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Post by Justin T on Aug 6, 2011 23:21:24 GMT -5
Gamera vs Gaos: Amazon.com delivered my copy of the new Gamera vs MST3K set the day after it came out, very nice. Since I had only seen vs Guiron, I let my friend choose which to start with and he choose Gaos.
This one is full of problems all right. The movie really drags when Gamera and Gaos are not fighting. Itchy isn't as annoying as some of the other Gamera kids, but its still silly how the adults all listen to him as if he's been certified a Gamera Expert. Plus the whole subplot about the villigers trying to haggle more money for their land over the building of a new roadway feels like it was added just to help pad out the movie. The two road workers were funny, kinda like Laurel and Hardy.
And I have to say, for a Japanese Monster Movie marketed towards kids its got some pretty darn violent monster fights! Gamera and Gaos really tear into each other and the blood on both sides flows like a river. Gamera bites a good chunk off of Gaos' foot in one battle forcing him to regenerate it.
The riffing is pretty good in this one. The riffing drags in the middle portion before Gamer and Gaos' final showdown, but there are some killer riffs in this one, ones that left me gasping for air. I thought the riffing was the strongest during the monster fights and most of the stuff involving Itchy.
I found the host segments to be a mixed bag. I loved the opening with the bots doing raspy Celeberty voices, the rest of the host segments were either ok or just meh to me.
Still, this was a good episode for sure. Looking foward to more Gamera in the weeks to come.
My Grade: B+
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Post by notundercovercop32 on Aug 7, 2011 0:08:48 GMT -5
Gamera Vs. Barugon Is it just me or is this film a sad commentary on Japan as a military power? Japan spends the entire second half of the movie trying to come up with a way to kill Barugon and all their ideas fail. Then Gamera comes and in less than 3 minutes defeats Barugon and saves the day.
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Post by angilasman on Aug 8, 2011 10:43:24 GMT -5
Hobgoblins
This was an old favorite from the days when the only episodes I'd seen where Sci-Fi channel reruns. It's still funny... but at the same time, a bit depressing, as in: geez, how many times in my life is MST going to make me watch the entire movie Hobgoblins? Hobgoblins is the most unpleasant movie they did. No. Unpleasant isn't quite the word. Icky. Yes, it's icky. One of the few MSTied movies I really and truly hate.
Comments: appropriately enough, a drawing of Lucille Ball in Crow's women documentary, and this film has two separate Marx Bros. references really close together.
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Post by georgeworge on Aug 8, 2011 19:18:07 GMT -5
Time of the Apes.... For the last time. Well until XXII arrives at Amazon that is.
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Post by georgewendt on Aug 8, 2011 23:33:29 GMT -5
Revenge of the Creature. I remember from the seeing the first Creature movie on television as a kid how ridiculous I thought the musical cues from when the monster appears were and how my brother and I still laugh about it today occasionally. It was funny to see the guys pick up on this in the sequel as well, "The score is out of control!". My other favorite riffs were the ones about the milkmen and Mike's line along the lines of "Here boy, here Chris......the dog."
I really hope a deal can be worked out with Universal in the future so the their movies can be released on dvd. I'd love to share this one with my brother.
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Post by continosbuckle on Aug 9, 2011 15:59:23 GMT -5
Human Duplicators.
This is a "warm blanket" episode for me. I enjoy it immensely but it's not because I find it especially funny or even specifically memorable. The guys solidly riff an old movie that's silly but nonetheless competently done and enjoyable. The film in question just has an easy quality to it that makes it fun to watch. George Nader was likeable in a role which he very easily could have played intolerably smug. The movie could have been meaner and uglier, considering its subject matter, but it refrained from doing so, so it was just good clean fun.
I will carve out an exception in the "not especially funny or memorable" for Mike's turn as the irritated Hugh Beaumont. That was beautiful, and quite possibly my favorite host segment for the entire series.
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Post by angilasman on Aug 9, 2011 22:01:02 GMT -5
Gamera
This episode doesn't really become a classic until halfway through when Kenny really begins displaying deeply troubling behavior and the full-scale Gamera action is under way, at that point Joel and the bots have something to really sink their teeth into.
Toho movies like Gojira (that's what we fans call the first Godzilla to differentiate the original film from the identically titled US remake) and Rodan really do the slow reveal of the monster well. They do a good job of building the tension and intrigue until the respective monsters show up. In comparison, in Gamera the eponymous turtle shows up for a little in the beginning and then there's a lot of waiting around for him to show up again.
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Post by georgeworge on Aug 10, 2011 19:51:00 GMT -5
Laserblast. The South Will Rise Again chain was a hoot.. Gotta get me one of those Monad probes!
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Post by inlovewithcrow on Aug 11, 2011 9:52:32 GMT -5
I watched the terrific film Ed Wood for the first time a couple weeks ago and again more carefully a couple nights ago, so I had to rewatch Bride from my MST collection and Plan 9 from my rifftrax collection. I know Ed Wood is not 100% historically accurate, but I felt like I "knew" the actors nevertheless. Made it a richer experience.
I have similar pleasant memories of making fun of the original movie, but you simply must buy, rent, or borrow the original Creature DVD for the astonishingly good (and crucial to MSTies) commentary and interviews to learn about those music cues. There were four composers, including Henry Mancini, hired to evoke different moods.
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Post by Afgncaap5 on Aug 11, 2011 19:12:08 GMT -5
I considered starting an all new thread for this, but ultimately decided that it didn't really count as "news" so I'll post here instead... Today, Mike Nelson posted this link on Twitter, going to an interview with Bruce J. Mitchell who played Zap Rowsdower in The Final Sacrifice. It's not a new interview, but I always like seeing the actors talking about the MSTed films they were in. And that's what I Just Finished Watching (IV).
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Post by angilasman on Aug 11, 2011 19:23:21 GMT -5
Gamera vs. Barugon
On it's own, this is probably the best of these old Gamera films. As a Japanese monster buff I've considered Gamera to be pretty low on the totem pole. I love ridiculous monsters and fights and models being smashed, but there's a kind of tedium and inanity to a lot of these Gamera films that I suppose comes from being targeted strictly to very young kids (as opposed to Godzilla films, which are targeted to older kids or a family audience in general). Anyway, Gamera vs. Barugon is the most straightforward and enjoyable of these films. Lots of city destruction, some nice animalistic fighting from the two monsters (almost all of which is cut out of the MST version), some cool model environments, and fairly likable human leads in the guy and the native girl.
... of course, this is the weakest of MST3K's Gamera episodes because of those very reasons. The more head-scratchingly weird the Gamera film the better the episode!
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Post by angilasman on Aug 12, 2011 13:13:09 GMT -5
Gamera vs. Gaos
This is where things really get popping. The Gamera films get much weirder at this point and MST3K really revels in that. This is sorta the Gamera series in mid-metamorphosis: there are still adults and adult subplots (military stuff, the group of farmers) along with the lead kid. After this the kids are the sole focus, and are basically just little adults much smarter than all the dumb actual adults that rule the world. In this movie, Ichi is more realistically a kid.
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Post by fathermushroom on Aug 12, 2011 21:18:06 GMT -5
Gamera vs. Guiron
In the wonderful Michael Feinstein bit, watch Frank and Forrester when Mike gets to "boo it says". They are both working manfully to keep from busting up.
Fantastic piece.
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Post by angilasman on Aug 13, 2011 10:03:43 GMT -5
Gamera vs. Guiron
This is the real apex of the MST3K/Gamera team-up. The movie is just the right mixture of complete off-the-wall bizarre plot, crazy monster action, and terrible dubbing for Joel and the bots. They really get a hold of the Gamera theme song and riff off it about half a dozen times before episode's end (no wonder it became an instant classic - I don't think they took any other of their songs this far).
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Post by angilasman on Aug 13, 2011 21:27:26 GMT -5
Gamera vs. Zigra
The kids in this are even younger than the ones in Guiron, and yet they're put in even more life threatening situations and couple that with the news reports of whole cities destroyed and millions dead it makes for a disconcerting disconnect. Would you like more genocide in your kids' movie? Gamera's monster fighting antics disappear for long stretches of time as the terrapin is incapacitated or just plane fails to show up. The movie feels twice as long as it is and once it over feels like a dream.
...weird.
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