Movie Details
| Title: | The War of the Gargantuas | |
| Director: | Ishiro Honda | |
| Year: | 1966 | |
| Genre: | Monster | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 11.01.07 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 11.01.07 | Alamo Ritz | After No Country ended, we decided to try our luck finding seats down in the theater proper for the midnight movie. I must confess to peeking at the poster early to pass the movie on to Micah so he could decide whether or not to make the drive down from Dallas. I wish I had more time to talk about the film with people afterward (I noticed Lars sitting in the back watching it for a second time; ANnie said Javier gave her nightmares) but the size of the midnight standby line motivated me to look for seats ASAP. I found a few other friends and sold the guys sitting next to them to swap their seats for VIP spots and voila: prime seats for the midnight feature. This was my first time actually walking down into the big house. I'm not sure what the view is like from the first row because the screen looks A LOT taller from down here than it does from the back or the VIP boxes. It's really nice though and seems more personal than the SOuth Lamar houses for some reason (be it the size of the room or the number of rows or slight differentiation in row height, i dunno why it just does). Styrofoam skyscrapers and city scenes started dotting the stage, coupling with the Japanese Monster pre-show to give people a pretty good idea of what the next movie was. I saw the buildings and someone asked "Who's gonna get up there and smash them?" and I flashed back to Zack's theater tour with Owen and him showing off a hot pink monkey suit and I knew. Sure enough, once Tim got up there and started talking, he introduced a few special guests with their own theme music. Horns of impending doom sounded and a black gorilla man walked out with his arms up in a rage, followed by a hot pink Dr. Seuss version of a gorilla. The dark brown one picked a model plane up and threw it at the pink beast. Pinky leapt through three buildings into the larger darker ape and they wrestled to the ground. Buildings were kicked into the faces of front row patrons, the pink guy almost lost his mask at one point (revealing his converse all stars underneath the pink fur), general havoc ensued. Once the buildings were decimated, The pink guy took off his mask to reveal... ZACK! The Triumphant return of Terror Thursday! Last scene wrestling Owen in a kiddy pool of blood, a pink gorilla suit is the perfect way to welcome back the weekly wacky midnight horror series devoted to blood and fun. Zack proceeded to give some short words, yelling into a microphone that was turned off and out of breath but still heard by all. Then the monkeys got down and Tim welcomed Quentin Tarantino to introduce the film after noting that Lars and Zack both got man-happy when they heard the title of what we're about to see. Tarantino gets up and reveals that we're about to watch The War of the Gargantua which is actually a direct sequel to another favorite of his (and QTfest alum) Frankenstein Conquers the World. Apparently, in Japan the two monsters who battle it out with Tokyo at their playground were not "gargantua" but Frankensteins and they had names (Sanda and Gaira) but US distributors excised as much as they could of that stuff and invented this Gargantua thing instead. He also mentioned that Nick Adams (male lead of the first film) fell so madly in love with Kumi Mizuno that the Japanese people were embarassed by how much shame he was bringing to his wife and that's probably the reason why Russ Tamblyn steps into the role for this film; Adams' wife wouldn't let him spend any more time with Mizuno! He probably said a few more things but I can't remember. The movie started after a few choice Monster trailers and... ...I'm not experienced enough to really be a connoisseur of this genre, but it seems to me that most of the movie is waiting for the monster (or monsters) to either fight or destroy Tokyo or do both (preferrably at the same time) but you have to wait for the whole movie to see it happen so it's like an hour of waiting then maybe 10 or 15 minutes of fun then that's it. There's always some unsuccessfull military action that scientists try to stop... and in the end they sort of think they killed the monster (until the next time it shows up in another movie). Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I don't know what to be looking for with these movies, but they end up feeling rather slow and familiar to me. So while I won't say I disliked the movie, I will say that after No Country it was kind of a sit-through-it deal and I can't help but wish it was Anguish because I'm dying to see that movie and have been told repeatedly not to watch it on my computer but to wait to see it in a theater. Oh well. So afterward there was much lobby chitchat. It was fun and Thomas was there getting everything on video and before I knew it the first night at the Alamo was over! Here's hoping for many more years of fun there. It will never be the original downtown, but hopefully it can be something just as good in its own way. |
