - In case G's landing on any specific coast of Japan is positive
1 Drink - Godzilla uses his Atomic Ray
1 Drink - When the Godzilla Theme plays
1 Drink - During a conference scene
1 Drink - When direct casualties of monster attacks are shown
1 Drink - Appearance or arrival onto a mysterious or monster inhabited island
1 Drink - If Godzilla can't be located or reappears in a totally different place
1 Drink - When a Kenji Sahara character appears
1 Drink - Hiroshi Koizumi plays a scientist
1 Drink - Whenever Kumi Mizuno is being awesome
1 Drink - If a fight ends with either the losers running away or the monsters falling off a cliff into the water
1 Drink - When Godzilla wins
1 Drink - Gratuitous English
1 Drink - A wild Kenny appears!
1 Drink - Mechagodzilla falls over
1 Drink - When a scene from the first movie is recreated or referenced
1 Drink - Every time the Americans or Russians do something stupid
1 Drink - Any time G-Center or a G-Center equivalent is able to watch the movie on their viewscreen
2 Drinks - Cy-Bot!
1 Drink - If the Mothra fairies sing her theme song
2 Drinks - If the Mothra fairies sing a different song
This is where I started drinking, more mixed drinks, soda + vodka, which is a pretty solid way of avoiding a hangover, or at least diminishing it. I have to say I did a pretty good job sticking to the drinking game rules I made, all things considered, which is cool because I drank a lot, you'd think I'd start forgetting things. I did this all the way through Biollante and switched to something else for the MST3k episodes.
This is a weird movie. RoG is about as much of a product of it's time as it is a statement about the time it was made in, and walks kind of a thin line between illustrating the climate of a war torn world having to deal with Godzilla and giving in to nationalistic pride and hysteria. G85 looks at this from a different perspective, and walks a similar line, but totally throws its hat into a camp RoG only skims. While the original plan for the Americanization of RoG was more of a straight parody, once Raymond Burr was attached to the project he was adamant it stay respectful and hold the same weight as the original film (here meaning both RoG and G54), and his presence is actually pretty cool, his scenes lend the otherwise embarrassing new footage a lot of dignity even when he doesn't really do much besides stand around and sound grim. I suppose this could be seen as corny in a certain light, but as a returning character and someone who - onscreen and off - really believes in what he's saying, it's harder to dismiss him as playing it up. So there's certainly a respect for Godzilla, and to some extent the film being adapted, but there's one change that severely changes the entire context of everything that's happening: while the Americans respect the wishes of Japan, the USSR decided to go ahead and secretly launch a nuclear weapon at Shinjuku anways, um, you know, on purpose, intentionally launching a nuclear weapon at the soil of another sovereign nation without their consent. Um, a war crime. The good guy U.S. notes that according to the UN space treaty or w/e it's called it's illegal to have military operations or weapons in space, which is true, by the way, that's a real thing, and in this film only the USSR has a nuclear satellite, not like in the original, so it's solely up to the U.S. to stop the pure evil Soviets from taking over the world. So much for putting aside our differences in the face of a greater threat. Ishiro Honda was alive in 1985, by the way, they aren't even pissing on his grave, they're just fucking pissing on the guy full stop.
Although there are several Americanizations with new footage, to date there has never been one with a complete re-contextualization of the original film like the proposed Volcano Monsters or Saban's Power Rangers as a distinct idea from the Super Sentai. The changes made are usually pretty simple, dates and rarely names are changed, motivations for or explanation of events and monster's appearances are sometimes fudged into subtly different versions, various scenes are edited for various reasons, etc. Volcano Monsters is the only time anything like this was even attempted, with even the most drastic of edits like King Kong vs. Godzilla still letting the content of the original film play out in more or less the same way for more or less the same reasons. I think that's unfortunate. Sometimes the changes are so slight that there's no real reason to bother watching both versions, and cases like this walk another line, between subtle differences and total PR-reversions. The subtle changes are interesting sometimes in looking at what they decided to change, but wondering what sort of changes would come about in the process of trying to turn one story into a different one with the same footage is way more so. The early seasons of Power Rangers are so beloved because they told a unique story that ran a continuous thread for six years, something the original Sentai never have and never will do. "Americanizations" are easily a better option than a straight remake of the same god damn movie because U.S. audiences apparently refuse to watch anything that doesn't have a cast composed solely of white people (i.e. The Ring), but trying to come up with stories based on the limitations of pre-existing footage is a fun exercise and it's led to some awesome stuff, but given how little anyone cares about anything other than the original film these days, it will probably happen. The western theatrical release of Godzilla 29 will probably be the same sort of thing as Godzilla 2000, disappointing, pointless, and a waste of everyone's time.
There's some interesting ideas in the dialogue that took me by surprise. Dr. Hayashida's dub introduces the idea of Godzilla as a victim of the bomb, although not in a simple sense of his mutation and anger, but that since the monster is apparently or practically immortal he is "destined to walk the Earth forever" as a kind of unwilling highlander. That's a pretty chilling thought, and when you consider that no upper age limit for Godzilla has ever been suggested, challenging the notion that he would even have one after becoming Godzilla is the sort of thing I wish more characters would mention. There's also a nice parallel to the ending of the original film (by which I mean Return) where "Mr. Martin" emphasizes the same points that go mostly unspoken there. He says that whether or not Godzilla appears again, "the things he has taught us remain." It's a really powerful moment when you realize that Godzilla really is beyond nationality, that the lessons he's supposed to be teaching us have not only been taken to heart, but have reached people all over the world, so that both Martin and Japan's Prime Minister, in two different movies, both understand the very same thing at the very same moment. The film was universally critically panned and failed at the box office, laughed out of town as a huge fucking joke. It is sometimes difficult to remember that the United States is supposed to be a civilized, modern, first world country with public schools and running water. The following year, James Cameron's big budget schlocky, skin-deep brainless action crap ALIENS, written at a fourth grade reading level by a person who is either actually a moron or is intentionally writing for the stupidest possible audience, became an overnight sensation and spelled doom for the entire franchise as it introduced clueless meat-heads to something that they didn't, and couldn't, understand.
17. 1989 - ゴジラvsビオランテ • Godzilla vs. Biollante
1 Drink - In case any chemical, geological, meteorological, or psychical, other than physical, sign of G's action is confirmed
2 Drinks - In case any physical sign of G's action such as voice and motion is confirmed
3 Drinks - In case G appears
4 Drinks - In case G's landing on any specific coast of Japan is positive
1 Drink - Godzilla uses his Atomic Ray
2 Drinks - ...and it's reflected backc by the Super-X 2
2 Drinks - Nuclear Pulse!
1 Drink - When the Godzilla Theme plays
1 Drink - During a conference scene
1 Drink - When direct casualties of monster attacks are shown
1 Drink - Appearance or arrival onto a mysterious or monster inhabited island
1 Drink - If Godzilla can't be located or reappears in a totally different place
1 Drink - When a Kenji Sahara character appears
1 Drink - Hiroshi Koizumi plays a scientist
1 Drink - Whenever Kumi Mizuno is being awesome
1 Drink - If a fight ends with either the losers running away or the monsters falling off a cliff into the water
1 Drink - When Godzilla wins
1 Drink - Gratuitous English
1 Drink - A wild Kenny appears!
1 Drink - Mechagodzilla falls over
1 Drink - Any time G-Center or a G-Center equivalent is able to watch the movie on their viewscreen
1 Drink - Cut to a computer generated wireframe layout of the battlefield
1 Drink - When Miki Saegusa closes her eyes and thinks really hard
1 Drink - If the Mothra fairies sing her theme song
2 Drinks - If the Mothra fairies sing a different song
I want to talk about four things for my Biollante coverage this year: GunHed, A.N.E.B., Major Kuroki, and the deep rooted pessimism sewn into the film's later half that I've never really noticed until now.
GunHed came out five months before Biollante and was the runner up in the Godzilla 2 story contest. The story, written by James Bannon, had Godzilla removed from it and was reworked into the bizarre and awesome movie we have to day, but what was the original story? To understand that we have to understand what the story of GunHed is and this is no easy task. The film takes place in a cyberpunk future with strange technologies and a backstory of war with artificial intelligences and a bunch of future babble, almost none of which is told to the viewer directly, and this is ultimately the source of total bewilderment among first time viewers, who have no choice but to interpret the film as a nonsensical wad of insanity that can't even establish what the characters are even running away from half the time. After the second or third time, however, context clues can lead you to the truth if you let them, and perhaps the most incredible thing about GunHed is even though it seems like a fever dream of disjointed half-remembered nightmares from another dimension, it's actually a totally normal movie with a backstory and character motivations and a story arc and everything! In fact, the plot structure of the movie is suspiciously similar to Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster, a rag tag group of unlikely heroes wind up on an island that turns out to hold some dark secrets and find themselves antagonized by an evil mastermind and the monster under its influence, but their salvation comes in the form of an old, dormant monster that they are able to use to escape and defeat said evil forces. The Red Bamboo is Chiron-5 (sorry, "Kyron"-5), Ebirah is Aerbot, and the long dormant benefactor is GunHed, a sentient war-machine who fought against Chiron-5 in past and rather than reviving him with lightning our lead (Major Kuroki, of course) goes and repairs the robot, and the two become fast friends... sort of. Curiously James Bannon's story has never come to light and no details on it are really known, however based on the final film I'd have to guess the original story, with Godzilla still in it, was basically Sea Monster but with robots instead of claw shrimps.
While Godzilla's stated primary opponent is Biollante, the story treats the "science gone awry" plot in a way that hasn't really been done for or since, by looking at the larger picture and what the actual strategic military value of "science gone awry" really is and the consequences of it. Biollante, who is more or less an accident created by a mourning old man, is a beautiful immortal monster, while the monster intentionally created by man as a useful weapon is a nightmarish hybrid whose very existence will change the balance of power between nations in a fundamental way. Colonel Gondo is the one who makes the call to produce the bacteria, and it falls upon his pal Major Kuroki to organize the operations that will deliver it to Godzilla.
Kuroki is a really fascinating guy, because when given command of Anti-Godzilla operations he has confidence, something no one in his position has any right to do. Watching the way he handles himself and seems to have an answer for everything, you'd be forgiven for thinking he's every bit the infallible super soldier he presents himself as, but if you're paying attention you'll notice he fails nearly every objective he's given. There is one instance where you can actually see the exact moment he's humbled, however. Before the first engagement with the monster in the Uraga channel, he had been briefed on a pair of incredible super weapons, A.N.E.B. and Super-X 2, and probably understood them as being far above the technology used in both '54 and '84, which made him believe that it would be possible to take on the monster directly now. When the fire mirror begins to melt, you can tell he's just realized what Godzilla is. From here on out, he is met with one set-back after another, and desperately uses every resource at his disposal just to delay Godzilla's arrival by a few minutes. His mind is always on damage control, and even though he can't do much besides push, pull, or stall, by the end of the film it appears he finally gets something accomplished, and as we discover in the next film, the A.N.E.B. actually would have worked. My two favroite Kuroki moments are, of course, when he calls in Miki to have a psychic battle, and another more subtle bit involve the second battle with the Super-X 2. He understands that the machine is going to be destroyed by Godzilla sooner or later, but the A.N.E.B. stands a fighting chance. A squad of tanks or masers would just get smashed or blasted without a second thought, so Kuroki uses the Super-X 2 not because it has a back-up weapon that is anywhere near as effective as the fire mirror, but because Godzilla recognizes it as a legitimate opponent after his previous encounter with it and the probably association he made between it and the first Super-X. It isn't large like a monster, but it's visible and powerful, and Godzilla will pay attention to its position, track it, and actively consider its actions in battle, and what he doesn't realize about its inability to retaliate against him won't hurt Kuroki. He's using Godzilla's own behavior against him.
But of course the real monster is A.N.E.B. It is clear from RoG, GvsKG, and other bits of the Heisei films that the timeline of these films shows a totally different political future than the touchy feely hippie future of the Showa films, and, as I just now considered as I noticed a Russian scientist on the Moguera team, I can't help but wonder if the USSR actually dissolved or not. Godzilla would have introduced a serious threat to the world, and his appearance may have ended the hostility between nations, but it didn't change anything about their territoriality or international cooperation. Oh sure, there's American and Russian scientists helping develop weapons for use against Godzilla, but this all happens in Japan, it's not an alliance anymore than an international scientific conference is today, scientists do not = politicians, and in a cease fire climate it makes a lot of sense that multiple countries are developing things like Mechagodzilla and Moguera, but it isn't clear to me that the U.S. and... Russia? Aren't still funding weapons research of their work with Japan has ulterior motives. Bio-Major is a U.S. bio-weapons research suite, and Saradia is a stand-in for Saudi Arabi, yet they don't just get the creatures in the spirit of international friendship, they have to steal it cloak and dagger style, and their efforts are staunchly opposed by the Japanese. Furthermore, if this was a Honda-esque world, Kirishima's fears would be completely unfounded, and Kirishima is a pretty smart guy. No, it's safe to say that releasing A.N.E.B. into the world would be just as bad, if not worse, is such a monster existed in real life. A.N.E.B. would remove the only thing keeping the Cold War from becoming the kind of never-ending bloody apocalypse that the first two world wars were, the bomb, and at the same time remove the only thing that keeps the combatants in a temporary cease-fire, Godzilla. In addition to that, conventional weaponry is far more advanced in this world than it is/was in ours, meaning the resulting hostilities could possibly be a repeat of the Great War where a lack of familiarity and respect for the technological advancement creates casualties on a scale never before witnessed by mankind, with the ultimate fridge horror being that in the intervening 71 years we haven't learned a damned thing.
While I was watching "Cozzilla" on the 11th I came to a really angry place when I started to realize that not only was Godzilla dead, but it seemed like we started burying him long ago, that in the decades since the bomb was first dropped and Godzilla was born, we haven't really been practicing what we preach, and now all the preachers are dead. In the post-Cold War world it's easy to put the bomb up on a pedestal as the fear born from it was directly responsible for forcing the aggressors to seek a peaceful solution to their disagreements - the price for not doing so was the total extermination of all life on Earth - and this I think colors our perception of Biollante some, but after watching it again I noticed that the same anger is right there. That final leg of the war "needed" Godzilla, but no one was paying attention to him. While Shiragami, Kirishima, and Kuroki are being transported to the TC field, Shiragami makes a statement while watching the sleeping Kuroki that maybe it's time for his generation to move aside. Kirishima tells him that "if we continue to do the same thing, we can't call it a new era." Maybe it's a bad example, as Kuroki, as I mentioned earlier, has his shit together pretty well, but the message is clear, the only thing being passed down is a stubborn fixation on patriotism and violence. At the end of the film a voice-over asks "How long have we been living in that age? Maybe it started when mankind first stepped out of the garden of Eden. Please think about that one more time." The three world wars are supposed to be our rite of passage from our immature past to a modern society, a civilization based on scientific understanding, logical thinking, and a mutual love and respect for ourselves. What I think I'm finding out is that nothing has really changed, that we're nothing more than a bunch of bloodthirsty monsters wearing people suits, walking around playing at being civilized, stone age barbarians with access to world-ending doomsday weapons with no understanding of how to use them. If Kirishima is right, then we're still living in the dark ages, and Godzilla is nothing more than a kitschy reminder of an ideal or warning that maybe one day in the distant past we believed, but never really had any power at all. Maybe, if Godzilla is brought back again, it will be no different in the new era than it was during the events leading to his death. Maybe I shouldn't ask when Godzilla died, but whether he ever even truly lived. But I don't think I'd like the answer.
13. 1991 - Mystery Science Theater 3000 #212 Godzilla vs. Megalon
1 Drink - In case any chemical, geological, meteorological, or psychical, other than physical, sign of G's action is confirmed
2 Drinks - In case any physical sign of G's action such as voice and motion is confirmed
3 Drinks - In case G appears
4 Drinks - In case G's landing on any specific coast of Japan is positive
1 Drink - Godzilla uses his Atomic Ray
1 Drink - When the Godzilla Theme plays
1 Drink - During a conference scene
1 Drink - When direct casualties of monster attacks are shown
1 Drink - Appearance or arrival onto a mysterious or monster inhabited island
1 Drink - If Godzilla can't be located or reappears in a totally different place
1 Drink - When a Kenji Sahara character appears
1 Drink - Akihiko Hirata plays a scientist
1 Drink - Hiroshi Koizumi plays a scientist
1 Drink - Whenever Kumi Mizuno is being awesome
1 Drink - If a fight ends with either the losers running away or the monsters falling off a cliff into the water
1 Drink - When Godzilla wins
1 Drink - Gratuitous English
1 Drink - Gratuitous stock footage
1 Drink - If Godzilla stops taking a fight seriously
1 Drink - Godzilla does the Young Guy nose rub thing
2 Drinks - When Daisenso-Goji takes a dive
1 Drink - A wild Kenny appears!
1 Drink - Gigan is blasted out of the sky
1 Drink - Jet Jaguar does something inexplicable (including growing/shrinking)
1 Drink - If the Mothra fairies sing her theme song
2 Drinks - If the Mothra fairies sing a different song
2 Drinks - Godzilla swims/walks into the sunset accompanied by a theme song
1 Drink - Invention Exchange (Joel + 'bots)
1 Drink - Invention Exchange (Dr. Forrester & TV's Frank)
1 Drink - Host Segment
1 Drink - Movie Sign!
1 Drink - Commercial Sign!
1 Drink - A joke makes a reference you don't get
1 Drink - Rex Dart: Eskimo Spy!
1 Drink - Haikiba!
I suspect most "90's kids" have more or less the same stories about MST3k. I found out about them because they had episodes on Godzilla and Gamera movies, and then from there it just snowballed. A lot of the humor - at least from the Joel era - was based on some pretty heady references to "underground" culture rather than straight pop satire, and you're almost guaranteed to learn something every episode. While all the Showa Gamera films distributed under Sandy Frank appear on the show, only two Godzilla movies do for obvious reasons. While there are elements of camp running through many of the 60's and 70's films, Megalon, as I mentioned earlier in the week, is really the high point of this as it is purely a film made for like the littlest tiniest babbies, and so lends itself better to the MST3k treatment. This episode is one of best, really as good as you can get with a good movie on the show, although my personal favroite of all the "good" movies they did was Gamera vs. Barugon. For the MST3k experiments I switched from hard liquor to beer, first with Gulden Draak and then to some other kind of thing made by Devil's Backbone that was just okay. Although to be honest it didn't matter much at that point since I was pretty wasted. At this point my handwriting has turned into illegible chicken scrawl, which is what happens you you have to write down jokes at the speed of light whole also being drunk. Here's what I can find that's decipherable:Crow: This watery manifestation of a wrathful vengeful god couldn't have come at a worse time.
Goro: But those only existed in legends.
Joel: Historians only existed in legends?
Goro: It would be funny if the quake destroyed your robot.
Joel: It would be funny if the quake killed your family.
Crow: Let's see... Boy's Life, Popular Science, Highlights... my own autopsy report!?
Joel: That's mine just leave it alone.
-=Host Segment=-
Crow and Tom compare monsters. A review of their various abilities is as follows:
Gorblat (Tom Servo's Monster):
• Green
• 18' tall
• Has flames shooting out of it
• Has 2 claw thingies that he uses to eat railroad trains
• A million jillion more powerful than Crow's monster any day of the week
• Spawned by a giant mutant hellbeast
• Comes up every so often to kill
• Must drink the blood of the innocent to live
• So completely scary that even thinking about it could kill you
Crow's Monster:
• Has flames too
• 20' tall
• Has a big claw thingy
• Has a secret that there's an elf in his head
• Trillion times the atom bomb power
• Hydraulic tail stomper
• Is the number before infinity
• Silent as tomorrow
• He kills in the night
• He has been acquainted with the night
• Not only reads Frost, but he also sprays it like icy death from bloody stumps
• A 24-hour wide awake nightmare
• All that stuff plus has the power to kill Gorblat 10 times over
Robert Dunham: They've already destroyed a third of our contry.
Joel: You'll just have to take my word for it.
...then there's a series of jokes all in a row that Joel always starts with "You know, in France..."
Joel: They're gonna attack the monster with a Fresnel light.
Tom Servo: Yeah, I think it's a baby junior.
Crow: Daft dangerous? Don't you mean Taft treacherous?
-=Host Segment=-
The... infamous? Orville Redenbacker skit. I think it might be a little... "high concept," but I kind of love it, and it features this immortal line:
Crow: It's part of the proud popcorn creed to be without the love of a woman.
And then later...
Crow: I've got the key's to the kingdom! I'm the god! I'M THE GOD!
Crow: Okay, I gotta question why doesn't he go straight for the flame?
Joel: Because the man is a professional, the man is a real class act.
-=Host Segment=-
Here are the transcribed lyrics to the Jet Jaguar theme song, from the Hodgson translation:
"He Jock it made of steel
Eats sushi from a pail
Jet Jaguar? Jet Jaguar!
He mother never really love him
He crimefighting covers up a basic insecurity
He dickey covers up an Adam's apple the size of a Toyota
He basically good-hearted but he'd like to smash that kid against a rock
KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!
Who's there?
His head looks like Jack Nicholson
Don't smile like that it will stay that way
Yahmmmaahoaahoaaaugh!
Don't touch my bags if you please Mr. Customs Man"
7. 1991 - Mystery Science Theater 3000 #213 Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster
1 Drink - In case any chemical, geological, meteorological, or psychical, other than physical, sign of G's action is confirmed
2 Drinks - In case any physical sign of G's action such as voice and motion is confirmed
3 Drinks - In case G appears
4 Drinks - In case G's landing on any specific coast of Japan is positive
1 Drink - Godzilla uses his Atomic Ray
1 Drink - When the Godzilla Theme plays
1 Drink - During a conference scene
1 Drink - When direct casualties of monster attacks are shown
1 Drink - Appearance or arrival onto a mysterious or monster inhabited island
1 Drink - If Godzilla can't be located or reappears in a totally different place
1 Drink - When a Kenji Sahara character appears
1 Drink - Akihiko Hirata plays a scientist
1 Drink - Hiroshi Koizumi plays a scientist
1 Drink - Jun Tazaki plays an authority figure
2 Drinks - Jun Tazaki plays a general
1 Drink - Yoshio Tsuchiya plays/is controlled by aliens
1 Drink - Whenever Kumi Mizuno is being awesome
1 Drink - If a fight ends with either the losers running away or the monsters falling off a cliff into the water
1 Drink - When Godzilla wins
1 Drink - Gratuitous English
1 Drink - If Godzilla stops taking a fight seriously
1 Drink - King Ghidorah appears out of a burst of flame
1 Drink - Chase scene!
1 Drink - Ebirah takes the fight underwater
1 Drink - Godzilla does the Young Guy nose rub thing
1 Drink - GIANT CONDOR!!!
2 Drinks - When Daisenso-Goji takes a dive
2 Drinks - Whenever it becomes painfully obvious this is supposed to be a King Kong movie
1 Drink - If the Mothra fairies sing her theme song
2 Drinks - If the Mothra fairies sing a different song1 Drink - Invention Exchange (Joel + 'bots)
1 Drink - Invention Exchange (Dr. Forrester & TV's Frank)
1 Drink - Host Segment
1 Drink - Movie Sign!
1 Drink - Commercial Sign!
1 Drink - A joke makes a reference you don't get
1 Drink - A PLANET WHERE APES EVOLVED FROM MEN!?
1 Drink - We are filled with shame.
1 Drink - Yeah, and scarecrow's brain!
Megalon is pretty gooftastic, but the reasoning behind the pick of their second Godzilla movie is a little more murky. Of the two south seas Godzilla movies, Sea Monster is certainly the more frivolous of the two, but it's nowhere near Megalon. It must have simply been a process of elimination. The rest of the 70's films are varied, with the earlier ones having perhaps some comedy potential hidden behind otherwise straight faced hippie movies, and the later ones not really having any trace of humor at all. The 50's movies are right out, and the early 60's or golden age films are both too well put together and too intentionally funny to work as the subject for a comedy show. So this puts them in the late 60's, but here we have another problem, and that's why in the hell they didn't do Godzilla's Revenge? Holy christ that movie would have been perfect for MST3k, and there my only guess could be that it's a legal thing, as Megalon I believe had slipped into public domain somehow at the time and the particular version of Sea Monster is... hmm... curious. The source material here is nowhere near as good and as a result the comedy suffers, and there are long pauses between bits. However, as far as I'm concerned, the whole episode is saved by Crow's unceasing attempt at Planet of the Apes satire which goes nowhere as he keeps shouting "A PLANET WHERE APES EVOLVED FROM MEN!?" over the course of the experiment with no provocation and it's bizarre and wonderful and being drunk while it was happening definitely made it all the more awesome.
Some Guy: I wonder what the owner looks like.Joel: He looks like me except taller.
Crow: Let's visit God now.
Tom Servo: Hi, I'm God. This film is moving slowly my children.
Akira Takarada: Just don't touch this, understand?
Crow: Can't touch this.
Joel: You got your backgammon in my money!Crow: You got your money in my backgammon!
Tom Servo: They're liquid assets now.
Crow: Is that what they call laundered money?
Joel: I just saw half a crab kill a guy.
Jun Tazaki: You must be losing your sight.
Tom Servo: I don't think that's funny but go on.
-=Host Segment=-
The Godzilla Genealogy Bop. The family tree works out to something like this:Released Pets + Nuclear Blast
|
`-+-Godzilla-+
| |
`-Nessie---+
|
`-Godzooky + Laurena Loft
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`-Ron Perlman + Yoko Ono
|
`-+-Kermit the Frog
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+-Swamp Thing
|
+-Hulk
|
`-Ernest Borgnine
Crow: A PLANET WHERE APES EVOLVED FROM MEN!?Joel: ...and that is when the chicken heart began to grow.
Some Guy: They'd destroy the world.
Akira Takarada: Godzilla would do that.
Some Guy: No he wouldn't.
Crow: We went to school together, he's a good guy.
-=Host Segment=-
Joel has been spending his time building a model city, but when he tries to explain to the 'bots what they're supposed to be, they're clued in that Joel may be having an episode of Space Madness. For his own good, they decide they have to demolish the miniature city to snap him back to reality.Crow: All these monster fights are rigged.
At around this point I have a note that reads "thank god they skipped the button scene, also I poured beer in my nose."
-=Host Segment=-
Joel: What is this, suddenly I'm a tragic hero alone on an island?
Crow: What is this, Medea?
KEEP CIRCULATING THE TAPES
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