Evil Goblin King

The strange kinda sequel to the mysterians, there’s a lot to love about this movie, the star of the show is the effects work the sets, miniatures, vfx, matte paintings all are so fun and clearly had so much love put into them that it’s impossible not to have a good time at the peaks of this movie. There’s some fun and creative sequences in there too it’s been a while since I laughed so hard at a movie like when the aliens pick up a railroad bridge to make the train plummet to its doom then carefully put it back in the spot it was before I was losing my shit. The plot and characters are meh uninteresting which is fine for a movie like this but they spend a little too much time on it so it bogs it down a little. Small other note was kinda upset about the lack of alien or alien reveal, they just spend the whole movie in ufos, the one scene with aliens was so lame I convinced myself they were inferior henchmen aliens and the big bads would get revealed later but I guess not. These Mfs have NOTHING on the swag of the mysterians those dripped out mfs. Really charming and silly and fun but has some serious baggage

This film feels like a patchwork of the previous Toho kaiju films, varan looks like a spiky Godzilla and is discovered by scientists investigating an ecological anomaly in the area, much like beast man snow man a local secluded village worship the creature, he gets his name because he is the last remaining of a previously extinct species called the Varan (much like Angilas in Godzilla raids) and he’s not even the first flying kaiju thanks to Rodan. The movie is okay, it’s not a standout and just kind of uninteresting but it has a few fun set pieces here and there and I laughed really hard both when he started flying and when he was hiding underwater like a looney tunes bit. It’s not the worst but it’s also just not very interesting, the first half is pretty decent and then it just slows to a drag. Not to mention the original cut of this film is a fucking bitch to find online.

This film is very cool, throughout history many counter culture movements have had their ties to fascism metal, punk and obviously in this case the biker / greaser culture of the 60s. This is a short evocative little work that explores this idea. The imagery is surreal, intimate and at some points pretty chilling (the party scene especially sent some chills down my spine). I thought especially the Jesus black and white film spliced in was pretty fun, Jesus guiding his followers to prayer as the bikers lead each other to debauchery and fascism.  The blue velvet needle drop low key jumpscared me as well I wasn’t ready for it.

I mean this is the original Godzilla without the substance but it’s funny and fun and cool and gamera is a giant turtle that turns into a helicopter via flame propulsion within his shell so put some respect on his name.