Tag Archives: movies

The Nuclear Gothic of Frankenstein vs Baragon & War of the Gargantuas

In 2 weeks (July 17, 2021) I’ll be at Romancing the Gothic giving a free virtual talk (twice, because time zones!) on a pair of peculiar Japanese/American films from the late 1960s which make deft use of a number of genre conventions and storytelling modes to explore both personal and national trauma. Well, one of them does, at any rate, but I’ll get back to that after some background.

Monstrously transformed bodies rampaged across movie (and television) screens throughout the Atomic Age. Brimming with disfiguring laboratory accidents, wacky mutations, and extraterrestrial invasions, in these Hollywood movies figuring out how to obliterate monsters was every heroic scientist’s duty.

Japanese director Ishiro Honda reinvented the Hollywood monster movie form, bringing forth movies that spoke not to existential fears of atomic disaster but to the lived experience of atomic devastation and the long-term consequences of trauma and radiation exposure. His monster movie, Gojira, was released in Japan in 1954. The following year, American producer Edmund Goldman acquired the worldwide rights to the film and hired director Terry Morse to radically re-edit the film, inserting newly shot footage which transformed Gojira into the less overtly political Godzilla: King of the Monsters! (1956). This Americanized version of the film was the only version officially distributed outside Japan until 2004.

A decade later, Honda directed a pair of films in which Mary Shelley’s novel is re-imagined as non-fiction, the catalyst for a series of slowly unfolding disasters.* Unlike Gojira, Honda’s Frankenstein movies were produced in a partnership between Toho and American International Pictures and were dubbed, not re-edited, for American release.

Promotional Poster for Frankenstein Conquers the World. Actor Nick Adams name is featured prominently on the poster, which depicts a large Frankenstein Monster with a battleship tucked under his arm, locked in destructive combat with the gigantic reptilian monster Baragon. Nick Adams is depicted in the lower right of the image aiming a machine gun, despite the fact that he portrays Frankenstein’s friend and defender, the kindly Dr. Bowen, in the film.

In Frankenstein vs Baragon (1965, released outside Japan in 1966 as Frankenstein Conquers the World) a child consumes Frankenstein’s monster’s immortal – and irradiated – heart in 1948 Hiroshima and grows to monstrous proportion. The figure of Frankenstein, as the child is known, is ambiguous, first pitied and studied, then feared, before ultimately become a savior when a powerful ancient mythological being re-emerges to threaten civilization and the project of capitalist expansion in post-occupation Japan.

In the sequel, Frankenstein’s Monsters (1966, released in the U.S. in 1970 as War of the Gargantuas), the Frankenstein monster’s cells regenerate into a gigantic pair of mortal enemies, Gothic deadly doubles and fragmenting identities writ large.

This talk includes historical background and cultural context and a discussion of how Honda’s use of Gothic conventions contributes to a politically and socially complex story. And also a second movie. If you’d like to sign up, here’s the link.

I’ll be focusing primarily on Frankenstein vs Baragon, but, to be fair, War of the Gargantuas also employs Gothic tropes in interesting ways. While it’s not a particularly substantive film, it is bizarre and truly delightful. Whether or not you sign up for my talk, I encourage you to visit the Cultural Gutter to learn more about the confoundingly catchy lounge number which occupies an interminable segment of War of the Gargantuas: In Memoriam: The Words Got Stuck In My Throat.

Familiarity with the films I’ll be discussing is not required but will be helpful to you. Be aware: there will be spoilers, but hopefully what you learn will enrich your viewing. No specialized knowledge of the Cold War, Nuclear History, or Gothic film and literature are necessary and the live sessions will include ample time for questions. And likely also for answers.

If you haven’t seen the original Godzilla, I highly recommend the Criterion Collection’s restoration (of both versions), which is also currently available in the US both on their subscription service, the Criterion Channel and HBO Max and is also available for rent or purchase through a variety of streaming services.

—————–

* A Slowly Unfolding Disaster would have been an excellent alternative title for War of the Gargantuas.

Interstellar does not look stellar to me.

We saw a lot of movies in the theater this summer. An unusually high number (for us).

I quickly reached the point where I could only endure the trailer for Interstellar by imagining all of the characters who go into space (for no apparent reason) eventually crash land on a planet of apes.

If I see the trailer too many more times I may have a psychotic break, because there’s something about it that irritates me. A lot. I don’t know what the movie is about. I don’t care.

Husband’s plot summary is good enough for me. Granted, it’s also based on seeing the same trailer too many times. Everyone’s a critic these days.

According to Husband, the plot of Interstellar is this: “Matthew McConaughey loves his children but he hates wheat. He probably loved baseball, but not as much as he loves his old truck and his children. People play too much baseball which results in all of the old trucks in the world being covered with dust. This endangers humanity, and possibly the wheat, so Alfred must send Catwoman and Matthew McConaughey into space. McConaughey is sad to leave his children. How sad? Really fucking sad. But he’s got to go, because we need a new planet to play baseball on. But he’s really really sad anyway.”

Here – in case you’ve managed to miss it:

Bermuda Tentacles

Like all battleships that venture into the Bermuda triangle looking for the President of the United States, the heroes of Bermuda Tentacles have a worm scientist on board. This is useful when the convoy of ships are beset by giant worms reaching out of the water to menace them.

I’m making it sound an awful lot better than it is.

Admiral Linda Hamilton asks Dr. Worm Science Guy Played by Jamie Kennedy: “Do they seem hostile?”

He replies: “I don’t know…they’re worms. (dramatic pause) They do seem angry.”

Huh.

In addition to the questions I was forming about that scientific assessment of the situation, I wondered why a movie called Bermuda Tentacles would be about worms.

Later, I sort of got my answer, but by that point I was of the opinion: “Worms. Tentacles. Who the hell cares?”

Linda Hamilton makes a commanding Admiral, but each of her scenes ended with her looking like she was going to angrily turn her agent into a chew toy as soon as the camera stopped rolling. And well she should, this movie was more crap than craptacular.

Bermuda Tentacles

Godzilla Countdown

kingkongvgodzilla

I recently finished a draft of an article about Pacific Rim (2013) that required re-watching both Gojira (1954) and Godzilla: King of the Monsters! (1956), which I thought were permanently etched into my brain because I wrote numerous papers including them as an undergrad studying the Cold War and Nuclear Culture.

Criterion remastered both movies and put them together as a BluRay set (also available on some streaming services). It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Gojira, I was surprised how much I’d forgotten. This is probably because I’ve seen Godzilla so many times it’s pretty much over-written the other movie in my brain.

It’s fascinating to watch them back to back again. Both are melodramatic and slightly nonsensical, but Gojira is artistic and intensely political, while Godzilla is generally just silly and over-wrought.

More than 1/3 of Gojira’s scenes were cut to make room for the insertion of new scenes featuring American actors, and, to be fair, it’s impressive how well Godzilla works.

It’s always interesting to see how much of the story was changed, re-arranged, or simply obscured through the omission or lack of translation for some of the original dialogue.

Here are Criterion’s 3 Reasons to Watch Gojira:

After you watch those two movies, you’ll be ready to move on to Godzilla Raids Again (1955), which is a delightfully bonkers piece of movie-making. I’m certain the original movie must be wacky, but it’s the epic amount of narration added to the American version that truly elevates this movie to instant classic status.

Godzilla Raids Again makes a perfect double feature with King Kong versus Godzilla, which was re-edited to make a strange movie even stranger, although I’m not certain that was the intention.

The actor playing the American scientist doesn’t pronounce reptile properly. He keeps saying “reptull,” which is odd since he’s supposed to be a specialist in reptulls, er, I mean, reptiles.

The plot: someone decides it’s a swell idea to go get a giant gorilla and bring him to Tokyo to fight a giant prehistoric dinosaur. Sure, why not? And then there’s a whole pharmaceutical company subplot, the racist depiction of natives in the King Kong acquisition scenes, something involving hallucinogenic red berries, and a giant octopus attack.

Don’t miss the Interpretive Kong Dance Extravaganza!


Husband and I are definitely ready to see the new Godzilla Thursday. I’m going to be very sad if it sucks like the 1998 Godzilla did. It’s okay for a Godzilla movie to be Bad, but it should never be boring and stupid.

That movie was boring and stupid and let us never speak of it again.

Here’s the Official Godzilla (2014) Trailer:

If you want to know more about the evolution of the Godzilla movies, William Tsutsui’s Godzilla on My Mind: Fifty Years of the King of Monsters is an entertaining and informative read.

Abita

Abita is a haunting animated short that portrays the impact of the Fukushima tragedy on the children in the region.

Abita from Shoko Hara on Vimeo.

This film, which has such a clean and simple visual style, grows more haunting with repeated viewings. The sound design is particularly beautiful.

The filmmakers chose the dragonfly because it is symbolic of the island of Japan. They write, in answer to a viewer’s question about the symbolism, that the dragonfly “…symbolizes hope, perspective, dream, energy in Japan and it unites all the natural elements like water, earth and air….The Dragonfly represents the innerworld of the child, that it wants to be free in nature, but it can’t.”

Abita is a Graduate Thesis film by Shoko Hara and Paul Brenner.

New readers may be unaware of an incident in the Fall when “activists” (read: profiteers and hucksters) set their sights on my blog. Promoting fish farming in the Great Lakes with hysterical propaganda about the dangers of eating fish caught by indigenous commercial fisheries in the Pacific Northwest, making false or unverified health claims in an effort to sell affluent California parents anti-radiation pills for their children, and propagating a reframing of the nuclear disaster as an insidious plot to poison America topped the trolling topics hit parade.

In all of that noise, the plight of the vulnerable populations closest to the disaster are easily forgotten.